A high school teacher
laments what students lose
by not embracing books.
M
ost of us who grew
up in the United
States before the
advent of smart-
phones and social
media can remember adults using
phrases like “serious reading” or
can name people in our orbit who
claimed certain books changed
their lives. I can still vividly recall
teachers, friends and family mem-
bers insisting I read this book or
that poem, usually for reasons I
had yet to understand.
Early on, we were imbued with
the notion that reading mattered.
Not because it empowered us to ef-
fectively absorb information or po-
sitioned us to do well on a future
standardized exam. It mattered
because the books we read often
had a lasting and powerful impact
on the people we would become.
In middle school, I greatly dis-
appointed my English teacher fa-
ther by telling him I had no love for
the written word. But in high
school I discovered the popular fic-
tion of Stephen King, Dean Koontz
and Tom Clancy. In college, what I
read and, more importantly, why I
read, became central themes in my
search for knowledge. I found my-
self hypnotized by the grandeur of
Tolstoy, the longing of Wordsworth
and the timeless wisdom of writers
whose names are often associated
with the classics.
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 teach-
ing high school in California’s Cen-
tral 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 certainly
read all day — memes, posts,
tweets — but it is all of 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
reportedthat they read a news-
paper, magazine or book on a daily
basis for pleasure; by 2016 that
number had dropped to 16%. Teen-
agers are more likely to read books
at 13 than 17.
None of this would surprise
modern classroom teachers, who
can attest that the ubiquitous
presence of cellphones and other
devices in the lives of students is a
zeitgeist-defining development
that has fundamentally altered the
American classroom. Students are
perpetually, almost manically, dis-
tracted 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.For almost two decades I loved
recommending books to students
depending on their particular
interests or the problems they
shared with me. Experiencing
teenage angst? Read Viktor
Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Mean-
ing.” Having trouble figuring out
what to do with your life? Read Tol-
stoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych.”
Does life feel debilitatingly unfair?
Read early 6th century philo-
sopher Boethius’ “The Consola-
tion of Philosophy.”
Recommending books worked
because students intuitively
understood philosopher Michel de
Montaigne’s dictum, “I speak the
minds of others only to speak my
own mind better.”
In fall 1998, I began my teaching
career with five classes of freshman
English. After one class, a student
asked me two simple questions:
“Why are we required to read these
stories? What’s the point?” I no
longer remember my response, but
I have never forgotten his words to
me. “I never really thought of read-
ing like that before,” he said. “It
really gives me something to think
about.”
In that moment, I fell in love
with teaching. From then on,
spreading the gospel about the
transformative power of reading
found its way into most of my
classes on most days.
Then the era of the smartphone
invaded the classroom, and every-
thing changed.
Suddenly I was in a desperate
struggle for my students’ atten-
tion. Phones began appearing on
desks in the middle of class. When
students were told to put their
phones away, bathroom requests
shot through the roof. The time
they reported it took to complete
their homework was much longer
than it used to be.
Many students used to leisurely
read a book or talk to a friend in the
few minutes before class. Now they
endlessly scroll through their so-
cial media feeds, often in isolated
silence. When I recommend a book
or speak glowingly about reading,
their eyes start to glaze over.
Consider all of the benefits the
habit of reading ushers into the
lives of those who practice it — and
then take them away. A generation
that has filled its time with the end-
less frivolity of pixelated screens
will live in a world that is smaller.
They will lose empathy. Their
imaginations will be stunted. Their
dreams will become prosaic. They
will become estranged from many
of the treasures that only readers
can comprehend.
Some of my more reflective stu-
dents are aware of what is happen-
ing to them.
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 of it.” This
young man knew there was a gap
between who he was and what he
could be. He recognized he had to
do something drastic.
Do the rest of us?Jeremy Adams is a high school
and college political science
teacher in Bakersfield.The death of serious
reading among teens
By Jeremy AdamsL ATIMES.COM/OPINION FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 2019A
OP-ED
I
used to livea few blocks
from Raymond Chandler’s
house. Or one of his houses, at
any rate. Chandler — accord-
ing to Judith Freeman’s geo-
graphic biography, “The Long Em-
brace” — had at least 35 Southern
California addresses before he died
in La Jolla in 1959. The place I’m de-
scribing was the 31st, and last in
Los Angeles: 6520 Drexel Ave.,
walking distance from the Farmers
Market. He and his wife, Cissy,
rented it from 1944 to 1946.
