Just Read!
I've noticed some comments appearing on some of my old blogs lately. Apparently some of you have gone back through the archives in search of...what? Wisdom? Inspirtation? Yikes!
One thing I like about blogs is that they allow you to look back on what you were thinking and feeling at a given point in time, which also allows you to reflect on how you have changed...which in my view is part of learning. In scientific terms, you offer a hypothesis, test it, and revise it based on what you learn during the test. In blog terms, you write what you think, you go out into the world to experience Life, and then you revise your thinking based on your experiences.
Wondering how my blog voice has changed over the past three years, I looked back. In some ways I am as jaded and cynical as ever, but one thing I noticed, a theme that runs through all my teaching frustrations, is how disappointed I am in a culture that does not value reading. It's a knife in the teacher's heart! And it is something I have always been bothered by. The first suggestions of it appeared in a blog called "End of Term Blues," in which I expressed frustrations about parents who didn't seem to support reading requirements or accountability for their kids. Then, at the end of a blog called "The Countdown is On...," I wrote this: "Any book can be engaging and entertaining, but it is what the reader brings to it that makes it so. The same can be said of Life." I still agree with that, but I also know that we live in a culture that does not encourage people to bring anything. We, as a society, aren't so much concerned with what we can do as with what can be done for us. In October of 2005, after a very disturbing parent-teacher conference in which a mother of one of my students told me boldly that independent reading should not be required at all, I wrote about the Accelerated Reader program and asked what would work better. This year I implemented a new reading requirement that allowed students to earn reading points without using AR; I did this hoping to get away from the complaining and back to the simple precept that Reading is Important! It shouldn't have to always be an assignment! Educated people read! That's why, a couple months later, I scolded the students who always whine about reading: "It's So Boring!" Last spring, while reading Fahrenheit 451 with my classes, I almost became despondent over such complaints. Even books which had once been class favorites, short books with no big words in them and plenty of action, fell under the critical attacks of students so numbed by the spin of modern culture and technology that I was driven to write a series of blogs addressing my concerns: "Beatty's Lecture," "We have met the enemy...*," "Wake Up, Mildred!" (originally written in 1999, which illustrates that this is not a new concern for me), "Why Read?" (an assignment I now give my students every year in hopes of making them find some value in what appears to be a dying art), and "Patience, Iago, Patience," in which I touched on some of the cultural and technological reasons that so much of the society doesn't read. Just when I think I have said it all, just when I think I have a handle on what the problem is, new aspects of it emerge, and I end up writing about it again. It's maddening!
With all these frustrations floating around in my brain, I asked this class to take a survey about their own reading habits. I was hoping to present a proposal to the school's community council in which we might address the fact that reading isn't just the job of English teachers. It is everyone's job...and it shouldn't have to feel like a job. Reading is a reward, but in this culture we have made it a punishment. It is now something that students feel they should be rewarded for. Twenty years ago, a "read-a-thon" during the school day was a reward for some other act of positive behavior (like raising money in a fundraiser or maintaining good citizenship). Now, in order to get students to tolerate a read-a-thon, we have to promise them candy and treats; it has to be a party to distract them from the painful drudgery of reading. It's sad and wrong, and I wanted our community to address it using your ideas as a springboard for the discussion. We've got to get reading back into the family domain and quit thinking about it as something to be done only at school. Well, I never got a chance to make that presentation to the community council because other "more pressing" issues came up, and we have only a limited amount of time. But because I have all this saved in blogs and discussion boards, I can come back to it. Because we continue to read and write, we are always armed against those who would rather not.
With that in mind, here are some general trends and ironies I have noticed about reading in modern America:
1) Parents want their kids to know how to read, but they don't want to have to teach them (or even support those of us who do). This generalization is not true of most people who will bother to read this, but it is widely accepted by much of the culture these days that schools are solely responsible for all aspects of students' reading development. I think parents who do not read to, with, or around their children are negligent. No wonder kids don't enjoy reading anymore! How could they when they never see anyone at home read for enjoyment? In fact, for many families, the word fun has been redefined (like Captain Beatty suggested) to include only fast-paced activities that do not require any reflection or mental effort. At the secondary level, schools need kids to know how to read well not so that they can be entertained, but so they can learn. It's not often "fun" to read a science book, but it is necessary! Yet I get a handful of e-mails and phone calls every year from upset parents who accuse me of "taking all the fun out of reading" because I require students to read novels -- books that were written to entertain, published as entertainment, and often sold millions of copies because people were entertained by them! And I'm taking the fun out of reading?
