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I have no memories of learning to read, except that my whole life seemed defined by the journey from being read to, to being able to lose myself in a book. My granddaughter, at 4, is at the just-before-reading-and-writing stage, and she gets fully absorbed in ways I remember:

  She loves to be read to like I did. She also loves to lose herself in music videos and stories on her parents’ computers. That was obviously not happening alongside learning to read in the 1960’s, nor when her own parents learned to read in the 1990’s.

Now I teach young people who always had those alternatives. Born between 2004-2007, first their caregivers and then they themselves always had YouTube (launched in 2005) as an alternative to reading. By the time they were preteens, TikTok was around and smart phones were everywhere. Standardized testing required their teachers to organize learning around what would be tested, and how. All of them spent some period of time during their junior high or high school years under Covid lockdown, with uneven impact on what and how they learned.

All of those factors affect how they learn that are well documented in educational research and endlessly discussed in higher education. Alongside many of my colleagues, I study my students’ learning styles and capabilities with the same vigor I bring to scholarship into peace education in Colombia.

I did not, however, have that aim in mind when I assigned students in my global health course, Foundations of Health Humanities, to reflect on how they learn. Because the course fulfills a general education requirement, all but a few are first and second year students. Many are in pre-health majors, so they lean toward being smart, highly motivated, and used to success in school. I asked them to write about how they learned something they really wanted to learn, whether that was chemistry or surfing, and how they did it. Their reflections did not exactly surprise me: only 2 out of 30 mentioned reading at all, and only one of those said their primary way of learning was through reading.

Many said they prefer visual or audio inputs or doing something active, like an experiment or an applied project. Having them confirm what I had read about Gen Z learning strategies, however, emphasized to me how much of my learning (indeed, my life) revolves around reading. I read for pleasure even more than I read for work, and the distinction often blurs. I watch documentaries, listen to podcasts and use YouTube videos for some stages of learning. I almost always do that with an eye (and ear) toward what I can pass along to students as alternatives to assigning them something to read.

Naturally, I’m ambivalent about that. If the folks in my class don’t read (something teachers have moaned about since orality was replaced by literacy) and aren’t great at processing what they do read, shouldn’t I encourage and support them to read more, not less? When does “meet them where they are” become surrender?

Paying attention to the experts, I try to encourage reading by focusing on what they are likely to find interesting. I try to share what sparked my interest in the reading I assign by adding information about the authors and questions that point them toward why it’s important. I look for visual and audio material that I hope will support, rather than replace, what they’re assigned to read. I try to model reading comprehension strategies and encourage them to work together, in pairs or in small groups, when there’s a complex task before them that relies on reading.

I still grapple with the question of what it means to believe they have learned something in my class, when there is – I’ll go ahead and say this – less reading required in my classes with each passing year. Grappling with the undeniable fact that these students have other ways of learning that seem to work for them (to different degrees), I’ve had to ask: What makes my generation believe that the only way to really learn something complicated and important is to read something complicated and important?

Just one example: There are canonical articles that define our fields. They were impenetrable 40 years ago and, because decoding them was the password to join the club, we have trouble believing there is any other way to truly master fundamental concepts.  One of the most terrifying threats of AI is that if high-quality summaries of those articles are available in seconds in bullet points and some – gasp – produced as chatty, engaging podcasts, how will we ever police the gates? If we fall back on the assumption that the only way to REALLY learn something is to read it – slowly, painfully, perhaps many times – are we upholding time-tested standards?  Or just policing?

The obvious next question is how to know whether – and what – they have learned. I stopped believing in exams as measurements of learning close to a decade ago. I became a convert to project-based learning and, more recently, to students’ own evaluations of their learning. I de-emphasize grades as much as I possibly can, wanting all of us to focus on learning rather than on evaluation. I know too well that this generation worries about their grades to an extent that truly was not invented when I was in their Chucks* (of course there were no Chucks then, either).  Sometimes I read a learning reflection or self-evaluation from a student and want to

STAND UP AND SCREAM FOR JOY 

(Students, please teach me how to generate a .gif here)

I honestly want to hug those students when I read those. I see that they HAVE learned something, that they believe it is important, that they think it will stick with them. Whatever that is (that a good story involves showing not telling, that caregiver burnout looks different in Singapore than in New Zealand, that for something to be considered a primary source it has to have been peer reviewed, that making art can be a solid mental health strategy), when a student can show me that they have, in fact, learned something, there is no better feeling for any teacher.

That’s where I am for now: My role is to understand how they learn, provide them with many ways to learn, and put some of the responsibility for assessing their learning on them.  For now, that means looking beyond the activity of reading that has been, and apparently will always be, the alpha and omega of my own learning processes.  One of my countless privileges is that I’m free to experiment, to admit that something did not work out, to shrug and try something else next semester. Best of all, I get to keep teaching, and learning about how students learn, and keep teaching – I hope – better.

* “Chucks” = Chuck Taylors, a subtype of Converse sneakers, available in a bazillion colors and styles and wildly popular among people with young feet.