The house is not much when it
comes to literary achievement.
Chandler wrote no books there, al-
though he did complete a pair of es-
says (including his seminal exami-
nation of detective fiction, “The
Simple Art of Murder”) and the
screenplay for “The Blue Dahlia,”
which he famously cranked out, by
arrangement with the studio,
under the influence of glucose in-
jections and alcohol. None of that,
though, really matters: Whenever I
walked past 6520 Drexel, I felt I was
getting close to history’s hidden re-
sidue.
Were Los Angeles another city
—London, say, where since 1866
blue plaques have been affixed to
buildings in which notable resi-
dents lived or worked — we might
find a marker there. Instead, the
house sits, like any in the neighbor-
hood, set back from the curb be-
hind a small front lawn, stucco with
a red tile roof.
When I first moved to Southern
California, such a lack of acknowl-
edgment disturbed me; now, I find
it exhilarating. What it tells us is
that in this place, history takes on a
different texture, not so much dis-
tinct, externalized, but woven sub-
tly into the fabric of the everyday.
This makes it ours to find.
I imagine Los Angeles history
as less a guided tour and more an
individual inventory we carry
around in our heads.
Understanding the city re-
quires a kind of secret knowledge of
what the writer Sam Sweet has
called “lost heroes & miniature his-
tories” that peel back the surface of
the place and allow us to internal-
ize the past.
Los Angeles, after all, has a
complicated relationship with his-
tory. That’s something we take
for granted. Landmarks get erased
here, or overwritten. I think of
another writer’s house, Ray Brad-
bury’s, in Cheviot Hills; he lived
and worked there for 50 years.
Then architect Thom Mayne
bought it and tore it down in 2015.
Bradbury’s house, like Chan-
dler’s on Drexel, was notable for
what went on inside it; it was no
masterpiece of design. The same
holds for the places Sweet recalls.
His pamphlet series, “All Night
Menu,” highlights, for instance,
Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors, formerly at
12318 La Maida St. in North Holly-wood (made famous by Elvis Pres-
ley’s gold lame suit and Gram Par-
sons’ embroidered marijuana out-
fit), and the basement studio at 506
North Virgil Ave. where Jake
Porter recorded local R&B per-
formers for his label Combo.
That such spots are often for-
gotten — or at any rate not formally
landmarked — makes it incum-
bent on us locals to remember, to
stitch the overlapping narratives
of the city into place.
My list of touchstones includesEl Coyote, the restaurant still in
business on Beverly Boulevard,
where Sharon Tate and the other
Cielo Drive victims had their last
meal on the night they were
murdered by the Manson family.
Also Greenblatt’s Deli on Sunset,
where F. Scott Fitzgerald ate be-
fore his fatal heart attack, and the
old Coronet Theatre on La Cienega
Boulevard (reinvented now as the
Largo at the Coronet), where
Charles Laughton and Bertolt
Brecht premiered the English-lan-guage version of Brecht’s play
“Galileo.”
Brecht lived in Santa Monica
from 1941 to 1947, part of the Ger-
man exile community that in-
cluded Thomas Mann and Arnold
Schoenberg. Although I’ve never
set foot inside Chandler’s place on
Drexel, I did visit Brecht’s house
once; the person who lived there in-
vited me inside for a tour of the
room in which the playwright
wrote.
Did the experience offer any
new insight into Brecht? Not espe-
cially. Like the rest of the house,
the writer’s work space had been
extensively renovated. But the fact
that the owner and I acknowledged
the history kept Brecht connected
to Southern California, and us to
the World War II emigre culture.
Southern California’s civic and
literary history is relatively new, as
such things go; when the first blue
plaque went up in London, fewer
than 5,000 people were living here.
It’s been less than a lifetime since
Brecht took up residence in Santa
Monica. Chandler died 60 years
ago, Bradbury in 2012.
What this means is that in this
place history lingers at our finger-
tips, something we can easily, if at
times unexpectedly, reach out and
touch. It is vernacular in other
words, not formal, asserting itself
in the interstices, the houses and
neighborhoods, the strip malls and
restaurants we still use, where our
ongoing heritage simply accrues.David L. Ulinis a contributing
writer to Opinion.The lived-in history of Los Angeles
We erase more than we
landmark, but we also get
to inhabit what’s left.