2) There is a split between people who read and people who don't, and it's getting wider every year. All of you were likely read to as children. You probably don't even remember learning to read, as it was never an obstacle but rather something much desired. Every year, however, fewer and fewer people willingly read. There is too much else to do, so many other ways of attaining instant (though often mindless) gratification. It's been called "the dumbing down" of the culture, and I think that's a good name for it. But there is an element of this cultural movement that is often ignored: At the other end (the top) of the reading spectrum, there are a small handful of students who are reading better than ever and who enjoy the challenge of reading a "difficult" book. Part of the reason I keep doing this is to interact with those people as often as possible. I just worry that all the burdens of maintaining a civilized culture will fall upon this shrinking handful of brilliant people. At some point, we'll be thrown irretrievably out of balance if we don't revise our cultural opinions on reading.
3) In the fiftieth-anniversary edition of Fahrenheit 451, there is an interview with Ray Bradbury in which he says this: "The main problem [in America today] is education not politics. The teachers of our country have to be taught to start teaching reading and writing in kindergarten and first grade. By the time children go to second grade, they should know how to read and write completely, as was the case with other generations. I was in the first grade in 1926, and my teachers were all poor: they made eight hundred dollars a year but they taught reading and writing completely by the end of the first grade. The government has nothing to do with that. The education system needs to be corrected." While Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite writers of all time, and I do agree that there are plenty of things about education that need to be fixed, this statement shows how naive he is when it comes to modern education. It is amazingly ironic that a fellow who wrote a book that illustrated the importance of reading is so clueless when it comes to the reading crisis in America today. Education is politics! The people who are deciding what is taught in schools are no longer teachers; they are politicians! Does the phrase "No Child Left Behind" ring a bell? That came from the federal government, and the only thing it has made American children better at is taking multiple-choice tests. Kindergarten and first-grade teachers are the experts in teaching reading. They are better at it than they have ever been because they have so many resources and so much research to work from. The reason kids can't "read completely" by the end of the first grade nowadays is because the entire responsibility for that skill is dumped on those overworked teachers; no one, including Bradbury, seems to believe that parents and families have any role in teaching kids to read. How can a teacher who is required (by laws generated by politicians) to cover hundreds of concepts besides reading also be held responsible for "complete" literacy? Did NCLB exist when Bradbury was in school? Did his teachers have the government looking over their shoulders to make sure they were doing it right? (These are rhetorical questions...and the answer to both of them is no.) Yes, Uncle Ray, the education system needs to be corrected, but shame on you for blaming teachers when the real problem is with parents and a techno-culture that you knew was on the horizon! Shame on you!
In the same interview, in answer to a question about what teachers and parents could do to help kids today appreciate the written word in a culture dominated by the visual, Bradbury replies: "Hand them a book, that's all...Give one of my books to a twelve-year old boy who doesn't like to read, and that boy will fall in love and start to read." Really? That's what I have been doing for the past 18 years, and just handing out books hasn't worked so well. Sure it's a romantic idea to believe that fine literature is going to captivate young readers, and it is sometimes true, but most often you find that a twelve-year old boy is going to set the book aside in favor of watching TV, playing video games, going to the movies (Why read the book if there is a movie, right?), or mindlessly surfing the Internet looking for someone who is equally uninterested in reading; there is no shortage of such. Because the culture has changed, the methods that may have worked for Bradbury's teachers in 1926 don't work anymore, and he fails to recognize that -- yet another amazing irony from a man who so clearly envisioned the future in one of his finest books. For the vast majority of kids today, the only way to get them to read is to give them some extrinsic incentive to do so: reading points, grades, candy, or special recoginition. This is a responsibility most parents have abandoned, and because the schools are the direct result of politics, it has fallen to teachers alone. Therefore, for most kids, reading has become just like all the other homework: a tedious chore. Nowadays reading is viewed as the last of all possible options -- you read when the MySpace account is frozen and the IM software is on the fritz. You read when you are out of cell phone minutes and can't send any more text messages. You read after the lawn is mowed, the chores are finished, the other undesirable jobs are no longer an excuse not to. Or, like most people today, you just don't read. I'm just guessing here, but I'll bet that the vast majority of Ray Bradbury books sold today are not purchased by twelve-year old boys. They are purchased by teachers like me, who are spending thousands of school (and personal) dollars on classroom sets of novels in hopes of reminding students that reading (and thinking!) in the modern world are not only important but also fun. I think Bradbury, by criticizing teachers, is biting the hand that feeds him.
But I'm still not done with Bradbury! In Fahrenheit 451, his character Guy Montag is told time and again that we once had all the books we needed, but the world still ended up in a mess. Why? People quit reading them on their own! They didn't need the firemen. The culture picked them up, entertained them, swept them along, kept them frantically busy all the time, and people just didn't care to read anymore. Bradbury predicted all this more than 50 years ago! Why does he believe that a modern 12-year old is going to fall in love with reading just because I hand him a book? Oh, sweet irony!
