So Meg Cabot posted a rant today about mandatory reading lists, and how much she hated them, entitled “How To Foster a Hatred of Reading,” in response to a NY Times article entitled “The Future of Reading.” I think part of Cabot’s argument is sound—if you want to foster a love of reading in kids, forcing them to read isn’t the greatest idea. Kids aren’t exactly enamored with things that look like work, and mandatory reading lists are, well, work.
But I don’t think the problem’s with the mandatory reading lists, necessarily. It’s with the way reading is taught, and the way reading is dealt with culturally. I look at the conversations and attitudes surrounding books and reading here in the United States, and I see two common attitudes:
The slobs think the snobs think everything you read should be a work of literature that will enrich your life forever, and be a statement of art and the human condition. It should transcend trivialties like plot, and Make A Statement. These books are usually depressing, difficult to understand, and unpleasant in every way. The slobs think the snobs are fun-hating elitist pricks, and that they overthink and over-analyze everything. Slobs just want to have fun, dammit, and the snobs are pissing on their parade of dukes, Greek tycoons and vampires who, if they’re not sparkly and creepy, are gangsta-rap lovin’ dudes with PhDs in Vhiolent Chrime.
The snobs think the slobs are intellectually lazy, and don’t understand why you’d want to read something poorly-written, or that adhered to a formula. The snobs are oftentimes reluctant to recognize formula in literary fiction, and aren’t necessarily the clearest about figuring out where the line between entertainment and art lie, but dammit, it’s there, and they’ll know it when they see it (just like porn! Which, by the way, is what romance readers are reading). The snobs think the slobs have degraded their literary palates by reading too much trash, and worry about the social and political ramifications if you’re not reading the rights sorts of things.
Both sides are really annoying, because they both, by and large, have it wrong, even if they do get a couple of things right. I can’t help but wonder what Meg Cabot’s experiences with reading The Scarlet Letter and Wuthering Heights would’ve been if they hadn’t been sold, not only as homework, but tedious homework. The Scarlet Letter has become a joke—every kid knows it’s supposed to be a miserable, slow reading experience, and just about all except the most nerdly ones who relish dense stories are going to approach it as such.
I grew up in a household and a culture that emphasized academic excellence—sometimes pathologically so. But one of the blessings was how I was taught to approach what I thought of as Big Books. Every Big Book I read was like leveling up in a video game: it was proof that I was getting older and smarter. Reading the big, intimidating classics wasn’t a chore; it was sign that I was growing up, that I was getting smarter and more capable. I took statements like “You’re probably not ready for this book yet” as a challenge, and I’d pick it up anyway. Some of the books I disliked intensely (like Wuthering Heights, and anything Hemingway); but many others, like Madame Bovary, Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, Don Quixote, just about everything by Thomas Hardy, John Steinbeck or Mark Twain, and many other books on typical mandatory reading lists, I just adored and gobbled up before I was quite 16 years old.
I’m going to take the snob side for a moment, and say this: just about all the books on the mandatory reading lists have something enduring and important to say about us: about us as individuals, about us as culture, and about us as civilizations. They’ve stuck around so long because they represent fascinating and enduring looks into what people used to value and what people continue to value, and are capable of resonating with us centuries—sometimes millennia—after they were written. And most kids aren’t going to pick these books up on their own, because they’ve been represented as Hard, and Boring, and Unsexy. And, failing a culture that makes reading complex, dense books as exciting as leveling up in a video game, it falls on teachers and parents to show kids that these books are sexy and exciting, and if they’re hard, well, they’re well worth the work.
And now to switch to the slob side: it also wouldn’t kill to have the kids select their own reading material sometimes, y’know? The books may or may not be especially well-written, but they’re obviously compelling, and I’m a firm believer that pop culture has valuable and interesting things to say about the human condition, too. The most important aspect of teaching kids to read is how to read critically, and to recognize how books tell us a lot not only about the authors and what the authors are writing about, but about the readers themselves and how they process text and meaning, and we don’t need Moby motherfucking Dick to do that. (Incidentally: Moby Dick was a book I picked up fully expecting to hate, and ended up loving; others, like Sometimes a Great Notion, I expected to love, and ended up loathing. Such are the vagaries of mandatory reading.) Allowing the kids to select their own books introduces a great deal more diversity into the reading experience than a mandatory reading list ever could, because those lists tend to favor the dead, the white, and the male. There’s a quick, disdainful reference in the NY Times article to how kids, when allowed to choose for themselves, pick “plenty of young-adult chick-lit novels,” and I don’t think these people get it: the YA novels obviously speak to teenage girls in a way, say, The Unbearable Lightness of Being won’t—and can’t. And this isn’t a bad thing, or a good thing; it’s just a thing, and we need to recognize it and work with it.
This part of Cabot’s article actually made me sad:
I don’t think there should be mandatory reading lists in school. I cannot think of a single book I enjoyed that I was required to read in school….
…with the exceptions of books I had read before they were assigned to me in school, like To Kill A Mockingbird, and Catcher in the Rye, which were then ruined by someone going on and on about all the “symbolism” in them, and what the authors really meant, which, as an author myself, I can tell you–THE PEOPLE WRITING ABOUT THESE BOOKS DO NOT KNOW. Seriously. THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE AUTHOR REALLY MEANT AT ALL, AND ARE MORE THAN LIKELY WRONG. THIS IS WHY THESE AUTHORS ARE IN HIDING.
Man, what kind of miserable-ass, misguided English teachers did she have? Because I feel that any teacher worth her salt would’ve taught the readers that sometimes, what the author meant and what the author expressed aren’t necessarily the same thing, and that reading is both personal and interactive—it’s a highly solitary activity, in that the reader generally reads alone, but the reader is engaged in a dialogue with the text itself. Reader insights may not have anything to do with what the author meant, and may have everything to do with the reader’s own experiences, and you know what? That’s OK. In fact, that’s great. Language is slippery, and meaning is even slipperier, and we all have something to contribute to the dialogue surrounding books and the reading experience.