THE CHEVIOT HILLShome where writer Ray Bradbury lived
for more than 50 years was demolished in 2015.Nick UtAssociated PressBy David L. Ulin
T
he most basic duty of every city is to pro-
tect public health and safety. But last
September, the 9th Circuit Court of Ap-
peals issued an alarming decision that
strips cities of a critical tool in meeting
this responsibility. In Martin vs. City of Boise, the 9th
Circuit became the only appellate court in America
to rule that a city’s ordinance against living on city
streets violated the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition
on “cruel and unusual” punishment for those who
have no other options.
Six judges of the 9th Circuit, who opposed the de-
cision, have warned that the ruling would have “dire
practical consequences” for hundreds of cities and
their residents. Unfortunately, they are being proved
right.
The court’s position is unworkable and wrong on
what the Constitution requires. That’s why as law-
yers for Boise, Idaho, we’re asking the U.S. Supreme
Court to weigh in.
From Boise to Los Angeles and across the coun-
try, cities are facing a crisis of growing encampments
—semipermanent tent cities that threaten the
health and safety of those living in them as well as the
broader community. It’s an issue that is bringing
public health, environmental and community safety
advocates and homeless service providers together
to compassionately help the homeless acquire shel-
ter, food, counseling, workand healthcare.
We know there is no one-size-fits-all solution to
the homelessness issue, but the court’s decision to
strike down a tool that cities need is exacerbating the
current crisis. Communities need to have the ability
to regulate, and even ban, encampments to protect
everyone, especially those who are most vulnerable
and in need.
From the most populous cities to small towns,
communities are struggling to control the increased
crime and violence, spreading diseasesand environ-
mental hazards that threaten the lives and well-be-
ing of those living on the streets and the general pub-
lic. Every week, it seems, we hear from another city
facing similar problems, concerned that its hands
are now tied.
The 9th Circuit ruling says that it is not meant to
cover individuals who do have access to adequate
temporary shelter, either because they have the
means to pay for it or because it is available to them
for free, but who choose not to use it.But this seeming limitation is inadequate and im-
practical. For instance, a police officer on the beat
cannot actually ascertain someone’s ability to pay
for lodging (sometimes subsidized by government)
or to stay with a friend or family member.
The court’s decision also misreads the 8th
Amendment. The 8th Amendment cannot be read to
exempt individuals from obeying a generally applica-
ble law because the conduct at issue is purportedly
“involuntary.” For instance, sleepingis not the only
“involuntary” act that those living outdoors per-
form. If public sleeping can’t be punished, how can
public urination and defecation? The court’s deci-
sion will cause havoc in how cities control all sorts of
conduct in public spaces.
Taking away a local government’s ability to regu-
late or ban public encampments as one option for ad-
dressing the broader issues of homelessness cer-
tainly won’t reduce homelessness.
The reality is, cities must have the authority to tell
people where they can and can’t sleep or camp on
public property. Most cities have done so for years.
But even cities with large homeless populations
rarely issue tickets to people merely for sleeping.
Many use anti-camping laws largely as a tool to stop
the spread of encampments.
Without such laws, the threats to health and safe-
ty from growing encampments will surely increase.
The tragedy is that striking down these ordinances
will harm the very people the 9th Circuit Court pur-
ports to protect.
In the Los Angeles area, we’ve seen diseases such
as hepatitis A, typhoid fever, typhus and tuberculo-
sis reemerge, particularly in encampments. Serious
crimes against homeless persons in Los Angeles rose
dramatically between 2017 and 2018. And hazards to
public health from human waste and thousands of
discarded hypodermic needles have soared.
In Boise, lawless encampments since 2018 have re-
sulted in a rise in crime and violence, including drug
and alcohol offenses, physical assaultsand even ho-
micide. Other cities within the 9th Circuit’s jurisdic-
tion have frustratingly similar stories to tell.
We rely on state and local government to prohibit
harmful behavior that puts public health and safety
at risk. The 9th Circuit’s decision virtually guaran-
tees that dangerous encampments will continue to
proliferate — and that would truly be cruel.Theane Evangelis is a partner of Gibson, Dunn &
Crutcher LLP and counsel to the city of Boise.It’s not cruel to ban
homeless encampments
THE FEDERAL appeals court ruling that struck down ordinances that prohibit living on city
streets will harm the very people it purports to protect.Jae C. HongAssociated PressBy Theane Evangelis