Kelly Gallagher's book 'Readicide' argues that school practices are systematically undermining the love of reading, particularly through excessive test preparation and fragmented teaching methods. The author highlights alarming statistics about literacy among adults and students, especially in low-income areas, while emphasizing the importance of recreational reading. Gallagher calls for a reevaluation of instructional practices to foster genuine reading engagement and prevent the decline of reading culture in schools.

1. Readicide: How Schools Are Killing
Reading and What You Can Do About It
Book by: Kelly Gallagher, 2009, Stenhouse Publishers
Discussion Facilitator: Dr. Lynn Warren
Slides are excerpts from the book for discussion only.

2. Kelly Gallagher
• 22 years as a classroom teacher
• Teaches English in an urban high school, most
recently New York inner city
• Addresses “the systematic killing of the love of
reading often exacerbated by the inane, mind-
numbing practices found in schools”
• Intentions are not the problem, practices are

3. Our Questions
• Are we contributing to Readicide? If
yes, how are we causing it?
• How do we end Readicide?

4. Aliteracy
Quotes from Readicide
• Ray Bradbury
“You do not have to burn books to destroy
culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
• Reading At Risk study from 2004 found that
54% of adults were nonliterary text readers.

5. Test Preparation Issues and Reading
• Drives shallow teaching and
learning
• Keeps struggling readers
struggling and in “magic pill”
reading programs
• “Apartheid” schools—less than
14% of low income students are
reading at grade level
• Too many standards—teachers
are in a hard place
• School culture valuing
developing test takers over
developing readers
From Readicide

6. The Kill-a-Reader Casserole (Overteaching
with the Chop Chop Curriculum)
• Take one large novel. Dice it into as many pieces
as possible.
• Douse with sticky notes.
• Remove book from oven every five minutes and
insert worksheets.
• Add more sticky notes.
• Baste until novel is unrecognizable, far beyond
well done.
• Serve in choppy bite-size chunks. (page 73, Readicide)

7. The Kill-a-Reader Casserole
(underteaching)

8. Role of Recreational Reading
• What is it? Why is it important? What are we
doing to promote free voluntary reading? How
much of this kind of reading should students be
doing?
• NAEP study: Students who read out of school for
fun almost everyday scored higher than students
who read once or twice a week who scored
higher than those who read only once or twice a
month who scored higher than those who hardly
ever read for fun outside of school. EdResearch.info Quote
from Readicide

9. How do you find the “Sweet Spot” of
Instruction?
• Students need the
proper level of
instructional support
without abandoning or
drowning them. What
is the right balance of
help?

10. Reading Materials and Time to Read
• Do students have lots of
interesting reading
material to choose
from—”a book flood?”
• How much time are
students given to read
in school?
• How do reward reading
programs affect
readers?

11. Are we fixing the wrong things?
• What do we do to prevent Readicide?
In today’s data-happy era of accountability, testing and
No Child Left Behind, here is the most astonishing
statistic in the whole field of education: an increasing
number of researchers are saying that nearly 1 out of 3
public high school students won’t graduate…For
Latinos and African Americans, the rate approaches an
alarming 50%. Virtually no community , small or large,
rural or urban, has escaped the problem.” (Thornburgh 2006
in Time Magazine “Dropout Nation” quoted in Readicide)

12. What we can do to prevent Readicide