Ultimately, I think I’m in favor of some kind of hybrid approach: have a mandatory reading list together with a bunch of books the kids get to pick for themselves. But more than that, I think we need to change the way we look at books and talk about them. I’m tired of the old dichotomies. Some of the most depressing books I’ve read have been romance novels (Devil’s Embrace by Catherine Coulter is deeply, deeply depressing, because holy shit that book is one long, loving paean to the joys of Stockholm Syndrome), and some of the most hopeful and uplifting, even if they have a pang of bittersweet, belong on many mandatory reading lists (most Austen novels, Far From the Madding Crowd, several Dickens novels).
I’m also a big fan of an approach that embraces the maxim that even though reading the book may not have been fun, thinking about it and talking about it certainly can be. (C’mon: most of y’all love the D- and F reviews best, and don’t even pretend that isn’t true.) The singular agony of having to suffer through a bad book, or a book we don’t like, tends to bring on passion and comedy in equal measure, and we need to tap into that. I think we need to free kids from the expectation that they Must Love This Book Or Else; honest reactions and dialogue about those reactions would be a far better teaching tool than some kind of rote “see Symbol X in Element Y” lesson plan.
I found the NYT article thought-provoking, but I do find the “let me alone to read what I want and don’t ruin it by making me discuss it” perspective ridiculous as applied to formal education.
Without any assigned reading, there would be no shared reading. It’s hard to teach about literature unless everyone in the class has read the same book. So, if we’re going to have any discussion of lit., someone has to assign the same book to everyone. That means some will hate it, some will love it, and most will be somewhere in the middle—not counting the ones who don’t read it at all, which is another discussion entirely….
Do teachers try to pick books they think are interesting? Mostly; a lot of us have “great books” thrust upon us by some sort of standardized curriculum, but we tend to think those books are “great” for a reason. (Yes, even Hemmingway.) Will our students all agree? Nope. But students don’t enjoy reading their textbooks for other classes either—and yet they do, and no one cries that “they ruined my love for reading by making me read this boring book.” Last I checked, textbooks were both longer and more boring than most literary “great works.” I think there’s a lot to be said for the inherent value of reading great literature, even if you don’t learn to love it.
My son had to read A Tale of Two Cities last year for sophomore English. He moaned the whole time, but I know it had value. On several occasions since, we’ve been watching a movie or a play where there’s a reference to “the best of times, the worst of times” and he says, “OH! There is is again.” He has also used images and ideas from the book to make points in discussions of various subjects—“you know, like in Tale of Two Cities, where the guy…” So while he didn’t enjoy reading it, it definitely had educational value. It also didn’t ruin his love for reading, because his teachers use a hybrid method and encourage students to do some (guided) selection of their own reading material.
My childhood experience of literature was very much like Candy’s—I was rewarded with books, and with the cautious estimate “MAYBE you’re ready for this.” Not all of us get that, and it doesn’t work for everyone (three of six in my family), so it falls to English teachers to try and instill a love of reading AS WELL AS a knowledge of literature in their students. I agree that our society seems to expect that more with literature than with other subjects, as if people coming out of school hating math, or history, or science, was somehow not as bad as hating literature. It’s a difficult challenge for teachers to try and foster both mastery of and love for the subject matter, particularly with inadequately prepared students, too many at a time, with too many other demands on their time and energy, and without enough resources. That so many teachers are still trying, and still considering different methods and models, gives me hope.
I haven’t read Gone With the Wind or seen the film, but I have read an essay (admittedly dating from 1986, so not the most recent of commentaries) in which the author wrote that
Taylor, Helen. “Gone With the Wind: the mammy of them all.” The Progress of Romance: The Politics of Popular Fiction. Ed. Jean Radford. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986. 113-136.
This is wonderful! I feel that a copy of this post should be sent to every parent and teacher. Though I had suffered through some boring books, I had for the most part ended up reading some wonderful books because of required reading in classes and required summer reading (which wasn’t too bad since most years, I was allowed to choose 5 out of a list of 80+ books). My parents only read the Chinese newspaper; my cousins whom I saw a few times a year weren’t voracious readers; and I was too shy to pester the librarians- so these lists really did help!
Someone mentioned Ethan Frome. It was the most hated book of sophomore year high school. By the time it was my class’s turn to have the books, I had endured months of various friends and classmates complaining about it. And yes, the book was as bad as they said it was. However, the experience of reading it was fun because my teacher, while teaching us the important “literary” aspects of the book, also mocked it and discussed it. It was awesome! The experience was much like reading the D/F reviews on this site! She even made The Great Gatsby sound fun and romantic (I read it a few years prior to her class and thought it was boring and dumb).
My other English teachers didn’t really look at the book as a whole- they just told us what the themes and symbolism. It was more like “this is what I am telling you. Write it down”. One teacher had even given out an exam asking us what Jane Eyre’s eye color was! I think a lot of these teachers are just burnt out and it doesn’t help when they have school boards controlling every aspect of how something should be taught. It takes a very energetic teacher to satisfy the rigid curriculum rules while injecting their own creative approaches and activities and hoping they don’t get criticized for it during their weekly/monthly department meetings. When I was in high school, I notice that the younger teachers in their 20s tended to be more creative, helpful, and energetic (though I did have 3-4 teachers in their 50s as well), so I do think that incoming new teachers are trying their best to make reading more approachable.
