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.
What a wonderfully insightful article! I agree with you that a hybrid approach is probably best: if kids are given just a little room to be themselves—especially in an activity as personal as reading—perhaps they won’t mind as much the mandatory readings to which they are assigned.
By the way, I love that you’re a fan of Thomas Hardy — I was the only one in my AP English class senior year who gave Tess any chance at all, and since then I’ve been a tremendous fan of the Hardster, eagerly devouring a number of his books and poems. The funny thing is, my experience in high school was not one of frustration with difficult books, but rather with books that were too juvenile — too basic for someone who at home regularly read books like Leon Uris’s The Haj and short stories by Melville, Kafka, Salinger and the like, as well as an ungodly number of artist biographies, scientific and philosophical manuals, and almost the entire Stephen King collection (I love his work!). Essentially, I think that readers in the real world consume a great deal of different types of literature (this, I believe, was similarly mentioned in the original article), and if we’d like our kids to grow up to be good, happy readers, we have to be able to steer them in the right direction while simultaneously allowing them to discover for themselves what really turns them on.
@billie- I agree with you, if a teacher can find the right way to sell books to their students, a lot more students would voluntarily read them. Unfortunately, this is not a skill all teachers have. More of them possess the talent of dissecting a story to the point where even the most eager reader never wants to see the thing again.
Hopefully, you’ll never get one of those.
I have to give a lot of kudos to Mrs. Rishel, my 10th grade American Lit teacher. In that class I learned so many things that have been essential to my academic career and my greater understanding of literature that I could just kiss her. As you can probably guess, we read many of the dreaded classics in that class: The Scarlet Letter, Old Man and the Sea, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, etc. However, she introduced me to that second unseen level of reading, the one where you look past the obvious and delve into the meaning and ideas and, yes, symbols that are found in these works in order to garner a deeper understanding of the human condition. She never said, “This is what the author meant, so there!” She would point out symbols and themes and we would have a discussion about what we thought the author meant. I absolutely ate it up. Others did not. I remember getting comments like, “I think you are looking to hard at this. What if an albatross is just a bird and not a symbol for anything more?” Even then, those students weren’t slapped down. She agreed that that may be true, but that culturally albatross’s are identified with Christ who carried our burdens and that it is just as legitimate to discuss that meaning as to disbelieve that there was meaning there.
For me, just the idea that writing could be looked at on multiple levels was a revelation and greatly enhanced every single book or piece of writing that I’ve read since then.
I guess the upshot of all this is that I think that mandatory reading can be a vital tool in fostering a critical eye and analytical skills.
I wasn’t saying that Behavior Modification does not work. I know that it does, and if there was any one orientation that i would choose as a psychologist—I have a BA in psych—it would be Behaviorism. Applied Behavioral Analysis does wonders for Autistic children. The problem I had was with the Bookit Program and the way in which I was exposed to it. At my school there was no secondary reinforcement to go along with the free pizza. Maybe in other schools it was not done this way, but that was how it was done in my school. All I know is that once the program was over, there were less people in my class that wanted to read than there was when the program began, me included—although i was never really a reader to begin with. While on the program, I was willing to read just to get the free pizza, but once that was taken away I had no desire to read. If it wasn’t for Harry Potter and a neighbor with a bunch of used Harlequins, I would not be a reader today.
I actually enjoyed (or could live with) the majority of the stuff I read in high school English – it was principally ninth grade with Mrs. Barbara “Book Killer” Carter that was the exception.
The English teachers my other three years in high school were all good, and I even enjoyed Scarlet Letter (twice!), which from the sound of it is widely hated by high school students.
I was already a reader, though. My parents are English professors, and both my grandmothers were book addicts.
It would have taken a lot more than just that one year of THIS IS THE INTERPRETATION OF THE SYMBOLISM THAT WILL BE ON THE EXAM to kill reading for me; I’ve been an addict since I was about 4.
I’m one of the long time addicted readers. There’s not much to do in our town. When I was a kid Mom and I spent a lot of time at the library. She’d get stacks of books to bring home, and I’d have a matching stack. We’d go to every story time session the library offered. I was reading on my own by the time I turned 4.
I was lucky in the sense that we had a pretty good library in elementary school. We were allowed to check out 1 book per week. I would come home, read my book, and beg to exchange it the next day. After I proving to my teacher and the librarian that I was actually reading the books, I was allowed to check out 5 books per week. My favorite was Moby Dick. For about 3 years, I read that book every single month.
