Choice

[lillibet]

There's an article in the New York Times talking about some English teachers trying to give their students more choice in terms of what they read.

Reading was always very easy for me, but I was the top student in my school, so I don't think I'm much of a metric. Looking back at what we read, it does feel as though a lot of it was poorly chosen and too mature for us. I mean, I think Crime and Punishment is a great book, but it was a very hard read at 16.

As I think I've mentioned, my school did a cool thing where they'd pick a theme with four books to it (alienation, death of innocence, etc.), divide the class into teams to read and present on the books, so we got a significant exposure to more books than we could have covered doing them one at a time.

One of the things this article touches on, but doesn't have any answers for is: what is the goal? Perhaps the answer is to give kids much more choice in earlier grades, to develop their love of reading and then switch in later years to either direct assignment or narrowing the field of choice in order to develop the shared cultural literacy.

I'm curious what other people think about this.

Comments

[rmd.livejournal.com]

in some ways, it's a continuation of educators expanding beyond THE CANON[tm], which is good. on the other hand, "twilight"?

i like your suggestion of a goal, there - start off with whatever fun stuff [FIRST HIT'S FREE, KID] both to get them reading and to get them used to thinking about what they're reading, and then funnel them towards some things that are closer to the canon.

[muffyjo]

I like the idea. I think that especially at around 16, you really want more of a voice in your world and that it gives you an opportunity to actively choose to be part of your environment. Hopefully, it would also keep you engaged in that same fashion, having gotten your buy in, you will actually participate in the classes and encourage active participation by your peers. It's so easy at 16 to just "check out" and sit on the sidelines dissing everything.

As for books that are hard, I remember Dante's Inferno and an intense almost line by line reading of it and discussion by the class at 17. I thought Catcher in the Rye, when I was 13, was a really great book but it's also a fairly mature subject. Then again, I was reading anything and everything I could get my hands on. I read Flowers in the Attic that same year and probably shouldn't have. I can't remember when I read Crime and Punishment as I did it over a summer and they sort of blur together.

Dunno, I think any topic is a fair one if the audience is interested and over 13 as long as you have a mature and responsible adult able to handle the tough questions kindly and honestly.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Looking back, I can't believe our generation got away with reading things like Flowers In The Attic in our tweens and teens. I'm no prude, but I wouldn't let someone under 17 or so read V.C. Andrews.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

My brother taught remedial reading to middle schoolers for a while. These kids were mostly very poor, many were not native English speakers, etc. He had a two-hour block with them, and every class started with 30 minutes of "free reading." He completely did not care what they read, as long as they read *something*. Comic books, ghost stories, Sweet Valley High, whatever. Not all the kids caught the reading bug, but it did help when they had to go through more difficult material.

[gmpe.livejournal.com]

I think you can have both. Learning "the canon" is really important to being considered "educated" in society. At young ages, a lot of schools seem to do X minutes of reading per night, with no restriction on what. This makes sense. It also lets kids who are poor readers not feel behind because they didn't read 75 pages and only made it through 18, and it teaches kids to find things they want to read. In high school, most of our reading was all of the class reading the same thing at once. We did have major projects, however, comparing works by the same author, the works of one poet, etc., and we got to pick those. Other places make kids keep journals and reading journals on whatever they read. All of these also make sense as a way to get kids to read things they want, while also keeping the communal learning of the same thing in place. You really can't have a discussion on Hamlet if only half the room has ever opened it. (Yeah, maybe they all just read the Cliff notes, anyway. That's a different problem.)

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

i think that "the canon" is part of what's silly about society, and part of what's silly about "being considered" to have an education.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

i think the goal of teaching reading should be to get people to read. not to read "to kill a mockingbird" in the eighth grade (face it, that book is NOT going out of print) but just to read.

i read a lot, always have. i learned to choose books for myself at the library, but i don't think most schools have "library" as a class anymore (they did when i was at yeshiva). so doing that in english class seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do (i.e. i see it as a transportation of the library-class curriculum, not as a totally breakthrough idea, which may make it easier for me to take than people with other educational backgrounds).

when people read on the t, some do read shakespeare, and others read novels i'd consider trash, and i read stuff many other people would consider trash. it's our choice. i think teaching kids that they *have* a choice is vital.

i don't think kids will miss the messages or themes or whatever if not instructed to look for them. the original audiences for shakespeare managed to get what they were about without being prodded too much by teachers, and imho if they miss something, who truly cares? (my own reading of "romeo and juliet" is, shall we say, not par for the course.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/urban_faerie_/]

I think this is a great idea. Put a lot of trust in students that age and they will almost always rise to the occasion and do more than you expected them to. Having personal ownership over their own education is huge for them. That person in the article who said "no kid is going to pick up Moby Dick" really has no respect for young people. As a kid I frequently pulled out books to read that the adults in my life told me were beyond my skill level, I was stubborn and didn't listen to them and as a result, I became much more of a reader than if I was constantly reading the generic stuff provided for me.

There are many ways to guide the student selection of books so that they all don't just read Twilight. Have conversations about genre and reading levels and require students to choose from several genres over the school year. Have students evaluate where they are with their reading skills and choose something more challenging when they feel ready to. Obviously, this can't be the only method of assessment or the only way literature is chosen, but it is an excellent way. When children are personally invested in material they choose for themselves they will go further with it than if they are just handed a book and told why they should think it is important.