As important the classics are, there are just too many of them to get through them all and schools should just accept that it wouldn’t hurt to take a few out of the curriculum and put in a few non-classic books with characters teenagers can identify with and happy endings. There is enough angst in teenage life- it would be nice to have some required escape.
What SonomaLass said.
This discussion has sent me off on a tear that began last summer when the college graduate daughter of a friend said she’d never heard of Willy Loman. There are simply some things everybody should know the same way we know the multiplication tables and the capital of France; ‘It was the best of times…, ‘Please, sir, I want some more’…‘Rosebud’, and poor Willy Loman. The only way to make sure of this is to require it. Period.
I just now read Meg Cabot’s article and IMO, I don’t think she really thought the issue through. Her implication is that the ONLY books kids will read are the ones they are required to. She makes it sound like NYCS students aren’t ALLOWED to read any book not on the lists. ‘Let kids read what they want to’ is the mantra.
Can’t they?
It seems to me that lumping assigned reading and reading for pleasure in the same category is a disservice. Yes, they’re both reading, but isn’t reading for pleasure a recreational activity just like sports and video games? Should a tenth grader expect credit for Grand Theft Auto?
I’d be interested to hear Ms. Cabot’s opinion of other books she was required to read in school, say history or biology textbooks.
Okay. I’m done. Really.
Oh dear, I was one of the “nerdly” ones whose passion for books was nigh unkillable. I do remember intense frustration that the books I loved best (science fiction/fantasty, mysteries, historical novels and romance) were always ineligible for book reports even when we were allowed to select our own books… or when I did sneak them in the teachers never “got it.” I had a succession of terrible English teachers—in fact, I’ve never actually had a *good* English teacher—and I don’t think it mattered one way or another, but hopefully for a kid who isn’t already in love with books it would make a difference.
That said… I mentor a little girl who is a reluctant reader, and she goes back to the same “baby” books over and over and REFUSES to read anything even slightly longer or harder. Thank goodness for required reading, because I couldn’t even get this 5th grader to read “Alanna: the first adventure,” or any of my childhood favorites despite doing everything possible to help her and make it easy and exciting. She just wants picture books or for me to read aloud to her… so depressing. 🙁
I guess the point of my comment is I’m not sure reader choice is the best answer for the hard cases. I think it’s great for kids who are on the fence and can be tempted into reading more—but like the failures mentioned by the teacher in the NY Times article, some kids just hate reading. For those kids, there’s required reading—so that they achieve at least a basic level of literacy before they have to fend for themselves.
@willa: Yes, I get all twitchy, too, when readers and authors claim that the authoritative meaning within the text is what the author chose to put in there; some even go so far as to assert that it’s the ONLY meaning, especially when the author is explicit about her symbolism and/or pooh-poohs any analysis she doesn’t agree with. I wrote my senior thesis on Flanery O’Connor, and while her assertion that all her stories are about achieving grace (in the Christian sense) is certainly one possible way to interpret her stories and the way she uses the grotesque, I thought even more interesting (and telling) readings could be found when you abandoned that lens and looked at the stories from, say, feminist perspectives. O’Connor, in fact, had some interesting things to say about literary analysis, and the way literary analysis is taught:
From Mystery and Manners, quote lifted from this page. Don’t know that I agree with O’Connor regarding how analysis with discrimination requires prior enjoyment, because valid—and sometimes the most insightful—analyses are arrived at by strongly critical eyes that didn’t necessarily enjoy the story. A lot of the most insightful critiques of Gone With the Wind and James Fenimore Cooper, for example, come from people who didn’t especially enjoy the works and wanted to unpack exactly why.
In any case, I think part of the critical reading process is learning to go beyond the explicit text and what the author tells us; we need to see what the author is showing us, too, and to see the skips and gaps between text, expectation and interpretation.
@Robin: Oops, sorry, didn’t mean to put words in your mouth!
No set book I ever had to read at school—not even ‘Brighton Rock’, which was a book I didn’t like, taught by a teacher I didn’t like—, made me as bored, frustrated and finally extremely annoyed as ‘Size 14 Is Not Fat’.
Spam word: view87 – coincidentally, the very year I did my O-level English Lit exam.
Why oh why does literature have to equal depressing? I had some great English teachers in High School – one particularly was young, creative, and enthusiastic – but all the books we had to read were depressing as hell. I had enough trouble fighting endogenous depression in high school as it was, I didn’t need the extra kick in the kidneys.
On the other hand, I was challenged by a college professor to write an unusual critique of Crime and Punishment. I critiqued it as a police procedural novel (it does fit!) and came close to getting kicked out of class because police procedural novels were (gasp!) *genre* writing, and therefore beneath contempt. He had to give me an A because he couldn’t argue with any of the points I made, though.
I have been thinking for a very long time that more people would read books if school didn’t teach them that reading is a mentally painful experience. Nearly all of the stuff I had to read for school was horrible (Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis is the worst book I ever had to read), and if I hadn’t loved books even before I went to school, I would probably have read those books I absolutely couldn’t avoid, and would never have picked up another book after finishing school. I once met a 16 year-old who said that she never voluntarily read a book until someone gave her the first Harry Potter book, because she hated all the books that her school made her read. So I think anyone should get to read what they like – as long as they read at all.
I’m on the hybrid team supporting both choice and guidance as a way to foster a love of books as well as an awareness of nuanced writing. In HS we read King Solomon’s Mines to death but I then devoured the whole series, shedding tears when Alan Quatermain died. Would I have done so without being assigned KSM in the first place? Maybe. I was and remain a book junkie, joining the Shakespearean Authorship Society at 10 and retaining a love affair with the bard (whever s/he was) to this day, despite the attempted hatchet job in school.
