Article on Readers Versus "Book People"

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by kandwo

Are people really that brittle? One bad experience and nevermore!

It depends on a person. Personally I avoid anything I've had a bad experience with like a plague. Life's too short to do things you don't enjoy, IMO. That said, school didn't put me off classics. While I hated school, literature lessons included, with a passion, fortunately I'd already read most of the books discussed there. And I read classics for a while after my school years too. Still, I tired of them and stuck solely to my lifelong love, genre fiction. As of now, I have no plans to read any more classics in my remaining lifetime.

[ekbell]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'll disagree. If you want kids to confront their ideas about the world, you have to have them reading books that are more relevant to the world as it is now and not as it was. That's part of the problem. Teachers need to pick more modern books that kids can relate to in some way.

I think that if we want children to enjoy their literature classes, their teachers should assign books that they themselves liked and can talk about. A good teacher can find plenty that's relevant in nearly any book that's survived to be labeled a classic (people haven't changed that much) but the enthusiasm that can lead a reluctant class towards appreciation is harder to come by.

My high school daughters have been complaining bitterly about the 'relevant' young adult novels that they've been forced to read for school, with one daughter consistently choosing older books whenever given a choice. Although her favorite book of all books is Dracula, to the point where she asked for a study edition with ample footnotes so she may not be a particularly good exemplar.

BTW she discovered a new appreciation for Fahrenheit 451 after I went over what American life was like in the early 1950's. A good lit teacher should discuss where the writer was coming from.

[issybird]

I’m sure it differs from district to district, but overall I don’t think individual teachers have much control over the curriculum at the K to 12 level.

I must give a rousing second to the sub-par quality of most “relevant” YA novels that I’ve seen. Ekbell’s daughters are clearly young women of taste and discernment. Far better to teach books that have lasted, than those that are written to expose an issue.

[Sirtel]

My personal opinion (yes, I get that it's an unpopular one) is that school should not teach any books at all. People either read or don't and personally I don't know a single person who reads because of what they were taught at school. Those who like to read generally read despite what they had to do at school. That's my personal experience, at least. I loved to read long before I even went to school; OTOH, most of my well educated relatives don't read for pleasure at all and never have.

Of course I might be biased, as I hated school and anything to do with it since the very first day. So nothing can convince me that school is the right place to make someone love something.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

My personal opinion (yes, I get that it's an unpopular one) is that school should not teach any books at all. People either read or don't and personally I don't know a single person who reads because of what they were taught at school. Those who like to read generally read despite what they had to do at school. That's my personal experience, at least. I loved to read long before I even went to school; OTOH, most of my well educated relatives don't read for pleasure at all and never have.

Of course I might be biased, as I hated school and anything to do with it since the very first day. So nothing can convince me that school is the right place to make someone love something.

School is the place to educate people. Kids can find love on their own. Reasons to teach books include general cultural knowledge and appreciation and the ability to engage with a text, to question it and to understand it. Kids might not love algebra, but they still need to learn it.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by issybird

Reasons to teach books include general cultural knowledge and appreciation and the ability to engage with a text, to question it and to understand it.

But the problem is that making people read fiction doesn't teach them that, unless the teacher is very, very good and usually he/she isn't. I didn't get anything valuable at all from my school literature lessons, nor did anyone else I know. It's not that way with language lessons, mathematics, biology etc. But it is with literature lessons. Of course you may have had a different experience; then you're lucky.

[kandwo]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

My personal opinion (yes, I get that it's an unpopular one) is that school should not teach any books at all. People either read or don't and personally I don't know a single person who reads because of what they were taught at school. Those who like to read generally read despite what they had to do at school. That's my personal experience, at least. I loved to read long before I even went to school; OTOH, most of my well educated relatives don't read for pleasure at all and never have.

Of course I might be biased, as I hated school and anything to do with it since the very first day. So nothing can convince me that school is the right place to make someone love something.

I don't think one should expect school to instill some sort of love of reading in kids. One can discover that on one's own. The point of reading classics is to have a common cultural framework and a general appreciation for the culture and history that one is surrounded by.

Originally Posted by issybird

School is the place to educate people. Kids can find love on their own. Reasons to teach books include general cultural knowledge and appreciation and the ability to engage with a text, to question it and to understand it. Kids might not love algebra, but they still need to learn it.

I agree with the general cultural knowledge part. But school is horrible at teaching some sort of critical thinking and deeper analysis in my experience. It's a good goal, I guess. Maybe if they taught logic at the same time... But then nobody would use it anyway.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by kandwo

The point of reading classics is to have a common cultural framework and a general appreciation for the culture and history that one is surrounded by.

As things stand now, you usually don't get any appreciation for the culture from the school literature lessons. Quite the contrary.

But school is horrible at teaching some sort of critical thinking and deeper analysis in my experience.

I agree with that wholeheartedly. There's too little emphasis on the skills that would be really useful in later life and too much emphasis on things a student forgets almost immediately after finishing school, because s/he never uses them in real life. Yes, yes... the argument is ''the general background" one, but IMO there's far too much of that and far too little of anything useful.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

As things stand now, you usually don't get any appreciation for the culture from the school literature lessons. Quite the contrary.

