``The typical child does not read very much,`` said Richard Anderson, co- author of a national report on reading. ``In a sample of over 150 5th graders in central Illinois, a median child was reading books about 4.6 minutes a day,`` he said.
This is not just a recent phenomenon. Teachers have been aware of it and have been trying to change it for a long time. ``Encouraging youngsters to read outside the classroom as a standard part of their leisure time activities has been an activity of the National Council of Teachers of English since 1915,`` said John Maxwell, executive director of the council, headquartered in Urbana.
``1915 was the year the council published `Home Reading,` the precursor of . . . book lists encouraging children to read by showing them books worth reading that they would enjoy,`` he said. Explaining the reason for the problem then, Maxwell said, ``I think it`s fair to say that children at that time had a lot of chores and duties and life was harder.``
Today there are still many demands on youngsters` free time. ``Children nowadays are very busy with extra activities after school, whether it`s going to something offered by the park district or to Greek school, Japanese school or Hebrew school,`` said Sherrie Gebhardt, a 6th grade teacher at Glen Grove School in Glenview.
Many see television as the culprit, gobbling up children`s time in 30-minute segments.
But the report that Anderson cowrote, ``Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the Commission on Reading,`` says that TV can sometimes be an ally of literature. ``There is evidence that confirms that TV programs especially designed to have educational value for young people do in fact promote reading,`` the report said.
Maxwell noted, though, that TV often has a limited ability to translate literature to the screen. ``It has to eliminate portions of the plot and some of the characters to fit it into half an hour,`` he said. ``So although TV has enriched in some ways, in other ways it is incomplete because a great deal of complexity and texture and depth disappear.``
Maxwell said another disadvantage people cite about watching TV is that it supplies all the visuals and leaves no room for the development of imagination.
``Our children spend an awful lot of time watching TV and listening to the radio, but we want them to know there`s a lot of fun in reading a good book--that you can escape into another world, you can expand your horizons by reading,`` said Mattie Williams, director of the Bureau of Language Arts for the Chicago public schools.
Williams said that a new comprehensive reading program was launched in all Chicago public schools in the fall. In addition to teaching reading skills, it requires that one hour a week be spent on reading for recreation and enrichment.
At the McDade Classical School, 8801 S. Indiana Ave., teachers lead activities to encourage reading for pleasure, said counselor Joyce Batson, who taught reading for 25 years. ``Children do improvisations from portions of books or act out the story,`` she said. ``Some teachers take the time to read an ongoing story. The rooms are always appealing with something to be read--a chart, a poem, a quote. There is an extensive collection of books in the classrooms, which is a key factor.``
Anderson agreed. ``One of the factors that will get children to read more is easy access to books that are the right level of difficulty and that children will find interesting, informative, funny,`` he said.
Anderson, who is director of the Center for the Study of Reading at the University of Illinois in Urbana, has preliminary results of a study that put libraries of books other than textbooks into 4th-grade classrooms. ``We already know that doing that increased the reading of the children a lot, maybe doubled it,`` he said.
The National Council of Teachers of English has prepared book lists, such as one entitled High Interest-Easy Reading for Junior and Senior High School Students, in an effort to get children hooked on reading by suggesting books on contemporary interests. Some of the subjects include coping with braces, teenage alcoholism and anorexia nervosa.
Batson remembered giving a copy of Judy Blume`s book, ``Are You There God? It`s Me, Margaret,`` which deals with menstruation, to a young girl just reaching puberty. ``It came at the most appropriate time,`` she said. ``And her mother swears it`s what turned her daughter on to being an avid reader.`` Finding books appropriate for younger children also is important.
``Children are so advanced socially--the other day a 1st grader was talking about birth control--because TV is so accelerated. But books can give them things that are more childlike,`` Batson said. ``One of the favorites I read to my classes was `Charlotte`s Web.` ``