4) People no longer form opinions; they just accept someone else's as their own. Sadly, they usually just accept the opinions of those who talk loudest...like Rush Limbaugh. Why read if you can listen to him? Why check his facts? He's trustworthy, right? And, anyway, I'm busy.
5) Most students no longer eagerly try to answer questions or participate in discussions. They wait to be told the correct answers so they can write them on their tests and worksheets. Sometimes they cheat, but the means justify the ends. A student I like very much told me so at the end of last term, and it made me sad. I believe this attitude is a product of a culture of non-readers.
In conclusion, I believe that to read is to care. To write well is to care. To make a difference is to care. But there is no extrinsic reward for caring anymore. You seldom get paid to do it. AND I JUST WANT YOU TO CARE! Caring is its own reward, and it will make your life so much richer than any e-mail, text message, TV show, or video game.
For most of you, the acronym CTR has a certain religious significance. Here's my equally heartfelt version:
Care! Think! Read!
One thing I like about blogs is that they allow you to look back on what you were thinking and feeling at a given point in time, which also allows you to reflect on how you have changed...which in my view is part of learning. In scientific terms, you offer a hypothesis, test it, and revise it based on what you learn during the test. In blog terms, you write what you think, you go out into the world to experience Life, and then you revise your thinking based on your experiences.
Wondering how my blog voice has changed over the past three years, I looked back. In some ways I am as jaded and cynical as ever, but one thing I noticed, a theme that runs through all my teaching frustrations, is how disappointed I am in a culture that does not value reading. It's a knife in the teacher's heart! And it is something I have always been bothered by. The first suggestions of it appeared in a blog called "End of Term Blues," in which I expressed frustrations about parents who didn't seem to support reading requirements or accountability for their kids. Then, at the end of a blog called "The Countdown is On...," I wrote this: "Any book can be engaging and entertaining, but it is what the reader brings to it that makes it so. The same can be said of Life." I still agree with that, but I also know that we live in a culture that does not encourage people to bring anything. We, as a society, aren't so much concerned with what we can do as with what can be done for us. In October of 2005, after a very disturbing parent-teacher conference in which a mother of one of my students told me boldly that independent reading should not be required at all, I wrote about the Accelerated Reader program and asked what would work better. This year I implemented a new reading requirement that allowed students to earn reading points without using AR; I did this hoping to get away from the complaining and back to the simple precept that Reading is Important! It shouldn't have to always be an assignment! Educated people read! That's why, a couple months later, I scolded the students who always whine about reading: "It's So Boring!" Last spring, while reading Fahrenheit 451 with my classes, I almost became despondent over such complaints. Even books which had once been class favorites, short books with no big words in them and plenty of action, fell under the critical attacks of students so numbed by the spin of modern culture and technology that I was driven to write a series of blogs addressing my concerns: "Beatty's Lecture," "We have met the enemy...*," "Wake Up, Mildred!" (originally written in 1999, which illustrates that this is not a new concern for me), "Why Read?" (an assignment I now give my students every year in hopes of making them find some value in what appears to be a dying art), and "Patience, Iago, Patience," in which I touched on some of the cultural and technological reasons that so much of the society doesn't read. Just when I think I have said it all, just when I think I have a handle on what the problem is, new aspects of it emerge, and I end up writing about it again. It's maddening!
With all these frustrations floating around in my brain, I asked this class to take a survey about their own reading habits. I was hoping to present a proposal to the school's community council in which we might address the fact that reading isn't just the job of English teachers. It is everyone's job...and it shouldn't have to feel like a job. Reading is a reward, but in this culture we have made it a punishment. It is now something that students feel they should be rewarded for. Twenty years ago, a "read-a-thon" during the school day was a reward for some other act of positive behavior (like raising money in a fundraiser or maintaining good citizenship). Now, in order to get students to tolerate a read-a-thon, we have to promise them candy and treats; it has to be a party to distract them from the painful drudgery of reading. It's sad and wrong, and I wanted our community to address it using your ideas as a springboard for the discussion. We've got to get reading back into the family domain and quit thinking about it as something to be done only at school. Well, I never got a chance to make that presentation to the community council because other "more pressing" issues came up, and we have only a limited amount of time. But because I have all this saved in blogs and discussion boards, I can come back to it. Because we continue to read and write, we are always armed against those who would rather not.
With that in mind, here are some general trends and ironies I have noticed about reading in modern America:
1) Parents want their kids to know how to read, but they don't want to have to teach them (or even support those of us who do). This generalization is not true of most people who will bother to read this, but it is widely accepted by much of the culture these days that schools are solely responsible for all aspects of students' reading development. I think parents who do not read to, with, or around their children are negligent. No wonder kids don't enjoy reading anymore! How could they when they never see anyone at home read for enjoyment? In fact, for many families, the word fun has been redefined (like Captain Beatty suggested) to include only fast-paced activities that do not require any reflection or mental effort. At the secondary level, schools need kids to know how to read well not so that they can be entertained, but so they can learn. It's not often "fun" to read a science book, but it is necessary! Yet I get a handful of e-mails and phone calls every year from upset parents who accuse me of "taking all the fun out of reading" because I require students to read novels -- books that were written to entertain, published as entertainment, and often sold millions of copies because people were entertained by them! And I'm taking the fun out of reading?