...
.

One thing to keep in mind is that school experiences can be quite different from country to country (and really from school to school within a country).

I think over the last 20 or so years, perhaps more, in the US, the common culture thing has been de-emphasized in school as classics have fallen out of favor with the teaching establishment. Of course, over the same time period, actually teaching students to read, do math and actual history has fallen out of favor as well.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by kandwo

In my experience, people who blame their school for putting them off classics for life are people who never would read them anyway.

There are so many books out there that hy would you keep trying to find a classic you like when you didn't like the ones you've read? Just go find a genre you do like.

What I find strange about your argument is school making someone dislike Shakespeare. I actively disliked Romeo and Juliet and didn't like our class discussions about Hamlet. Did that ruin Shakespeare for me? No. Why would it? He's written a range of completely different plays in a variety genres and the fact that I dislike Romeo and Juliet doesn't mean that I won't like Henry V. And even if I dislike reading his plays, I might enjoy watching them.[/quote]

The problem is that Shakespeare was meant to be seen and not read. You might find you like Hamlet if you saw it performed. I've seen movie adaptations of classic books that I would not like to read. Sometimes, the problem is the style of writing.

I've read very little Shakespeare, but that's because I'm not that interested. I want to read him some day, just not now. And I'm under no illusion that my bad experiences in school spoiled him for me.

Furthermore, there are several books that I have found boring when first trying to read them, and yet, when returning to them at a later stage in my life, have loved.

I hated, absolutely loathed Dickens in school. Still I plan to start re-reading his works (yes, even the ones that school spoiled for me).

Are people really that brittle? One bad experience and nevermore! Listening to some people reading a boring classic in school means that a person who otherwise would be an avid reader and maybe the next Shakespeare will now be put off for life!

And finally, as for your last point - isn't one of the main points with reading developing empathy and learning about other viewpoints? If you're only going to read about stuff "relevant to you" - how are you going to develop? Don't you find it useful to explore how people function in other conditions, radically different to your own? To find out what unites us as humans and what sets us apart?

But, some of these other viewpoints aren't relevant to anything today. Sure you can read about different viewpoints, but not viewpoints that are obsolete. The problem also is in the way some of these books were written back then. If schools read books that were relevant to current times and using current language, then they might be more accepted.

[Quoth]

I find the only way to read a play is to read it out loud doing the voices. But also I can hardly read poetry. I need to read it out, or better still hear someone else or a recording of me.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Quoth

But also I can hardly read poetry. I need to read it out, or better still hear someone else or a recording of me.

I’ll extrapolate from this to my own experience of poetry, which is that I need to slow down. The inclination to bang through it at my ordinary reading speed has to be resisted; each line needs to be examined in itself and in the context of the poem. Reading it out loud, or hearing it read, would of necessity do this.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by issybird

I’m sure it differs from district to district, but overall I don’t think individual teachers have much control over the curriculum at the K to 12 level.

I must give a rousing second to the sub-par quality of most “relevant” YA novels that I’ve seen. Ekbell’s daughters are clearly young women of taste and discernment. Far better to teach books that have lasted, than those that are written to expose an issue.

I think if we want kids to read classics, parents have to taks an interest and help them find ones that they may be interested in that would not have all the misty of school to go along with them. I know it depends on the books and the teachers. But some of the books were awful and no teacher can fix that. Shakespeare was awful to read and most teachers don't teach it well.

I was an avid reader thanks to my mother. Not everything in school that I read was awful. But most books were. For example, I really disliked The Canterbury Tales. But Hyperion which was based it was so much better.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by kandwo

I don't think one should expect school to instill some sort of love of reading in kids. One can discover that on one's own. The point of reading classics is to have a common cultural framework and a general appreciation for the culture and history that one is surrounded by.

The problem (as I see it) is that if school is where you get the books you read and you really dislike them, then you may not find a passion for reading. If your parents do not help you with reading then you may not end up wanting/liking to read. My mother read and got me into reading. School, didn't do a thing.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem (as I see it) is that if school is where you get the books you read and you really dislike them, then you may not find a passion for reading. If your parents do not help you with reading then you may not end up wanting/liking to read. My mother read and got me into reading. School, didn't do a thing.

In my experience, it's not much to do with parents either. My parents didn't read, but at least they bought lots of books (which were very cheap in the Soviet Union). They bought lots of books for children as well. And my mother read to me when I was very little (I don't remember it myself). I was an avid reader since I was three or four and didn't need any encouraging from my parents to read. I just read everything I could get my hands on. Starting with children's books, of course. But I already read adult books as well by the time I started school.

Now my sister and my nieces grew up in the same circumstances. Lots of books at home and parents reading to them. But they didn't become readers. My sister read when she was a teenager, but lost interest in her twenties and never regained it. My nieces have never read for pleasure at all. So I think it's an inborn trait to an extent.