Content Reading...It seems that all this emphasis on reading has created a sense that reading is an end unto itself, as if the act of reading is a cure-all for struggling readers. The idea even sounds logical: The more that struggling readers read, the better readers they will become. They might even grow to like reading, to be less reluctant. For the first time in my life as an educator, I’m suggesting that this may not be true in all cases.
I want to be careful here. I have spent much of the past year blogging about the need to read more in all classes. I have gone on to suggest that reading more will breed better readers, build their vocabularies and improve their fluency. To be sure, studies show that struggling readers struggle because they haven’t read enough and the best remedy is to have them read more.
In fact, the whole notion of immersion literacy calls for kids to be reading a lot, everyday, in all classes. Still, I feel like I must temper this solution in light of what I’ve seen in some classrooms and in response to an excellent essay that I just read by C.S. Lewis. This summer, I read a superb collection of essays that deals with a number of issues related to spirituality, intelligence, power and culture. The ones by C.S. Lewis are smartly written and deftly reasoned. They are the types of essays that make you question what you know, what you believe and why you believe it.
Though most of his essays deal with faith, he often writes about the broader issues of belief and culture. In his essay entitled Lilies That Fester, Lewis covers a lot of ground (too much to discuss in one blog post) and I’m not sure that I will do justice to comment on his thinking for fear that I might have missed the point. Still, in the very least, he makes the case that doing religion (like going to church) is different than being religious (like reading your Bible and leading a Godly life). He adds that doing culture (visiting a museum to learn more about art) is different than being cultural (visiting a museum because you enjoy art). To be sure, this is a chicken-and-egg debate that is difficult to reconcile.
Let me put it this way: Does one become cultured by first visiting the museum and later learning to appreciate what the museumholds? Or does one have to first be cultured (to appreciate art, for example) to enter the museum in the first place? More important to this discussion is this question: Does visiting the museum over and over help someone to become cultured? If so, what if I drag someone kicking and screaming into the museum every weekend for six months? Would a more cultured person emerge on the other end?
Of course, I ask these questions because (in schools) the same can be asked about reading. We all agree that reading more will help students become more learned. But what if we drag struggling readers (or reluctant readers) into the books day after day? What if we make them read, even if every part of their being is set against it? In truth, the reading that I see in many classrooms isn’t far removed from that. Worse than that, the idea of force-feeding books to kids is really much of what we hear preached at professional trainings and conferences. Read more, read more, read more. While I cannot argue that struggling readers should read less, I do want to caution that struggling readers (in fact, all readers) should be asked to read more of what they want to read and when they want to read it.
To put this all another way, allow me to be more pointed in my comments. I’m beginning to question reading as an assignment. Let me use my son as an example. He is 7 years old and an excellent reader. He certainly likes to read. Still, he hates doing his reading homework. Why? Because it is assigned and graded. In that setting, at the dining room table, he is no longer reading for enjoyment. He is reading for fear that he might get in trouble if he doesn’t.
It seems like we have pushed kids to read so much and held them accountable for their reading to such a degree that our efforts sometimes make reading in school sound more like a threat and less like a promise. Allow me to loosely quote from Roland Barth’s excellent book Learning By Heart. We have turned our message from “Read or you will hurt yourself” into “Read or we will hurt you.”
I’m not pointing this out because I don’t think we should assign reading anymore. I’m not even suggesting that we read less (God, forbid). I’m just wondering aloud if there might be an alternative approach to all the higher-pressure reading assignments that make reading sound like work or something that people only do in school.
Even if we are successful in reading more and more in the content classrooms, all this progress will be for naught if we end up frustrating kids and having them view reading as nothing but a bore. Though reading something (like a textbook) that is necessary but boring is something that comes with life, so is teaching kids that reading is also something that is pleasurable.
The answer, of course, is easy. Have students read more things that they enjoy and give them time to read when no assignment is in store. Our students will be better readers as a result and they will leave us with a greater appreciation for the joy of reading. Somewhere along the way we have made reading a subject and, alas, the joy has been lost. Here’s how C.S. Lewis puts it: “Those who read poetry to improve their minds will never improve their minds by reading poetry. For the true enjoyments must be spontaneous and compulsive and look to no remoter end. The muses will submit to no marriage of convenience.”
I say we have a lot to learn from the muses.
