Most parents don’t read with kids, tests find
Families more engaged by technology and it’s ‘heartbreaking,’ expert says
Do you regularly snuggle up with your seven-year-old to read a bedtime story? If so, you are in a minority among Ottawa parents. That’s the word from the kids themselves, who were asked about what goes on at home as part of provincial testing.
In addition to administering standardized tests for math, reading and writing, Ontario’s Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) asks children in Grades 3 and 6 questions about “parent engagement” — and the results are eye-opening.
Only 31 per cent of Ottawa children in Grade 3 said they read together with their parents “every day or almost every day.” (That is the average for the four Ottawa school boards.) The provincial average is the same.
“That’s heartbreaking, isn’t it?” said Joel Westheimer, the University Research Chair in Democracy and Education at the University of Ottawa. He suspects screen time is edging out reading.
“A lot of parents these days are defaulting to the whole family being on devices and being occupied by technology. It’s not just the kids that are absorbed by devices, but the parents as well. So many parents are bringing work home, answering emails. There are a lot of families where the reading time slips away.”
The results may also reflect growing economic inequality, he said. Low-income single parents or those working several jobs are often busy. “That’s going to result in a lot of parents having less and less time with their children, even though we know the immense importance of that time.”
Different cultural traditions also play a role, said Esther Geva, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Toronto. In some cultures, parents don’t read to their children, she said. “The kids go to school, that’s where they can learn to read.” Parents may supervise homework and hire a tutor if their child is struggling.
“They still care about their kids’ education, but the mechanisms they use are different.”
It’s also possible some Grade 3 kids are devouring Geronimo Stilton and Judy Moody books on their own, and parents figure they don’t need to read with them anymore.
Reading with children when they are young is key to developing their literacy. But at what age do parents stop? In Grade 3, children can be from seven to nine years old.
Plenty of experts say it’s valuable to read to older kids, too. It allows them to enjoy a more sophisticated story, for one thing. Children’s reading abilities don’t usually catch up to their listening comprehension until around Grade 8, says educator Jim Trelease, author of the Read-Aloud Handbook, in an article. Reading together is also a great way to introduce difficult issues, he writes.
“For example, you can tell your child, ‘I don’t want you to hang out with so and so,’ but that’s a lecture that will probably go in one ear and out the other. But if you read a book about a kid who gets in trouble by hanging out with the wrong crowd, your child is going to experience that directly, and she’s going to experience it with you at her side, and you can talk about it together.”
For parent Denny Alexander and his partner Robert, reading to their two boys at bedtime is a ritual that everyone enjoys.
“To them, it’s a big deal,” said Alexander. “If something cuts into that reading time, they are not happy about it.” Oscar is 8, in Grade 3, and Dominik is 9, so they’re at a transitional age, he said. The boys read on their own, often graphic novels like Captain Underpants and the Bone series. Their parents read more complicated books like the Harry Potter series aloud, a chapter most nights.
The question about reading was just one of several EQAO questions meant to measure how much support parents give their children at home.
The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board summarized the results in a recent report that found parents in that board tended to be “less engaged” than the provincial average. Fewer than half of the kids in Grade 3 at the public board, for example, said their parents regularly looked at their agendas or talked to them about the reading, writing or mathematics work they did at school.
By Grade 6, the percentages were even lower. That seems puzzling, given Ottawa’s high average income and education levels, which tend to equate with more parental involvement.
However, it might also be a reflection on the questions, which are ambiguous, or in the opinion of Westheimer, downright odd. Take this one: “We talk about the mathematics work I do in school.” Does that mean conversations while doing homework? Is it reasonable or helpful to expect parents to chat with little Johnny every day about what math problems he did in school?
“When you are outside of the school system, you recognize that question for the ridiculous question it is,” said Westheimer. “Maybe you could talk to kids about history, or social studies, or things that you can have a conversation about.”
The questions reflect the Ontario Education Ministry’s “myopic obsession” with measuring math and literacy achievement in young kids, he said.
“It’s particularly shocking at that young age (Grade 3). Why aren’t they asking kids about their friends at school, or whether they are in the play, or how did they do in the soccer game?” Those are more developmentally appropriate questions for kids that age, he said.