Walking into a VHS English class at 8 a.m. on a Monday morning you will generally be greeted with several mumbled statements about the weekend’s reading assignment. Several students will mention how they “glanced over the SparkNotes” or “sort of skimmed the chapter.” These statements are a crushing blow to English teachers at VHS and throughout the country.

It appears that teens simply just aren’t motivated to read anymore. With the widespread availability of SparkNotes and other websites that offer summaries and explanations for required reading books, teens simply don’t have to read.

Teachers will argue that those teens that do not want to read are truly missing out on the experiences that reading can provide. However, senior Erin Mortara says that she does not read because her teachers rarely give reading quizzes, so there is really no reason for her to even bother. Implied in her opinion of course, is the idea that only the grade matters, not the experience of reading.

But even if teachers do give regular quizzes as an incentive to read, students can simply go online and get a summary of their assignment. One click of a mouse can take students to a page where they can get character summaries, plot analysis and explanations of important quotations. This begs the question, is there anything wrong with SparkNotes being a replacement for an actual book?

The SparkNotes website seems to disagree that the website is a replacement for reading and at the bottom of their homepage there is a statement that reads, “When your books and teachers don’t make sense, we do.” This statement implies that this website believes that it does not act as a replacement for reading a book, but simply a tool to help students to comprehend what they have read. However, the appearance of the site’s homepage seems to dispute the helpful, educational image the site is trying to project. The homepage of sparknotes.com displays helpful links to summaries and study guides for many works of literature but it also has banner ads that link to fashion blogs and other pages that are bound to distract students from their educational assignment.

Many students claim that although they are simply are not interested in the required reading, they do still read. One VHS sophomore says, “I really don’t care about Boo Radley or Macbeth. I would much rather read something like the Hunger Games.” When asked what types of books they like to read, several students did answer with a simple “none” while others went on to list many different titles and series they find interesting.

It seems that the problem is not getting teens today to read, it is getting them to read the classics, or the authors someone else decided are important. But those authors simply do not interest many high school students while the likes of J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer do.

English teacher Tom White points out that “colleges will not be particularly interested in what students want to read and so students need to develop some academic discipline.” He makes an analogy to food, saying “we’d rather eat cheeseburgers and fries all day, but self-discipline tells us some vegetables need to be worked in there too because they will make us physically healthier. Challenging reading makes us intellectually healthier.”

While it is disappointing that some students do not find required reading books interesting the question now is, how do teachers get teens interested?