Friday, August 29, 2014

Article of the Week Period 6


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/opinion/bruni-read-kids-read.html
Please add an intelligent comment (minimum 5 sentences) in response to the linked article.  Be sure to use a minimum of one quote in your response.  Comment on a classmate's post in a second post (minimum 3 sentences) *Use only your first name, last initial and class period.

16 comments:

  1. This article was a well written and well thought out. It explains how much Frank Bruni cherishes reading and also how it is mentally good for the brain and the imagination. He says how he asks his niece what book she is reading and how she likes it. Frank states how the amount of kids that’s that read for fun has gone done in the past 30 years. “It showed that 30 years ago, only 8 percent of 13-year-olds and 9 percent of 17-year-olds said that they “hardly ever” or never read for pleasure.” As technology advances, kids are spending more time on smart phones than they are reading a book, which is rather unfortunate.
    Mike Gogs

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  2. In the article, "Read, Kids, Read", the author, Frank Bruni, tries to make a point about how healthy and educational reading can be for the mind and for the body. Nowadays, not many can say that they read for fun. With all the hustle and bustle of today's society, not everyone finds the time to just sit down and read. Once some do have the opportunity to do so, they probably won't. Only because there are so many distractions that present themselves in almost everyone's everyday lives. The article states, "that 30 years ago, only 8 percent of 13-year-olds and 9 percent of 17-year-olds said that they “hardly ever” or never read for pleasure. Today, 22 percent of 13-year-olds and 27 percent of 17-year-olds say that. Fewer than 20 percent of 17-year-olds now read for pleasure “almost every day.” Back in 1984, 31 percent did." These statistics seemed to make the author sad or maybe even disappointed, but with the changes and increase of mass technology, wouldn't it be expected that reading is easily thrown away because of all the other options were given today?

    Aaliyah H-S

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  3. I don’t think reading is that important. There are some meaningful quotes in this article that will give me second thoughts about really sitting down and reading. I feel like this is way to over dramatic about trying to make kids read it’s not that serious. Kids do enough reading daily on social media. I personally can’t sit down and read because it’s not interesting enough to me.

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  4. I disagree to the article Read, Kids, Read by Frank Brumi. For example when he says, “Reading does things to the brain, heart and spirit that movies, television, video games and the rest of it cannot.” I think that movies do more for the brain that books do. Because when you are seeing a movie you see emotion, not like when you read. Also when I’m watching a movie I can pay more attention than I can when a book.
    Anthony D.

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  5. The article states that “Reading has bequeathed what meditation promises. It has smoothed and focused us.” What I take from this quote is that reading and meditation offer the same thing. I would have to disagree with this statement. I think this because meditation is about clearing the mind and blocking out all distractions. When reading it is not clearing your mind it is doing the exact opposite, it is filling your mind with ideas and images from the book.

    Kris Vass

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  6. My opinion on this article is that it is really one sided. The author is someone who enjoys reading books himself, which is why he is saying reading is good and makes you a smarter and better person. One thing he says about books is, “I’m convinced that the shattered world has less hope for repair if reading becomes an ever smaller part of it.” I disagree with this. I bet there are a lot of people who are doing things that are benefitting the world and don’t read books.
    Nick E.

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  7. In this article Frank Bruni states that “reading does things — to the brain, heart and spirit — that movies, television, video games and the rest of it cannot.” I believe that this statement is not true, I do not think that it is true because when I watch a movie if there is no background sound muffling the movie I can get so in to it that it almost feels like I am actually playing a role in it. I have read the boy in the striped pajamas and seen the movie, but I felt that I got into the movie more and got more emotions out of it because you are not only listening to the words that they are saying you are also watching the actions that go along with the text. I feel that when you are listening it also gives you a better perspective on their emotions because you can hear the tone of their voice. All in all I feel that just because you read a book instead of watching a movie you don’t get more emotions out of the book.
    -Zachary DeGoursey

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  8. In this article it makes me think of how many people don't read and say they don't have the time. yes i agree with this article because back then people liked to read now the reading population has went down. The author that wrote this article stated ”I’m incessantly asking my nephews and nieces what they’re reading and why they’re not reading more”. This proves even his kids don't want to read they probably rather watch tv or play games. This population is filled with technology kids rather be on then putting their head in a book.
    mary t

