Opinion: Reading Helps Students Develop Critical Thinking Skills.

In an opinion piece in The Idaho Education News (10/23, Maxcer) Moscow High School student council president Miles Maxcer explains why he is alarmed by the decrease in young people reading literature because reading literature has helped him develop critical thinking skills. The National Center for Education Statistics found that the number of 17-year-olds who had not read a book in the last year increased from 9% to 27% over the past 30 years. Maxcer recently won a contest to write a letter to an author, living or dead, whose work had personally affected them. Maxcer wrote a letter to science-fiction author Michael Crichton explaining how his books “Jurassic Park” and “The Lost World” helped him think about the role of science differently and inspired him to learn more about the natural world.