Theresa Meyers’ comment that “Sometimes the snobs and the literary educators don’t have an effing clue what the author really meant” resonates with me. My MA thesis completed last year deals with how we authors “restory” (perform a kind of narrative therapy) on ourselves through our fiction, unconsciously and mostly understood only in hindsight. Stephen King was a case study, stating “Annie was booze, Annie was drugs, and I was sick of being Annie’s pet writer” facts he didn’t get while writing Misery. So even authors don’t always understand the symbolism of what we write – at least at time of writing. However, I also see a book as a transaction between writer and reader. We put into it what we deem essential to story and character. If the reader then draws different conclusions to what I intended, then great. You might be seeing something I put there unconsciously. Analyze away. At least you’re reading me.
Candy, this:
is such a great quote. One of the things that really defines a great book for me is how often I think back on, and how it redefines my mental map of the world. Like SonomaLass’ story about her son and “A Tale of Two Cities”, there are certain books that I’ve read at a certain time in my life that take on so much more importance after the reading than they did when I was reading them. A few of them were assigned reading (Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening”) which I never would have picked up on my own. Some I found because I heard other people talk about them so much (like the Foundation series). Other I stumbled over through sheer serindipity (Sandman graphic novels). But they all expanded in my mind, like grain in broth, and became touchstones for how I felt about things, or how I imagined other people to feel about things.
I suspect this process is hit or miss – I read plenty of books that didn’t mark my thinking that way even though they were literature (I liked the Scarlet Letter, but maybe because I wasn’t raised in a religious family, it didn’t resonate deeply and I think I got a different take-away from the story than my classmates).
Hey, that was kind of off-topic. Sorry!
Neglected to add to the last post: But I’m not sure about the “resists paraphrase” part. Sure, using the best, most evocative language is important to great literature, but I think the important part is the ability of a story to stick with someone and “expand in the mind.” And I think that quality shows that the book allows the reader to bring themselves into it.
Sort of like the Nietzche quote “When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you” but with fiction playing the role of the abyss.
(Still kind of off-topic. Oh well).
There are so many comments here, and I haven’t had time to read them all, so I’ll bet one or more will same the thing as mine and for that I apologize in advance.
I was raised in a very literate family. Readers, all. Thus, obviously, much of what was on those various mandatory reading lists for me was stuff my parents had read, and I was already interested in reading too. But frankly, when I read Scarlet Letter in 9th grade, let’s face it—there was no way I was able to fully understand the language or the cultural nuance. I tried, but that had to come later. I read M. Bovary as a 10th grader, on a lark, and thought it was SO COOL, so fabulously tragic. I read it again, last year, as a 32-year-old woman, and wept. Not cool, not at all.
My point is this. We give 11-16 year-olds texts that are difficult in tone and concept and say, Read this and get it. I don’t know that it’s fair—to them, or to the work. The other day, I saw that HS sophs in my county are reading Camus’ “The Stranger.” I’m sorry, but as a 14-15 year-old, what more can you do with a text like that than read the words? Do you have the life experience to really, truly, deeply get it? And when you don’t, as many won’t, does reading it do anything for you except convince you that you don’t want to do more?
My mother was a literature professor. First, she showed me the pleasure of reading—she read aloud to me, taught me to crave a story—then, she taught me HOW to read, how to understand, how to get to the thing. But that was later, once I understood. I know not every child gets that kind of teaching, and I think all we do is make reading another chore when we foist things that are too challenging upon them.
I just spent way too long reading all these comments, lol.
It is kind of funny, we are on a book blog, so of course we are all readers. 😉 So we obviously didn’t get our book passion killed. But there were so many when I was at school who struggled with reading and English classes it wasn’t funny. I ended up tutoring several friends who were barely scraping through. But the one book I didn’t have to help them with was the John Marsden I mentioned earlier, they managed to read it without the cliff notes, and it was analysed as much as the other books were, but through there enjoyment and more immediate comprehension, they were able to pull more from the text and better analyse it.
I actually think the argument is not necessarily to make it fun, but to make it engaging to as many of the students as possible and mixing up the standard required reading might be one way to go about it.
And let me tell you, as some one who passed maths by two points in HS pretty much only because the teacher found her entertaining, I sure as ell wish someone would do the same with maths.
there = their, I did pass English by much more than 2 points despite my atrocious posts. lol
My comment is at the end of the line here, however, I feel I must weigh in.
I grew up in a blue collar mill town in Connecticut, which is sadly, 40 years later even worse. Books saved my life. Literally. When I was abused, beaten, berated, and depressed, I could fall into a book and escape my horrific home life.
My team of high school English teachers (2) was demanding, held us to painfully high standards, and gave us a list from which to choose. Okay, so “Two Years Before the Mast?” Kill me. Please.
But the rest, gleefully, happily, I dove in and could say, “It’s homework, put the beating off, I’‘m working.” Symbolism? Bring it on. Themes? I’m there. Vocabulary, arcane or otherwise? Here, over here! I lived in the library.
Tidbit du jour: Out of 20 people in my English class, 10 of us have doctorates. Coincidence? I think not. I think it’s the teacher who makes the difference—and the student’s desire, where ever that comes from. The interaction is not only between the reader and the page, but the guide at the side, and the expectations of the students. We were always expected to do our best.
I grew up around books. My parents read to me when I was little, my father would take us on weekly trips to the library, but still I somehow lost my love of reading (or getting read to?) in grade school. We had the required reading of two or three books a quarter on a list (a very extensive list but still a list), and more often than not I would be the one who would just chose a book from the list and guess at the answers. That was until I found CS Lewis. He reawakened that passion for me, showed me that even required books can have that engaging quality to them.
My point with all of that is that despite many things and circumstances, sometimes it just takes one book to awaken a love for reading. And that book is going to be different for everyone. But that’s only one of the issues being discussed.
