I’ve seen more than a few comments on other posts talking about how forcing middle schoolers and high schoolers to read dry and inaccessible literature (even if it’s important) spoiled their love for reading, or put some people off of reading for good.
Now I’m not a US native so my impressions regarding the US “required reading” education is second-hand, but I’ve had this talk with an American friend multiple times. He absolutely detested having to read The Scarlet Letter and As I Lay Dying and The Catcher In The Rye and said it basically ruined literature for him for 10 years.
I totally get that. And it’s similar in Germany where I went to school - you read some really old texts for their historic importance and to learn about the evolution of literature, and then some more contemporary ones which can be… dry. Not what you want to be reading at 14 or 15 or 16. But at the same time I think there is value in exposing teenagers to literature that they otherwise might never pick up, especially older literature and classics. Maybe nine out of ten kids will hate it, but it might be an eye-opening experience for one in ten. And I mean, some of the point of school is just to expose you to things so you can learn what interests you and what doesn’t.
So I’m torn on this. Personally I liked most of the stuff I had to read in middle school and high school, but then I was a voracious reader and very interested in (art) history and philosophy and all kinds of nerdy things. I was wondering what this (book-positive, literature focused) subreddit thinks? Should all literature education be opt-in, or is there value in making everybody give it at least a fair shot? Should education in literature be done differently? Are there any books that you had to read that you think are particularly bad or good choices?
I do think literature could be taught better, but I’m also skeptical of the claim that lots of young people would love reading if not for being made to read The Scarlet Letter in high school.
The absence of classic reading requirements would likely not somehow be replaced by reading lots of literature. While I do believe that reading lists should have more current literature and cycle many of the “classics” to an optional list, the bigger issue is that many kids don’t do the reading. That’s true in college, high school, and before. In a first year composition class I’m teaching now (so, not even literature, not onerous reading), I have easily half of my students bluffing their way through class discussion and papers. They see no value in assignments or reading if it can’t be done 15 minutes before class.
I don’t have the answer for what needs to happen at the middle and high school level to turn that around. Maybe their behavior comes from in-grained, reflexive responses to readings they didn’t like in the past. Maybe it’s not on the teachers at all but on COVID, building anxiety about our futures, and a sort of information overload. In any case, I think reading selection isn’t as important as either building motivation in reading (which teachers can help with) or addressing the issues that cause anxiety in the first place (which is really on policy-makers).
When I was an adjunct professor of cataloging in a library and information science program, I asked the students to read an article called “Discards” by Nicholson Baker in the New Yorker. It was about card catalogs and his chagrin at their being replaced by online catalogs. I provided a link for the students.
The article was well written (though it was obvious Nicholson Baker had no idea how labor intensive paper card catalog were to maintain), germane to the course, and an extremely rare example of anyone outside the library profession giving a shit about library catalogs.
I thought we could, you know, have a discussion about it.
One person read the article. (She not surprisingly turned out to be the best and most motivated student in the class.) This was in a graduate-level program.
SMH.