Our high school library was less than adequate. To compensate, I made bi-weekly trips to the library in town with mom. She actually introduced me to romance novels about that time. Of course she read through them first to make sure they weren’t too racy for me.
What I remember most about high school was my 11th grade English teacher. She was young, fresh out of college, and loved pop culture. She picked out a handful of “required” reading, but allowed us to pick out the rest. She had this massive collection of random books all over the classroom and we were allowed to pick out whatever we wanted from her collection. It was awesome. And here’s the thing – if we read any book and found it to be awful, we could flat out tell her that. We had to give her a logical reason as to why we hated it though. In between reading and reports, we’d watch cool movies (Alfred Hitchcock – Psycho) and write our own version of the same – I’m sure to her it was like reading really bad fan fiction – but it was fun.
Now my 12th grade English teacher was a drag. She had this list of awful books we had to read. Then we had to write a 5 page report about whatever we read. We weren’t really allowed to argue why the book was a piece of crap and we were only to discuss the plot and hidden meanings.
My daughter, who just started Kindergarten, loves for us to read to her but had no desire to learn to read herself. Which never made sense to use, since we’re both avid readers. She brought home her first library book today, and sat on the couch reading to herself. I was such a proud momma at that moment. There’s hope for the kid yet!
English Teacher said something really interesting:
I ran into this with the “aged-out” young adults I tutored – everything we read, really basic stuff from the GED prep, like an excerpt of a drama review – everything was just so full of new stuff that they couldn’t both learn to read it and understand it. That is, they could learn to sound out Chile but then they also had to learn that it was a country, in South America, and people speak Spanish there and there are Black, white, Indian, and Mestizo people there which is why the play is about race, and the Black people there speak Spanish too, but the dialogue is in English because it’s being performed here…
I imagine that’s how it is for all younger kids, including the high school kids. They’re not just reading for tone, structure, theme, plot, they’re learning a bunch of stuff about whatever setting the book is in, and having to look up hard words, and thinking about which parts are likely to be on the test, and maybe if you’re lucky comparing it to other stuff they’ve read…it’s hard to do all those things at once, and if they’re being told only one of the things they’re doing is the point, of course they resist.
Just pondering if required reading colored us more because we were forced to read what we considered “bad” books, than the book being a classic. Not only that we had to talk about these “bad” books in depth. Reading a bad book, at least to me, is akeen to inhumane torture. Also a bad book is purely subjective. Of course, this experience is made worse because there is no opting out for a different story. There is no throw the book against the wall, you just have to suffer through it.
I would have immense hatred of reading too if that was my case. I read ahead with Death of a Salesman, Hamlet, Raisin in the Sun, and Of Mice and Men. I vaguely remember the question sheets that went along with the Salem Witch Trials play. *dear God shoot me now.*
But, I can’t attribute the teacher for my disdain of this play. I can count a few who made me realize not all teachers were cut from the same clothe. I can’t remember their names either, just who and what they stood for in my mind. Yet the teachers who I loved, who helped shape me in a positive way I can name them. That’s more powerful than a required reading list any day.
Sidenote: I was in the 7th grade when I decided to tackle Wuthering Heights on my own. We had to write a daily journal about what we read. This is my entry paraphrased: “I can’t forced myself to read this book anymore.”
The teacher’s reply: “Thank you God. I hated that book too. Read something you can enjoy.”
You can call me one of the lucky ones. This teacher actually taught Computer Science. We had to do this because the district required it.
And this is why I homeschool.
It’s hard. It’s just damned hard and it’s kind of unfair to put all of the responsibility on a teacher to foster a life-long love of reading in a person. We all know reading taste is subjective. That’s the first ding. Second is that school is an institution, and there’s not going to be too much room for experimentation within it. So you have to hope that one particular teacher finds a way to mash a temptation of the palate with requirements. God bless them, that’s quite a demand to put on any one person.
I’m in the half and half camp. We need classics. They are the great conversation, they are the foundation of western civilization and we need to know ourselves and where we came from.
BUT, if you go forcefeeding something to a kid who is not ready- either without knowledge to make literary connections or emotionally ready, you will kill any inborn desire to read for pleasure.