As for required read lists in a high school setting, my favorite class was Classic and Modern Novels. When the class started we read one novel together, but after that we could read whatever we wanted as long as we 1) read one classic a quarter 2) read 30 pages at least a night and 3) wrote an essay after completing a novel.
Every so often we would have a quiz alone the lines of “tell me about the setting of your story” or something like that. It was very refreshing to be able to chose what I wanted to read. I even read a romance novel for that class (I asked before hand, pretty sheepishly, if I could read it, promising fervently that I would be done in a day… I was.) The class was spent reading or taking the aforementioned random quiz, everyone with their own book. It was so relaxing!
The one thing that I just realized reading this thread that really made me love her was that even if we were reading a book we did not click with, we had to finish or give a damn good reason to why we wanted to throw in the towel. She really knew what she was doing with us. You have to take the bad along with the good. How else will there be any “good” without trudging through the “bad”?
I also had my share of the “symbolism must be this way (my way)” teachers. I am convinced that this is why I still hate the transcendentalist movement. My “symbol” teacher had a definite hard on for them… maybe in a few years I will be able to hear the word Thoreau without visibly flinching.
In the end, I am also on the hybrid bandwagon, because those books are required for a reason. But only having students read “the classics” and then killing them with book dissection is not going to foster anyone’s love of anything but the period ending bell.
I’ve been reading your blog for a while, and finally found myself really motivated to comment. I agree with your response wholeheartedly about the hybrid approach to reading. I think it’s a lot easier and often more fun to read a bad book and afterward, spend time talking about how bad it was. I most often side with the snobs (being an English grad student) but can begrudgingly admit that crappy books do serve a purpose if that is to get kids into reading. I really like your point about how a book like Twilight is going to speak to teenage girls and possibly (or hopefully) make them think a little more critically than say The Scarlet Letter. However, there are certain texts that stick around and are taught for a good reason. I think “classic” books, like Frankenstein, can be sexy—it’s all about how you dress them up. I think these days, everything is about combination.
I don’t think mandatory reading lists are bad. I think mandatory reading lists that coincide with mandatory singular interpretation is the problem. Talk about sucking all the fun out of books, college is worse at that than high school—especially if you’re an English major. I really disagree with Cabot’s statement books are ruined by someone going on and on about symbolism that isnt’ there. There seems to be some contradiction there. If she hates being told about what an author means or what is or isn’t there in a text, then whey is she ranting on about how people don’t get the one meaning she set forth in her book? I’m with the people who favor reader response; once the text is published, it is out of the author’s control; it’s up to the readers to make meaning. I can see in certain books there is one big obvious statement being made. However, part of the fun in reading is finding the new meanings for a text looking through different “lenses” or even stages of your life. Like you said, being able to read “bigger books” is a sign of age growth and maturity. Thanks for writing such a fantastic post that really weighs both sides of the issue and comes up with a solution pretty much everyone can agree on.
I tend to agree with what the others have said about required reading lists. As far back as I can remember, I have always hated the books that I was forced to read. In elementary school (private school), the lists were a bit worse then the ones in high school, although i hated them too. There were a few exceptions of course (Under the Blood Red Sun and Night—summer before 8th grade—, Number the Stars—summer before 6th grade—, and Maniac Magee—summer before 5th grade), but for the most part the books I had to read absolutely sucked (especially something with Silence in the title—about WWII).
I remember when I was in 6th grade, my teacher let us choose 2 books to read—1 classic and one other book—, i chose Wuthering Heights (which i never finished) and HP and the Sorcerer’s Stone (which is one of my favorites). That was the best reading experience i had in school (up to that point) because i got to choose what i wanted to read.
In high school, some of the books were a little bit better, but then the teachers spent FOREVER cramming symbolism, irony, and FORESHADOWING down my throat that I hated the books on principle. I remember kinda liking Gulliver’s Travels at first, but when we spent 2 weeks in Liliput, I was ready to tear my hair out by the root.
The same teacher that ruined GT for me was also one of the teachers that hated you if you disagreed. We read this poem in which a man is afraid of this monster that is trying to eat his heart (the narrator’s heart) and at the same time staring at himself in a mirror, so I suggested that it was about introspection and how the narrator did not like what he saw in himself. My teacher simply told me that I was wrong, even though half of my class agreed with me. (I don’t remember what she said was the theme and i do not care).
That is not to say that all of my hs English teachers were of the asshat variety. I absolutely loved my sophomore English class. We got to read Richard III and All My Sons, AND he made it FUN. We did these projects, and even though they were assigned topic, we could do what we wanted with them—I even got to write about Rock ‘n’ Roll for the project on life after WWI (All My Sons)!
I think that getting kids to read is a tricky thing, but that if teachers found a way to make it fun that they would be more likely to read than if they were told to look for symbolism or foreshadowing in the death of Candy’s dog in Of Mice and Men. It also couldn’t hurt if some of the assigned books were more interesting to them. If you have to read a classic, why not Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as opposed to Asimov? Why can’t learning be fun?
Just reading over these comments illustrates a big part of the problem—no one can agree on what the “interesting” books are! One reader says she loved the Foundation trilogy, while another uses Asimov as the author she’d like to see replaced. I found Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” fascinating, but someone else says it was a horrible reading experience. Arthur Miller? Votes for, but I’m sure there are votes against as well. It’s the nature of literature—you can’t please everyone, or you will please no one. One thing English teachers have to learn is that a book can be “great” in a cultural sense and still not be to your personal taste. (Teaching Camus’ The Stranger to college freshmen was one of the hardest things I ever did.) Finding a way to help students learn something from books they don’t like is what teaching literature is all about—it would be easy if everyone liked all the books, but that’s never going to happen.
