“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
That’s a quote from Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451. I came across it last week and it made me think of the report out from the National Endowment for the Arts, To Read or Not to Read. In it the NEA looked at a broad range of data on the reading habits of Americans. Every measure was depressing. Americans are reading less and less these days, especially the kind of great literature like Bradbury’s which Common Core wants to encourage. While this may not be wholly surprising, it’s always tough to see your fears confirmed in numbers.
So what do you think can be done to get people to read more? We would love to hear your thoughts.
Lauren Prehoda
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“PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR,
Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance. ”
Mark Twain’s warning to readers of Huckleberry Finn should be a warning heeded by educators. He’s telling us something, in his usual humorous yet pointed way. Don’t treat literature as a means to an end, but as an end in itself.
Yet too many teachers ignore this warning, and carry on with the failed methods that have turned so many young people off of great literature. ‘Read chapter ten and answer the five questions on this ditto.’ ‘Get ready for the test on Wednesday on the themes in the Great Gatsby.’ ‘Turn in your essays on Friday. Remember, five page minimum.’
Blah.
It should be no suprise that adults shy away from great literature, when such are the associations it conjures.
All too often, the obsessive need of schools to grade and rank students, to “evaluate” their “performance” leads to the counterproductive result that the students end up despising the very thing they are being”taught” to appreciate.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink — especially when you’re whipping him.
No wonder Twain also said “I went to public school, but I never let it interfere with my education.”
The solution: Let kids just read. Give them good books, talk about good books, but for God’s sake don’t beat them over the head with good books.
I’d love to pass on a recommendation of how to get people to read more…but I’m reading much less myself. Well, not reading-reading, but certainly book reading. Partly no doubt to the OpenHistoryProject.org health plan vs. my aging-and now tuned to the screen-eyes. Partly because 11pm arrives and I haven’t reached the end of the Internet each night.
But then, lets look at the flip side. Why would I read Pride and Predudice when the wonderful 6 hour PBS adaptation was available? Keeping up with technology, business, policy, and community text resources is hard enough; why not relax a little bit for my cultural enlightenment?
Then, too, who is keeping Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Amazon open? None existed just a short time ago, yet there they are selling books by the billions.
Last month I drove to Dayton and back–and polished off <A Soldier’s Story along the way. The wonder of audio books!
All that said, we know that schools simply aren’t making students feel that they should be reading some of these works. I had of course heard of Huck Finn, but who knew I really should have read it before age 27?
Teachers, are you reading to students? Of my K-12 years, Mrs. Alice Jacobs stands out from the rest because she took parts of the lunch break to read great books to us!
Peter Schramm wrote recently that he often asks prospective Ashbrook scholars to read a passage to him. They are equally often shocked–as no one ever asks them to read. Imagine if you are an audio learner and never hear reading!
You need nothing less than a faculty of teachers prepared to teach literature fearlessly, joyfully, and well.
I teach literature to my English language learner students–real literature, not the watered-down adapted stuff. They have read Antigone, Rhinoceros, Cyrano de Bergerac, Hamlet (side-by-side edition), The Glass Menagerie, Sherlock Holmes stories, The Old Man and the Sea, Animal Farm, Gilgamesh, and more. I am on my own with that and have bought almost all of the books myself.
Some of the students get so excited about it, they burst into the room every day and rush up to me with their latest thoughts on the book we’re reading. The response to The Old Man and the Sea was overwhelming. I ask them for essays–they bring me five, eight, ten pages and tell me they want more essay assignments.
But then, in the same class, are kids who couldn’t care less, and some who are interested sometimes but not all of the time. I have to be careful, because when the eager kids crowd around me, the others take this as their chance to playfight, throw paper airplanes, or whatever the distraction might be.
Why is this? The students themselves (the ones who don’t enjoy the reading) tell me that we’re not doing anything. They expect a concrete task, the very sort of thing that Matt Valenti decries. If I gave them a worksheet, they’d be content. But asking them to sit still and read and discuss a book? That’s a nothing-activity, as far as they’re concerned. And so, since “nothing” is going on, they feel entitled to do nothing.
Ironically, some of the mandated “constructivist” approaches (strategies, groupwork, etc.) impede true construction that comes from reading and thinking about a text. Kids are used to passages, graphic organizers and “think-pair-share”; they are not used to literature, challenging questions, or whole-class discussion.
How do we introduce reading and class discussion to them? How do we convince them that this is serious activity? Through example and practice, of course–but at the school level. A lone teacher can inspire individual students, but that’s it. Those who are not inspired do not feel an obligation to pay attention, since this teacher is clearly doing things differently from the norm anyway. So: put works of literature in the curriculum. Synchronize the curriculum so that, for instance, students will read The Glass Menagerie while studying the Great Depression. Offer electives as well as required courses. And by all means bring in teachers who love literature and are burning to teach it!
I don’t think students don’t read because teachers don’t acknowledge what Mark Twain advised. Rather, teachers are forced to go against what Mark Twain advised because students don’t read.
The fault does not lie with teachers or with students but with adults.
Give students books, and they move away to play video games or watch television. They are given all the time to read but they don’t. And guess what adults are doing? The NEA report answers that question.
The solution isn’t to give books to kids or time for them to read but to make adults read. It’s adults who construct these malls, broadcast television shows, make and sell video games, and are seen as role models by children, and as the NEA report shows, adults are doing what kids are doing. If more adults read and spend less time watching television or engaging in other distractions, then more children will read, too.
In the long run, then, instead of asking teachers if they are reading to students, we should ask all adults, including parents, if they are reading to children.
In short, to adults, if you want children to read more, you have to read more and talk to children about what you read. There is only so much time a children will spend in school; he will spend more time outside it, where lots of museums, public libraries, and groups of learners (ranging from amateur historian groups to music, drama, and reading circles run by adults outside schools), not to mention substantial funding for these from local governments (which is the case in several European and Asian countries where a culture of learning thrives) and adults who are very much like teachers will be needed. Perhaps what might even be more important than school reform will be continuing education for all adults.
I just wanted to add that the above suggestions are not the entire solution, but part of it. Students also need to learn grammar. I found that my students could tackle a Sherlock Holmes story more easily after working with subjunctive clauses.
Also, disruptive behavior must not be tolerated. Some students may take a while to find the material interesting, but that does not justify ruining the class for others.
I read similar article also named Flames of Indifference, and it was completely different. Personally, I agree with you more, because this article makes a little bit more sense for me