I love reading, and have since I saw Nana in her chair every afternoon drinking tea with a paperback. As soon as I could, I asked for books, and God love that woman, she bought me what I wanted. Shilouette teen romances. I could not BELIEVE they printed people kissing! The toe curling commenced and I was hooked.
I got to HS, and the love of reading was torn from under me. I did it, but begrudgingly. And, for those few books I loved, I’m too afraid to go back and read them (Narcissus and Goldmund, The Great Gatsby). I don’t want the shine rubbed off my penny.
Here’s how we do it in my house. Right now we are all studying ancients for history. From the wee ones to the high schoolers. It’s a spiral. We read the great books from that era. The littles have been read a gorgeous rendition of the Epic of Gilgamesh, we discussed the times, the thoughts and the beliefs of the people. My HSer is reading Gilgamesh: A New Version (which is knock down gorgeous). She’s had it before, its not new to her, but this time she is digging deeper into the history of the time and myth of the story. She’s not reading it in a vacuum. I’ve read it, we talk about it. She is 14 and making connections that are making me pump my fist in the air. It goes the same with every book my kids encounter throughout their schooling-they’ve had it in the children’s version before, Padriac Column’s The Children’s Homer in a few years will become The Odyssey and Iliad. Geraldine McCaughrean’s Oxford Illustrated Classic The Canturbury Tales one day becomes Chaucer. You can’t read classics in a vacuum. They can’t be plunked on a kid’s desk and then the kid expected to glean what is required automatically.
To have this approach the whole nation would have to have one set standard of school. Heh. Good luck with that. (How’s that Public Option going?) But unless we stop trying to teach these kids classics in a void, they will hate them-they have no significance and no foundation.
Lastly, I don’t only allow classics. Ds just finished the Lemony Snicketts in record time and Dd will read anything to do with vampires. And I won’t see her for the whole day, either, she’s a glommer like her mother. The littles are reading Little House. A grand day is all of us being able to hit B&N. I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way.
hmmm, i read this blog it is very usefull for me.
I think this entire thread should be required reading for anyone who has anything to do with required reading! As a Teen Services Librarian, I’m lucky that my work with young readers is all about choice and that I never have to worry about whether or not they’ve understood the symbolism.
I do think there are bad teachers, just like there are bad doctors or bad manicurists, and they’re the ones that people remember so vividly. But I also think there are prevailing beliefs that reading should be taught one way or another that even good teachers might end up subscribing to, plus all the standardized tests that have to be taught to. There seems to be some movement towards reading choice in schools, but it won’t happen fast or everywhere.
You could say there are three main reasons to teach reading. One is simply the task of reading, how to get meaning, how to turn around and craft language yourself. Some kids hate reading because they literally can’t read and they need a program like Read Right to help them re-train their brains. Or they have no way to relate to the people or situations in the books, as @English Teacher and others point out. Beyond the basic skills, there are critical thinking and analytical skills, although I’m not convinced you have to read books from the canon to acquire those—and teachers do more harm than good when they stifle the “wrong” answers that actually exemplify creative thinking. What about reading “bad” writing (as much as it’s possible to definitively say what’s good or bad since there are so many different tastes) so you can compare and contrast it?
Another reason to teach particular books has to do with having a shared cultural language, or as @Robin put it, “a common thread of ideas and experiences,” so when you’re at a dinner party and someone says, “That’s just like what happened to Hester Prynne!” you’ll know what they’re talking about. (It’s up to you whether that’s a dinner party you want to be at.) Some people learn things best when they read it in a story, as opposed to, say, a textbook—witness all the people who’ve learned everything they know about history from historical fiction.
Then there’s the third reason to make sure kids are reading, this idea that there’s something wrong with you if you don’t love reading. But @Jody and others are right: Why is it OK to not be that into listening to music or doing chemistry experiments but it’s not OK to not be that into reading? My job is to help teens who like to read find more stuff to read, no matter what they like to read, (and to provide them with a sanctuary where they can read it) and to help kids who don’t like to read but are being made to for one reason or another find stuff they might actually like. For some kids, it’s a matter of not having found the right thing to read yet, but for others, no matter how many books you give them, they’re just never going to like it. And that’s not the end of the world, although that might sound blasphemous to some.
One last point: There are great books that aren’t “classics” or “trash,” books from the YA shelves that some teens might never try, books that can be used to teach about language and the craft of writing, about the world around us and the cultural idioms we share, but that teens can relate to and even enjoy. I could make you a list of them if you’re interested!