Lan said
I strongly agree with her. More flexibility about interpretation is usually a good idea. However, the students who hate the book are often the same students who don’t want to engage with it, and who just want to be told what to think. I call it the “teach me something” attitude, and it is particularly pervasive in public high schools. What’s a teacher going to do with a class full of that attitude? What would YOU do, if you did your best to encourage discussion and sharing of opinions, but no one had anything to say? That’s how eager young teachers become disillusioned old teachers, telling students what to think and no longer expecting (or sometimes even permitting) students to thing for themselves. It’s sad, but given what we put into our education system, I can’t say it’s surprising. Instead, I am surprised every time I hear about public high school teachers of any subject who are still enthusiastic and energetic about their work. Talk about depressing.
Still, most English teachers I know brighten up when they get a few students who a)read the assigned book and b)offer intelligent reactions. They just learn not to expect that all the time, and how to keep the class going when no one’s interested but them.
And yes, that’s “THINK” for themselves, not “thing.” Aaargh, I miss the editing function in these comments!
It seems to me there are many educational issues in discussion here:
1. Commonality of knowlege, i.e. cultural icons such as Greek and Roman mythology, immortal characters such as the Fagins, Elizabeth Bennetts, Heathcliffs, Lomans, Beatrices and Benedicks, etc. that we think of as fundamental to cultural knowlege.
2. The academic rigor necessary to complete books we don’t necessarily like.
3. Bad teaching, as in ‘Here’s the author’s message. It’s the party line and learn it for the test. If you get it wrong, you’ll fail.”
4. Encouraging reading of any type and genre no matter what.
I’ve been an educator in many different environments. When I taught in an diversion type prison, the security people were always angry about books and magazines strewn all over the common room, but I always said, ‘How wonderful that our people are reading!”
I believe, and preached to my students that reading was the one friend who would never let them down. Most of my students operated at very low literacy levels; they’d dropped out of school and spent most of their subsequent years in correctional facilities. Getting these folks to read and glom onto the constancy and beauty of maths and algebra was the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done in my life. Some of them went on to college, which still makes me weepy to think about. It thrilled me no end when those people stole books. I had a hard time convincing the prison adminstration that book theft was a good thing, but book replacement was a line item in my departmental budget.
That said, as a teacher I had lower standards for those students than for students who weren’t starting out behind the 8 ball—non substance abusers, high IQ, no families to support as teenagers and the myriad other issues common to my incarcerated students. I demanded more of my ‘mainstream’ students. They are the ones who should know about Mr. Darcy, Willy Loman, the House of Atreus and Anna Karenina. Those kids already know how to read, and they read well. I’m going to push them to read the stuff that’s hard. because they can.
Just to echo what so many others have said, when I was in grade school, I LOVED reading. I’d read just about anything. Then I got to Jr High and High school and required reading lists and the teachers who over-analyzed them killed my love for reading. When I graduated, and for about 10 years or so after that, I refused to pick up a fiction book and read. It seemed like too much of a chore, and I had convinced myself I pretty much disliked everything, since I disliked everything I read in school. I had forgotten what it was like to read for “pleasure.”
The one exception to that was a class I took my sophomore year in college called, “The literature of Mysticism, Meditation and Madness,” where we read books like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” and “Siddhartha,” and instead of over-analyzing, we were free to express whatever thoughts and feelings each book gave us, and no answer was wrong. What a concept!! When we read “The Kin of Ata Are Waiting For You,” the paper I turned in compared the book to the song “Rainbow Connection” by Kermit the Frog, and I got an “A”!!
So, it’s really not that I’m against all “required” reading lists, but for me, the key is allowing each student to express their own thoughts and feelings in regards to what they’ve read. Instead of pages and pages of questions like “What does rosebush outside Hester Prynne’s prison door symbolize,” allow them to express, in their own words, what, if any, impact the book had on them, or what their thoughts and feelings were while reading it. You might get an answer back that you don’t like, but that’s ok. I think it’s ok for teachers to gently suggest a few things (like what the rosebush might symbolize), but don’t make a students entire grade hinge on whether or not they can answer a bunch of questions correctly according to what the “official” analysis of that book says.
Did they finish the book and get at least some small thing useful out of it? Then they get an “A”.
I have read quite of few of the comments and there is merit to all sides of the arguement. However, I think the deeper problem is turning reading into a chore.
I worked hard to foster and develop a love of reading in my daughter and by the time she arrived at school, she was reading above grade level. Somewhere about third grade, the public school system felt the need to require children to read 15 minutes a day and write about what they read. I appreciate the school’s position on this in order to develop young readers, but in the end, this daily chore has completely destroyed in less than 6 months what I spent the first 6 years of her life fostering. It wasn’t a mandatory reading list, they could read what they wanted, but the chore itself is the issue.
Today (4 grades later), I’m lucky if she actually finishes a book. I’ve spoken to teachers and librarians about rekindling the flame, we’ve tried all different genres, reading together, all without success. I’ve also had to come to the hard realization that my child is not a reader, but a doer. However, reading is necessary to her doing things.
This is alien to me as I LOVE to read and I read both trashy and “snobby” books. As a teen I made a point to read “banned” books (which I didn’t always enjoy) and I discovered Harlequins were steamy (to a “good girl”). As an adult, I impressed my husband by knowing all the responses to a British history category on Jeopardy! thanks to Barbara Cartland. I’ve been on both sides of the original issue. Yes, reading should be fun, not just fundamental; it should inspire life-long learning.
Books are my constant companions and my transportation to other times and places. For my child, they are a chore. That’s the real tragedy.
@Jody
I’ve got to disagree with this point. For one thing, I can identify all of these references without actually having read any of the books in question. (I did see Citizen Kane.) But are you really that deprived if you have no clue who Willy Loman is?
