I was pointed to this article recently. It makes some interesting points. I’m not sure I agree with all of it, but there is definitely some food for thought here. What do you think?
Michael Pacher. St. Wolfgang and the Devil
4 Ways High School Makes You Hate Reading
By: Christina H
I can’t be the only one who feels like the schools pulled a sort of bait-and-switch job on us when it came to reading. When I was in elementary school, they went to a lot of trouble to make sure we thought reading was fun, with bookmobiles and read-a-thons and tons of fun books about mice and motorcycles and phantom tollbooths…
That was the bait. In junior high and high school, they made the switch. I guess they heard about how drug dealers give you free doses of the good stuff until you are addicted, and then once you are hooked, they start cutting it with 50 percent baby powder or something…
So one summer you are reading A Wrinkle in Time or Fantastic Mr. Fox or whatever, and then you show up for your first day of school and BAM, The Scarlet Letter. And get on that pronto, kid, because we are going to talk about metaphors and symbolism in Chapter 1 tomorrow. I opened these books thinking they would be great and rewarding, like the books I was used to, but it was like biting into a delicious-looking cake and finding a bear trap. After my face had been so destroyed by so many bear traps (to continue the metaphor) that the greatest reconstructive surgeon in the world could do nothing to save it, I stopped looking at books as wonderful presents I couldn’t wait to open and started looking at them with a sort of low-level PTSD.
Let me be clear: I still love reading good books, but since experience has taught me that there’s about a 95 percent chance that a random (adult) book I pick up is going to be unenjoyable, I spend more time researching a book before I read it than I spent researching my house before I bought it. It’s crazy to have to be so scared and wary of something I used to look forward to so much.
I think this kind of experience is part of why only 50 percent of American adults have read any novel, short story, poem or play in the past year, and only 54 percent have read any kind of book at all that wasn’t required…
And as a disclaimer, I know there’s going to be people out there who loved The Scarlet Letter or A Separate Peace or what have you and feel like they got a lot out of it, and teachers who manage to get kids really engaged in discussing literature, and that is cool, but I don’t think that’s the common experience. Here are the sorts of things I think are going on a lot more often:
#4. High School Required Reading Sucks
The Scarlet Letter, Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, Ethan Frome, Walden, Heart of Darkness, Madame Bovary, The Catcher in the Rye and The Sun Also Rises all suck. OK, that’s just my opinion, but the average high school student — … the average human being — will probably agree on a bunch of those at least.
What really gets my goat is when people act like this is our problem. They say the reason we don’t like these books is because we don’t get it…
#3. You’re Not Allowed to Talk Smack About the Books
Even if you love literature and had a pretty good high school reading experience, you probably can agree that at least one book you were asked to read (in your opinion) sucked. There might be excessive exposition, laughable imagery, characters intended to be sympathetic who are grating or characters intended to be grating who are so grating that you can’t pay attention to the story (Holden Caulfield).
There are very few classrooms where you are encouraged to express this point of view, because I think a lot of teachers feel like if you admit to the book not being that great, then you open yourself up to the kids arguing that they shouldn’t have to read it. I don’t think it has to go there. I think teaching well-reasoned smack talk has a lot of value…
#2. Anything Fun Is Too Shallow
…The argument is that fun and popular books are too shallow to get much out of. They’re not going to have as many themes, or new vocabulary words, or symbols, or unusual storytelling techniques as a classic novel. And that’s probably true in a lot of cases. The point they’re missing here is that most high school classes never even get close to digging out all the analyzable stuff from a book, because of time limits or limits of the students’ reading level…
#1. Enjoy Reading? Preposterous!
There is a point in time where a lot of adults stop telling kids that reading is fun and start telling them that reading should be work. That if you’re not improving your mind and broadening your horizons, reading that book is just a waste of your time. …
And this teacher feels like kids should not waste their summers reading The Hunger Games because they don’t gain much “verbal and world knowledge,” recommending The Red Badge of Courage and a bunch of nonfiction books about the horrors experienced by real people in other times and places, like Hiroshima, well-known as a great summer romp. These are really valuable books, and kids should have some idea about the world around them, but seriously, even in the summer, they can’t read a book just for fun?
She says: “Summer assignments should be about why we need to learn and why we need to talk about what we think.” Sure, that’s an important lesson that needs to be taught at some point, but when is there time for them to learn the other important lesson: Reading is something you can also do for fun, when you are taking a break from learning? You can’t just tell people that and hope they remember it when they graduate and finally have time for it. That’s something they need to learn by doing it and experiencing the fun…
As for me, I haven’t given up on reading. I’m still looking for good books to read, but I’ve been burned so much by recommendations that I’ve instituted a new procedure for the approval of any new reading material. I will require at least five notarized affidavits from me-certified book evaluators who give the book at least 4 out of 5 stars in three major evaluation categories (pacing, character development and amount of dinosaurs, for example) before I will read it. Certification is a fairly straightforward process involving an application in which you list your favorite books and other media and a brief essay describing what you think I am looking for in a book. If your application is satisfactory, it will be followed by two phone interviews. Certification can be revoked at any time if evidence surfaces of you reading Fifty Shades of Grey or other disqualifying material unless you can submit witness statements from two independent evaluators testifying that you were only reading it so you could write jokes about it. This might sound like a great deal of trouble to recommend a book, but think about what’s at stake, man. I could be bored for several hours! Who wants that on their hands?
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