Rising seniors around Plant all issued a collective groan when we found out that, for yet another year, we had a summer reading assignment. Despite this, we soldiered on. We undertook the gargantuan task of searching for the title of the book, bounding through various files on Canvas or attempting to listen to our teachers’ desperate pleas to get started early and actually read the book for once. As the summer zipped by, each brave student in turn cracked open the summer reading book. A rich world of oppression, love and hate among war bloomed in our minds—for about five minutes. Despite the noble intentions of summer reading, it’s overall ineffective, frustrating and flawed—it’s time we either rethink it or retire it.
To think about why summer reading doesn’t work, we must examine why it exists. The most common explanation for summer reading is combating the “summer slide”—a slump during the summer in which students can lose skills and knowledge. The logic checks—if a student doesn’t interact with any course material over the summer, their ability levels drop. We’ve all felt the inner disappointment of misspelling a word as simple as “science” after a summer of actively vacuuming all old information out of our heads.
Another common point is that summer reading helps children who would otherwise not have the opportunity to keep up their reading skills during the summer. Research by Alexander et al. (2007) shows that impoverished students lose ground over the summer while their more affluent peers have the advantage of expensive programs and experiences. Summer reading therefore allows many students the opportunity to combat the deterioration of their academic proficiency.
These are both valid arguments. Children who don’t have the opportunity to interact with course content fall behind their peers that consistently do. On the other hand, there are several flaws with this logic. Poor children have less access to the books they need to read to help them. Why spend $15 on a book when that could mean a meal? Moreover, as English teachers staring at back-to-school test grades can attest, it’s not as effective as most people think it is. A large amount of these issues can be attributed to a simple fact—students don’t do the summer reading.
If you’re anything like most of Plant High School’s first-page warriors, you didn’t read the summer reading book. Whether it was uninteresting, irrelevant, or downright mind-numbing, most students stated that their summer reading book sat on their shelf as they chose other more appealing options, and the same reasons popped up time and time again for why this occurs.
“I chose happiness over academics,” said Grace Underwood (11). “I think students should enjoy their summer stress-free without…having to finish a whole 500-page book. I think that it’s just ludicrous.” In schools today, students are under immense amounts of stress. Between rising standards for college applications, increasingly difficult course loads, and pressure to have complex and unique extracurriculars, summer break is increasingly important as students get the chance to finally relax and recharge.
Isabelle Grosskopf (12), when asked if she read the summer reading book, commented “I never have and I never will…they’re boring, and I don’t feel like wasting my time on a boring book.” This reveals yet another issue with summer reading—the books don’t appeal to all students. One student’s favorite book could be another’s equivalent of watching paint dry. Demanding that all students read the same book simply doesn’t work.
However, even among those that read and enjoyed the book, the sentiment around summer reading was overwhelmingly negative. “It interrupts my summer,” Maggie Henson (9) stated. She wasn’t the only one. Plenty of students felt that summer reading diminished the quality of their summer, either taking away valuable time to rest or keep up connections with family members and friends.
Sloane Osterweil (12) brought up a different point— “I guess it could force people to read, but with the internet and AI…I feel like it’s losing its point of getting kids to read over the summer.” Between AI, SparkNotes, and whatever other online resource students may use, it’s increasingly easy to skate by without reading the book. Summer reading is no longer a guarantee that a student is reading during the summer, so what’s the point?
Natasha Walker, an English teacher of 25 years, commented on this issue. When asked about how many people she thought fully read the summer reading book, she responded, “For the high-level classes, I would say 85%…For our honors level, which is the lower level, less than half. Way less than half.” A book cannot be taught effectively when so few students are reading it. When this happens, it means either weeks spent reteaching the book or having to contend with failing grades.
However, this may not even be the students’ fault. Though it may seem like most students don’t read the summer reading book simply out of laziness, in reality there are a variety of reasons that the book may not get read. For incoming ninth graders, Walker commented, students may not even receive communication on which book to read. Some students may come from out of state or from a family where they were not able to get the book. It’s unfair to test students on something that each of them has a different ability level in and access to. For many, summer reading translates to entering the school year on the wrong foot. As Walker put it, “The problem is, not everyone is starting on a level playing field.”
On the other hand, when a teacher gets to choose their own content from the first day of school, they can ensure that everybody gets the same chance. In Walker’s class, this is no different—“When I start my first short story lesson with 9th grade… everybody’s level. Everybody gets the text, everybody gets the instruction, everybody has the ability to then be assessed.” Summer reading is the antithesis of this freedom and equality. As Walker put it, “I don’t think it necessarily demonstrates the ability to work in an AP class or whether the person is going to be successful, at all. I just don’t.” We cannot keep using summer reading as an accomplice in burdening teachers and discouraging students.
After all of these issues, we still have summer reading. It’s not effective, it puts students at a disadvantage, and students hate doing it, but we still have it. The real reason? People think we should. Unlike what most may expect, summer reading is not mandatory in any way. It’s the school that decides if we have summer reading and which book. On the outside, summer reading seems perfect. Students’ skills regress during the summer, so they do an assigned reading and discuss it in depth in class, maintaining the inertia of the previous school year and later refining their knowledge. However, as we have seen, the reality is much more flawed. What can we do about it?
Even though summer reading is far from perfect, it can be improved. In fact, several students had suggestions ready to go. “I think that they should pick better and more substantial books,” said Savannah Grounds (12). “I think there should be a winter reading. Like do it over winter break,” suggested Cecelia Sperry (12). “I believe if I should read a book that I choose the book myself and maybe do a project on it when we get back to school,” added Sofia Barkules (11). The students know that summer reading isn’t what it can be, and they want it to be better.
On the other hand, there’s a case for throwing out summer reading entirely. It feels wrong—Plant is a high-achieving school in a competitive environment. By all standards, we should be doing summer reading. Even so, this doesn’t change how summer reading functions in practice. “When you come down to it and we’re in here, all of us, it just doesn’t [work],” said Walker. We all love the shiny neatness of the idea of summer reading. Yet we can’t deny the reality of how it is in our classrooms and our homes.
The bottom line is that summer reading is a gamble. It’s a gamble on if a student is going to read it. It’s a gamble on if a teacher is going to teach it. It’s a gamble on if summer reading at all is effective. We need to stop pretending that summer reading is a panacea for achievement gaps and the summer slide. Summer reading isn’t the solution—it’s exhausting, a burden, and a losing battle. Teachers don’t want it. Students certainly don’t. We must listen to the people who have to contend with the summer reading. The time has come to let it fade into the past and allow our students to take back their summers.