Jeremy Adams, a high school and college political science teacher in Bakersfied, recently crafted a piece about high school reading in the tech age, and so, with thanks, here are a few excerpts worth reading:

Most of us who grew up in the United States before the advent of smartphones and social media can remember adults using phrases like, ‘serious reading’ or can name people in our orbit who claimed books ‘changed their lives’…

Early on, we were imbued with the notion that reading mattered. Not because it empowered us to effectively absorb information or positioned us to do well on a future standardized exam. It mattered because the books we read had a lasting and powerful impact on the people we would become…

I discovered when I took the time to read deeply, life brimmed with possibilities and surged with urgency in a way it never had. It is one of the reasons I became a teacher, to share this exhilaration with young minds.

Yet in my two decades of teaching high school in California’s Central Valley, perhaps the biggest change I have noticed is that the belief that reading both enlarges and enlivens life itself has largely vanished from the lives of my young students.

Today’s teenagers read all day—memes, posts, tweets—but it is all a transitory, casual nature. Reading books has been sacrificed to the tyranny of texting and the dizzying array of social media platforms.

In the 1970s, teens read three times as many books as today. In 1980, 60% of high school seniors reported that they read a newspaper, magazine, or book on a daily basis for pleasure; by 2016, that number had dropped to 16%…

None of this would surprise modern classroom teachers, who can attest that the ubiquitous presence of cellphones and other devices in the lives of student is zeitgeist-defining development that has fundamentally altered the American classroom. Students are perpetually, almost maniacally, distracted in class and at home. The ability to focus on a single task—studying, taking notes, and, yes, reading a book—has largely been lost…

Two years ago, during the last week of school, I asked a class of high school seniors what advice they would give their freshman selves. The class valedictorian raised his hand and matter-of-factly intoned, “I would find a cliff and throw my phone off it.”

Any parents and/or teachers out there nodding your heads and thinking, “Here! Here!”?

With my thanks, Carol (schoolwisebooks.com)