@Laura Vivanco
My exposure to Gone with the Wind was after that attitude mentioned became prevalent. I watched the movie expecting a grand sweeping epic romance, and ended up with well…
,and the niggling feeling that when Rhett carried a struggling Scarlett up a flight of stairs, that something was wrong here, in eighth grade history class.
@Lostshadows
Yes.
Is there agreement, though, about which “things everybody should know”? The discussion here has been quite US-centric, which is understandable since it began with an article looking at the US education system, but a lot of the books mentioned here are much less likely to be on curricula in other countries. There isn’t unlimited time for children to read and be taught every “great work” and there are so many of them, in so many different languages and written by authors of so many different nationalities.
While I’m on the topic of different approaches in different countries, I thought I’d also mention that I’m from the UK, and I didn’t come across a summer reading list, much less a compulsory one, until I reached university.
@Lynn M- If your son likes Diary of a Wimpy Kid, he might also enjoy The Last Invisible Boy by Evan Kuhlman. It is also written in journal format, although the plot is more nuanced and a bit heavier in terms of pathos (but still with some light, funny moments). (Ages 10+)
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Last-Invisible-Boy/Evan-Kuhlman/e/9781416957973/?itm=1&usri=1#TABS
Jody, I have to disagree with you. You are only being deprived of something if you cannot have a full life without the thing that they are not receiving. Can you live a full life without ever reading Death of a Salesman? Definitely. I have never read it, and i am doing just fine.
On another note, there was a program that was run in my school called the Bookit program. This involved reading 5 books within a certain period of time and then we would get a free pan pizza at pizzahut. While it was going on, I remember hearing parents praise the program, but about 6 months ago I read a report for a psych class claiming that this program may actually have killed kids’ love of reading. It claimed that the external reward of the free pizza canceled out the internal rewards (i.e. the pleasure of reading), and so the children “forgot” that they ever liked reading simply to read. This is called the Overjustification Effect.
I think this may have some implications on the way that reading is taught to young children in the American Education System. There has to be a better way to get children to read than bribery. It may get them to read in the short run, but once the external rewards are taken away they may be less likely to read than they were before the rewards were given in the first place. The bribes are only teaching them to read if they are getting something tangible in return. It is pure behavior modification. The problem is that the teachers aren’t providing secondary reinforcement in the form of praise. The children are only receiving a primary reinforcer (the food), and once that is gone the behavior that you are reinforcing (reading) will stop. If secondary reinforcement is given, it may be easier to keep them reading because by praising them for reading and giving them a chance to express the way a book made them feel, we would be instilling the feeling a pleasure that reading can evoke, the pleasure that programs such as Bookit erased by placing an external reward on reading.
My random musing on this after catching site of the new covers of “Wuthering Heights” on GalleyCat (hated that story because I hated the characters & new covers are using the Twilight series motif), and not having read through all of the comments here, is that if a kid gets turned off by books from a select list early on, the school/teacher will fall out of the student’s trust network. It’s the reader advisor in me musing about how we are only as good as our last recommendation. If the student doesn’t think the school/teacher has any clue about choosing books that will engage a reader of that age (note: engage =/ entertain), the student will do their best to avoid reading assigned books even if they’re a voracious reader. And yes, I can certainly count myself in that group.
I’ll side with the slobs for the most part. Though I’ve come to love more and more poetry and literary classics, what I learned from honors and AP english classes was how to get As and Bs without reading a single book. Forcing a teenaged boy to read Pride and Prejudice isn’t education, it’s torture, and if a teenaged boy has got any problem solving neurons in his brain, he’ll realize the easiest escape is to skim for the sort of details that will show up on tests. Before high school, my parents couldn’t get me to stop reading- I’d pull all-nighters reading books for fun when I was young. In high school, with the advent of miserable required reading lists, I stopped reading for pleasure, and I didn’t start again until after finishing my undergrad.
True, sure. But remember that these are kids who are just learning what sorts of fun and excitement can be had with genitals. Isabel Allende and Jane Austen may have had a lot to say about romance, but most high school students have no substrate on which these ideas can take hold.
I’m in favor of a broad, expansive reading list. Let the Victorian era romance novels be an option, but make something available to students who would rather read, say non-fiction (gasp!).
Liz-
I’d have to disagree with you re bookit. Behavior modification is a very successful method for teaching new behaviors. The hope with a program like bookit is that the external reward (pizza) will get them reading and that the internal reward will be found in the process of reading ie-the amazing world one can find in books. If behavior mod did not work many psychologists across the US would be out of business and teachers would have no control over their classrooms whatsoever. Behavior modification is extremely successful when the teacher is consistent and effective in using appropriate techniques. I have rarely encountered a teacher, either in my own educational experiences or in my experiences as a teacher who did not praise children for appropriate behaviors which would include reading behaviors.
As a literature teacher myself (6th 7th 8th grade) the key is this…
The librarian and their parents handle their fun reading. They are allowed their own quiet reading time with whatever book they bring in.
In MY time we read some of the classics. Books that have universal themes and I help them relate to them even though they are years out of date. Treasure Island is a perfect example of a “coming of age” story that can be compared and contrasted with Harry Potter as well as the student’s own life.
Symbolism and the heavier stuff should really be saved for High School level when their brains are slightly more developed. But even then you can be introduced to the ideas of symbolism.
I think even if modern authors are PURPOSEFULLY (and I am sure that some are…) putting symbolism of “higher literary learning” in their stories there STILL is symbolism present. It would be like me drawing a peace sign on the board and the kids not understanding what is peace. It’s all building blocks.