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  9. My opinion on this article is that it goes into well descriptive detail on why reading is important. This article tells how reading tells important stories and can change who we are better than watching television or movies as most people do. “It showed that 30 years ago, only 8 percent of 13-year-olds and 9 percent of 17-year-olds said that they “hardly ever” or never read for pleasure. Today, 22 percent of 13-year-olds and 27 percent of 17-year-olds say that. Fewer than 20 percent of 17-year-olds now read for pleasure “almost every day.” Back in 1984, 31 percent did. What a marked and depressing change”(Bruni, 5). People are beginning to read less which is a steadily growing and increasing occurrence. This article did a good job of bringing more awareness to that problem by inserting statistics. The decline of book reading was very informative in this article.
    Devin D.

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  10. I agree with the article because a lot of kids are not reading, and are watching TV and playing video games instead . In the article the author said “ But I’m coming at this differently, as someone persuaded that reading does things — to the brain, heart and spirit — that movies, television, video games and the rest of it cannot.” I think that this is true because when you watch TV and play video games you do not have to imagine what is happening. I also agree with him because if you ask kids what they do when they get home most will not say reading . Also reading helps you learn and can help you with your vocabulary and you can relate to more things going on in the world and an in people lives. So in all I think that reading is important and can do good things for the brain.
    Mario F

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  11. The article states that reading is the only way to get certain feelings like satisfaction, to think about oneself and all deeper meaning thinking. The author clearly has a big biased towards books and don’t think to highly of media such as TV or video games. I would have to disagree with his opinion as some TV shows, videos and graphic novels (comic books and manga) can be very thought provocative in many ways. For example for video games, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 (commonly just known as Persona 4 or P4) has pretty much more than what Mr.Bruni asked for. The plot of the game involves a mysteries murders that can’t be solved. It also leaves you the question of should you blind yourself from who you are and what is the truth, or should you pursue the truth even if it makes you face and accept the worst part of humanity, and maybe yourself. Though the game does learn towards finding the truth no matter what but it does leave you thinking about yourself and are you your real self or just a fake mask you put on everyday. Can you accept yourself as yourself? If a videogame can leave you self analyzing yourself at a such personal level, than why is it inferior to books? Not to mention the persona series is known to have great stories and not the those but a lot of games have a rich story and well develop characters and for the ones that have bad stories and I have to point out Sturgeon's law, 90% of everything is bad. From any media to any form of storytelling 90% of that is just bad which is true in a lot of cases. If you point out a bad story in a video game or tv show I will point out just as many books that are just as stupid. So Mr. Bruni should at least do some research before stating that a huge medium like video games is just bad or doesn’t do as much as books.

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  12. “It showed that 30 years ago, only 8 percent of 13-year-olds and 9 percent of 17-year-olds said that they “hardly ever” or never read for pleasure. Today, 22 percent of 13-year-olds and 27 percent of 17-year-olds say that. Fewer than 20 percent of 17-year-olds now read for pleasure “almost every day.” Back in 1984, 31 percent did. What a marked and depressing change.”When reading through this article I came to this quote and I thought of how bad it is getting for the younger generation to enjoy reading. My thoughts were since we are going through a more technology powered world. Reasons of why the older generation could like books is because they didn’t have some of the items kids use today, looking at phones you can play games on, high-tech computers, portable devices, etc. When using these devices kids get addicted to it so when they see books it seems really boring and they can’t focus on them making reading look boring.

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  13. I think that Frank Bruni is trying to tell us that reading books is important hes worried that no one read books for fun anymore “today, 22 percent of 13-years-olds and 27 percent of 17-year-olds say that”. Back in his day in 1984 only 31 percent read books for fun. In 30 years 9 percent of teenagers have stop reading books for fun. So in another 30 years will it drop another 9 percent? If this does happen then only 13 percent of teens would read books for fun and that 13 percent would have a better vocabulary than everyone else. I believe that this should change over time so the teens in the future aren't dumb and should read books for fun. - Mark N.

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