Reading is such a crucial aspect of everyday life that students have been doing since day one of their schooling. It is critical to human survival as well as obtaining knowledge, so why is it that students are becoming increasingly disinterested in voluntary reading?

In order to determine the extent to which students are choosing not to read, the Freedom Revolution Newspaper posted a poll on Twitter asking students how often they read in their free time. The choices included “Everyday,” “A couple times per week,” “A couple times per month,” and “I avoid it at all costs.” The results were shocking.

Out of the forty-five students who voted, a whopping 58 percent claimed that they avoid reading at all costs. 20 percent said they read a couple times per month, 13 percent said they read a couple times per week, and a mere 9 percent said they read in their free time everyday.

“I find [reading] to be important, but I don’t get motivated enough to do it,” said Andrew Wise, Junior.

Many students have the same opinion on recreational reading.

“I’m not much of a reader myself, and don’t usually enjoy doing it. I mostly only read when it is assigned,” said Mark Mouhawasse, Junior.

The question must be asked– what is causing the lack of interest in such an important activity?

Some Freedom students believe they know the reason behind the decrease in student reading. The answer that appears to be repeatedly arising is that the school system is to blame.

President of the Freedom Book Club, Senior Shahla Hassanyar, explained the importance of reading.

“Reading is really important. It’s calming for me personally but also it helps out your grammar and writing immeasurably,” said Hassanyar.

Perhaps students are less interested in reading because school plays a factor in it.

“School makes it less appealing because you don’t have any time to read because of school. There’s too much to do and the assigned novels they choose are too often boring classics and not contemporary novels,” said Hassanyar.

Wise and Mouhawasse held similar views on the matter.

“I do think that the school system is making reading less appealing to students. By assigning boring books to read, I don’t have time to read the things that I would like to read,” said Mouhawasse.

“I think the school system is making reading less appealing because they force unnecessary reading on their students when really reading should be enjoyable because it is a crucial part of education,” added Wise.

Students identified the problem as there being too much work assigned in school and boring classics being assigned to read. However, they believe this is a problem that can be fixed.

“I feel that a solution to the dilemma could be less tedious work involving reading in school so we could have more time to read outside of school and so that we would be more excited about doing so,” said Wise. “The school system should allow the students to have a say in what books we should read, so we could pick more enjoyable books.”

Students not only believe that the school system is at fault for the lowered interest in reading, but they also feel that they should be given less work in regards to reading, and more influence over what the required reading in school should be.