What do students read? To answer this question, I interviewed friends who are current students or recent graduates of post-secondary education. More specifically, I questioned whether or not being in school affects the amount of time and the willingness to read. I began knowing (from my own experience as a student) that being in school can significantly affect reading time, but I was curious to see if others had the same experience or how their experiences differed from my own. Taking this approach allowed me to gain some understanding of what students categorize as everyday reading and how often people in my own community of friends interact with the same types of texts.
My first step was to determine a working definition for the term community. I define "community" as people in a similar stage of life, with similar interests, who come together to challenge and strengthen each other in many spheres of life. I realize that this definition will not suit all situations, but it seems to work for my own experience and understanding of the term, especially with respect to the reading practices in question.
I decided I would talk to ten people who fit this definition of community, all of whom are enrolled in post-secondary education. I came up with five questions. First, I asked, "would you describe yourself as a reader or book lover?" I asked this question because I wanted to see if the people in my community identified themselves as individuals who enjoy reading. My rationale was that if you thought of yourself as a reader, you would take time out of your day to read some type of material, whether it was a novel or a news article. This question helped me see the importance of reading in the lives of the participants in my simple study.
The second question I asked was about time. When do you read? I also included a brief explanation to the question, pointing to time of day and time of year as possible ways to categorize an answer. I had a hidden hope for this question, wondering if the participants would differentiate between being in school and being on summer vacation. They all found this hidden desire of mine and provided separate answers for reading during school and reading when outside of school. Although the methodology seems less than rigorous in retrospect, the process and results were interesting regardless.
My third question:, what do you read every day? I asked this in an effort to gain some understanding of what they would consider to be “everyday reading.” I included some examples such as books, short stories, newspapers, magazines, social media, and more. Each person included an option that I did not include in my example list, such as different phone apps, blogs, news websites, and religious texts. They also provided me with genres and even some specific authors.
My next question provided a broader answer than I was expecting. I asked how many hours they would guess they read on an average day. Each person I interviewed provided separate answers for each type of reading material they were interacting with (i.e. 30 minutes on social media, 30 minutes on a news platform, 30 minutes with a novel, etc.). Often the participants also differentiated between how much they read during the school year and how much they read during vacation time. Looking back, based in part on my own experience, I might wonder just how precise such answers, derived from memory, could be.
The final question I asked was at the heart of the interview: does being in school affect your reading time? I received a resounding yes from all the participants. When asked why, they all mentioned something along the lines of the mental exhaustion that accompanies school, alongside the fact that many classes require significant reading, thus making the idea of leisure reading at the end of the day not very appealing.
A few comments on my own approach to the subject of this report seem appropriate. My understanding of everyday reading is that it increases awareness of the outside world and the complex relationships surrounding us at any point in time, for example in the fields of economics, politics, culture, and so forth. In my opinion, academic texts such as literary journals and research articles should not be the only texts that further knowledge. In relation, there is a narrow-mindedness in what constitutes educational texts, thus creating a divide between reading for fun and reading to learn. I have come to see this form of reading hierarchy as socially constructed and as too often dictating the reading practices of students—both within and beyond the university. Leisure reading is encouraged in childhood but it becomes a chore somewhere between childhood and adulthood, evidenced by the above results. Reading should and does play an important role in our lives, but school reading should not become the only form of reading that interests or serves. Unfortunately, it seems that education tends to dominate reading practices, at least among university students. It would be interesting to know more about how the reading practices of these people change, or if they change, after university. Does educational reading subside? Is it replaced by other forms of educational reading, or by something else entirely? My guess is that all students interviewed will continue to read, although differently, for both professional and personal reasons, in whatever way best suits their own path.