For the record though, I think every kid should read To Kill A Mockingbird at some point before high school!

[roozle.livejournal.com]

I think To Kill A Mockingbird is an excellent, excellent book, and I don't have any problem with thinking that everyone should read it, but why "before high school"? There are so many pieces of literature that can be ruined or trivialized by reading them before you're ready for them.

I wrote a post a while back about my own experiences with the (several) times I read the book.

Wheel keeps turning

[kellyjmf.livejournal.com]

I think these things go in waves. In high school, I had a few English classes where the teacher gave us choices of what to read as a class. In particular, I remember choosing Frankenstein and 1984 (I was class of '84). While I think we got a lot out of it and were engaged by our choices, I also missed out on the having the background of the canon. There were many books that everyone else had read and could see the themes in other works, but I was missing the point of reference. In my thirties I made an effort to catch up and great some of the classics I was missing.

Moby Dick was a great read. A Stephen Fry novel sent me to the pages of The Count of Monte Cristo. I am too practical and pragmatic for Wuthering Heights. Lord of the Flies was clearly the genesis for a lot of the science fiction I read. I enjoyed most of the Jane Austen I read after seeing Emma Thompson's version. I recently tried to read Mansfield Park but despaired of it every reaching the action so I put it down. And them my Mom loaned me the Twilight series, so it's back to mental candy.

Re: Wheel keeps turning

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Mansfield Park is rather slow going at the start and the heroine is a bit of a wet noodle. She was much more popular in Austen's day, but our ideas of how women should be have changed a lot since then.

[dpolicar]

I don't think anything too worldshattering here.

There are several different goals one can have in teaching reading. To name a few:

• Cultivating the habit of reading, and of exercising the associated skills.
  Extending your students' literary range beyond what they would choose to read on their own.
  
• Getting your students familiar with a shared body of work.
  
• Encouraging your students to think explicitly and critically about ways to write -- what is the author doing here, why is s/he doing that, what effect does it have on you, what's something else s/he could do instead and what effect would that have, etc. -- is a fourth.

There are others.

But it all hinges on that first goal. If someone remains functionally illiterate, the rest of this stuff simply won't happen.

I've got some pretty sophisticated reading skills... in English. And I speak fluent Spanish. But I would never pick up, say, Don Quixote... precisely because I don't have reading fluency in Spanish. I have to struggle with it. I can read day-to-day stuff, but Cervantes just isn't worth it to me.

If that were the level of fluency I had with reading in English, it would be the same situation. Shakespeare just wouldn't be worth it.

And if that were the level of fluency I had with reading in any language, I would never have picked up the sophisticated reading skills in the first place, and I'm not sure any book would be worth it.

I think a teacher's role is roughly like that of a physical therapist/trainer, here: evaluate your student, figure out where they are, decide what's an appropriate level of difficulty for them to be working at, provide a framework for them to select goals, and actively encourage them to do the work you think will best help them achieve those goals.

So if we're talking about a student whose basic reading skills haven't been exercised sufficiently, or who has cognitive disabilities that make reading more challenging, then sure, work with them on whatever they enjoy. You start from where you are, because starting from anywhere else leads to failure.

But if we're talking about a student who already reads for pleasure, then by all means work with them on the canon. Including the stuff they don't necessarily find enjoyable to read, if you can find a way to make that valuable. (And if you can't, consider another line of work.)

[scholargipsy.livejournal.com]

I find these comments interesting for obvious professional reasons. I have a slightly different take on this issue from many folks' and I suspect my English classroom teaching experience is the reason.

I think the canon has some value, even if we argue about what should be in it; without a shared body of referents for interpersonal and artistic dialogue, how can we talk to each other? Consequently, I think teachers have not only the right but the responsibility to select some "core" works for students to read. Call me conservative, but every English-fluent person should read at least a few Shakespeare plays (to pick one "gimme" example).

I do think it's good for students to have ownership of their reading choices to some degree, however, and like reading workshop approaches that carve out a block of time and space for kids to read what they like without judgment. (I like to tell my classes that I love superhero comic books even if [or especially because] they're formulaic and soothing.) I just don't think an English curriculum predicated solely on that philosophy would do everything it needs to.

There are books I adore, books that are an essential part of me now, that I am quite sure I never would have read if a teacher hadn't mandated them. Yes, I resisted sometimes, and yes, a lot of stuff didn't stick. Teachers need to insist students give authors a fair shake, but not that they love or even like those authors' work (I still despise Hemingway; probably always will). But the exposure is still valuable, as is the opportunity to discuss and debate what the canon is, or should be, and why.

what is the goal?

[wellstar.livejournal.com]

I've not managed to organize my thoughts coherently to really respond to this post/article (I also found it interesting and do have one thought on my own experience below) but recently had reason to look at various national education standards.

Here are the Language Arts Standards for English developed by the National Council of Teachers of English.

This site (which cites the site above) provides category names for each of these standards, which I found useful in my interpretation of the actual vision.

I think these are an interesting approach to your question "what is the goal?" from a purely academic standpoint.

More personally, my American lit class in high school had what I thought was a good policy. We had a few books that everyone in the class read, and a few periods where we chose from a list of suggestions (or had to present our case to the teacher to read something not on the list). Of course, we were, like you, highly motivated and generally well-performing students. Plus it was a joint class with AP American History, which spent a good deal of time on cross-curriculum connections.