Every time you analyze a story with students you make sure to say “Look this is how it reflects elsewhere! This is where you’ll see it in the stories that YOU are reading!” It’s also important when they are doing their own writing. Maybe adult authors can handle not knowing what they are doing but reading stream of consciousness from a 7th grader is simply PAINFUL. What the teachers are doing is putting down building blocks so that knowledge of theme and plot carry over to OTHER subjects as well.
For my own school, our list is vast. We take in every genre and try to get every type of taste. We even have some YA romance on it. The important thing isn’t JUST that they are reading. But that they understand what they are reading at different levels of understanding as well.
Consider this, the adults out there now who wildly love badly written schlock, can’t explain WHY they love it, scream and rant and rave when it IS criticized but can’t come up with a reason other than “Well I like it!” missed out on the analysis. Even fun fluff reading can be analyzed and critiqued and there is nothing wrong with that. As we grow older we SHOULD consider our entertainment on various levels. Otherwise we stangnate.
@Liz
Thanks, couldn’t have said it any better.
eyes68-That might help make a bigger dent in my TBR pile.
One of the most interesting things in this thread to me has been the sheer number of people who feel that school killed their desire to read. That for these folks every single teacher in every single grade seems to have made an indelible negative impression. And I honestly an struggling to understand how that could be. I mean, how did every single teacher, every single year create such a monolithically negative experience?
I’m resonating with Candy’s insight that we seem to place added expectations on reading instruction over and above those we have for science or math or history/social studies, etc. Clearly that seems to be the case. And for the teenagers we all know who feel that school is the biggest drag they could ever imagine—well, of course. I mean, at one level students are the most authoritative source as to a teacher’s abilities and effectiveness, but at another level, they’re the least reliable evaluators. So there’s always going to be that tension there.
But for adults, for those of us who have had years of distance between school and now, who have had whatever intervening experiences and opportunities, there seems to be a distillation process in our memories, a reduction to something like ‘reading saved me life’ (and to Sharon Buchbinder, your comment was so moving and a poignant reminder that education is still the most important guarantor of social mobility in the US) or ‘those teachers ruined any enjoyment of reading I could have had.’ I realize this is really quite normal, but I’m still struck by the polarized nature of the comments.
So for those of you who found school a reading turn-off, a question:
Were your parents and/or siblings and/or peers avid readers?
For me, I actually had two teachers in high school, sophomore & junior years, who I think were fabulous teachers and probably got me to read more of the required reading than I would have with another teacher. Often, it’s not really the teacher who is at issue as it is the books determined by the curriculum. A good teacher works around the limitations, like mine did, but they can only go so far with the stubbornness of teenagers and books with limited appeal. The lack of engagement, on my part, with 90% of the books assigned to me in school certainly didn’t kill my love of reading. In fact, teachers routinely took me to task for reading when I should have been paying attention 😀 Also, it was my sophomore year English teacher who sparked the idea in me that I could one day be a writer. She made English an interesting subject again after my freshman year teacher who came thisclose to killing poetry for me for the rest of my life.
My dad is/was and I mainly hung out with other voracious readers, so I always had someone with whom to discuss books.
hi, i’m billie. i turned 14 last month and graduated to sophmore status only a few weeks later. i’m a book loving recluse who reads everthing from meg cabot to dickens with little or no influence from anyone. and i like dickens a lot better. (sydney carton still holds the title of coolest hero ever written, at least in my mind). i just started the oddyssey today, after my teacher told me it was a better beginning point than the iliad, cronology (that can’t be correct) be dammned. the idiot (seriously, you’ll have to take my word on this) senior sitting next to me is reading the Mahabharata and upton sinclair’s “the jungle.” still, no urging from teacher; he started them over the summer. i think that if children are presented with the books they should read (if they are to be well educated) and told a little about them, including how good they are, they’ll read them, curious monkey descendents that we are. forcing children to read is entirely the incorrect approach. and giving them so many things to read that they don’t have time for the good stuff of ALL genres (my copy of Lord of Scoundrels should come in the mail tomorrow!) will only put them off and make it so they’ll never really read a good book. it may be a bodice ripper, it may be about dragons, it may be another of the painful, ubiquitous, shitty Twilight rip-offs. but it’s still a book. and it may lead to another, and another. and maybe, at some point, they’ll get around to reading the three musketeers ratehr then just watching the disney version. but i haven’t been to a normal school since second grade so i wouldn’t really know what it’s like.
spamblocker word or whatever: dead53. ever if vampires are FUCKING SHINY in the sunlight rather than ashes, that’s still two thousand pages of reading.
i grew up on a farm, like many of the other commenters and grew up, like probably everyone, with i love of reading and books in general. one of my earliest memories if going to the library with my mom and sister and filling up a laundry basket with as many books as we could check out at one time and bringing them home to read as fast as i could, them bugging my mom to go back. both my parents love books and always have, both graduated from college, though my father went on through chiropractic college. i didn’t grow up with cable so there wasn’t much but books, and music: two of my greatest passions to this day. but i also vividly remember watching some movie (i forget exactly which) based on a book by dumas. i then went to the library, looked up the book, read it, and fell in love. same thing with pride and prejudice, though we never read that on school. i do remember reading “little women” though, and having it disected by a really bad teacher, i forget her name but her nickname was Stinky, and loving it anyway. so much for tryign to keep kids from reading. oh and
too funny
has anyone read Matilda by charles dahl? minus the telekineticism (?) i think that is the perfect example of a child discovering books.
i was just wondering if anyone would like to have adiscussion on propriety and content and ages of readers. like whoever made the comment about her father having “strong words” with a librarian who tried to stop her from reading “are you there God? it’s me, Margaret” at a “tender age”
i remember reading that and “julie and the wolves” in grade school, on my own, just because they existed. these days kids are exposed to so much sex and swearing so early on that it’s just…… i don’t know