Quote:
Originally Posted by rkomar
I remember hating a lot of books when studying them in high school. A few years after graduating, I decided to read them again without the pressure of trying to analyze them, and I found that I enjoyed most of them. It wasn't the books I hated, it was the process of checking each line for similes, litotes, metaphors, alliteration,... that killed the joy of reading. So, I'm not sure that choosing different books is going to stop people from getting turned off, if they're still going to have to analyze the new ones.
|
This is in fact an excellent point. I might add to that the endless dissection search for themes and meanings, many of which I am sure were probably never even consciously considered by the author. Now, as someone who loves reading, I quite enjoyed this. But to the "non-bookworms" it must have been excruciating.
I agree that choosing different books may not necessarily help, particularly where a class is taught in a way that is not engaging. However, different books and a reasonable aproach to teaching may go some good.
It is of course a mistake to regard children in a grade at school as one homogenous body. It seems clear that such a group is comprised at the extremes of bookworms and book-haters, with of course graduated views between. I would like to think but have no evidence that many of those in between have the potential to become lovers of reading to at least some extent, often depending on their experience of books at school which sometimes, at least initially, can be their only exposure.
Unfortunately I have no magic answer. I am certainly not against the teaching of the Classics in school. An obvious answer off-the-cuff is for the choice of books and the method of teaching to differ between at least the broader groups of children. Because it is easy to kill not only a love of reading but also any interest at trying again later in life. Of course, such discrimination brings its own many potential problems. If adminstered reasonably and sensibly it could work well, but the reality is that in many cases this will not happen. So the cure may be worse than the disease.