2) There is a split between people who read and people who don't, and it's getting wider every year. All of you were likely read to as children. You probably don't even remember learning to read, as it was never an obstacle but rather something much desired. Every year, however, fewer and fewer people willingly read. There is too much else to do, so many other ways of attaining instant (though often mindless) gratification. It's been called "the dumbing down" of the culture, and I think that's a good name for it. But there is an element of this cultural movement that is often ignored: At the other end (the top) of the reading spectrum, there are a small handful of students who are reading better than ever and who enjoy the challenge of reading a "difficult" book. Part of the reason I keep doing this is to interact with those people as often as possible. I just worry that all the burdens of maintaining a civilized culture will fall upon this shrinking handful of brilliant people. At some point, we'll be thrown irretrievably out of balance if we don't revise our cultural opinions on reading.
3) In the fiftieth-anniversary edition of Fahrenheit 451, there is an interview with Ray Bradbury in which he says this: "The main problem [in America today] is education not politics. The teachers of our country have to be taught to start teaching reading and writing in kindergarten and first grade. By the time children go to second grade, they should know how to read and write completely, as was the case with other generations. I was in the first grade in 1926, and my teachers were all poor: they made eight hundred dollars a year but they taught reading and writing completely by the end of the first grade. The government has nothing to do with that. The education system needs to be corrected." While Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite writers of all time, and I do agree that there are plenty of things about education that need to be fixed, this statement shows how naive he is when it comes to modern education. It is amazingly ironic that a fellow who wrote a book that illustrated the importance of reading is so clueless when it comes to the reading crisis in America today. Education is politics! The people who are deciding what is taught in schools are no longer teachers; they are politicians! Does the phrase "No Child Left Behind" ring a bell? That came from the federal government, and the only thing it has made American children better at is taking multiple-choice tests. Kindergarten and first-grade teachers are the experts in teaching reading. They are better at it than they have ever been because they have so many resources and so much research to work from. The reason kids can't "read completely" by the end of the first grade nowadays is because the entire responsibility for that skill is dumped on those overworked teachers; no one, including Bradbury, seems to believe that parents and families have any role in teaching kids to read. How can a teacher who is required (by laws generated by politicians) to cover hundreds of concepts besides reading also be held responsible for "complete" literacy? Did NCLB exist when Bradbury was in school? Did his teachers have the government looking over their shoulders to make sure they were doing it right? (These are rhetorical questions...and the answer to both of them is no.) Yes, Uncle Ray, the education system needs to be corrected, but shame on you for blaming teachers when the real problem is with parents and a techno-culture that you knew was on the horizon! Shame on you!
In the same interview, in answer to a question about what teachers and parents could do to help kids today appreciate the written word in a culture dominated by the visual, Bradbury replies: "Hand them a book, that's all...Give one of my books to a twelve-year old boy who doesn't like to read, and that boy will fall in love and start to read." Really? That's what I have been doing for the past 18 years, and just handing out books hasn't worked so well. Sure it's a romantic idea to believe that fine literature is going to captivate young readers, and it is sometimes true, but most often you find that a twelve-year old boy is going to set the book aside in favor of watching TV, playing video games, going to the movies (Why read the book if there is a movie, right?), or mindlessly surfing the Internet looking for someone who is equally uninterested in reading; there is no shortage of such. Because the culture has changed, the methods that may have worked for Bradbury's teachers in 1926 don't work anymore, and he fails to recognize that -- yet another amazing irony from a man who so clearly envisioned the future in one of his finest books. For the vast majority of kids today, the only way to get them to read is to give them some extrinsic incentive to do so: reading points, grades, candy, or special recoginition. This is a responsibility most parents have abandoned, and because the schools are the direct result of politics, it has fallen to teachers alone. Therefore, for most kids, reading has become just like all the other homework: a tedious chore. Nowadays reading is viewed as the last of all possible options -- you read when the MySpace account is frozen and the IM software is on the fritz. You read when you are out of cell phone minutes and can't send any more text messages. You read after the lawn is mowed, the chores are finished, the other undesirable jobs are no longer an excuse not to. Or, like most people today, you just don't read. I'm just guessing here, but I'll bet that the vast majority of Ray Bradbury books sold today are not purchased by twelve-year old boys. They are purchased by teachers like me, who are spending thousands of school (and personal) dollars on classroom sets of novels in hopes of reminding students that reading (and thinking!) in the modern world are not only important but also fun. I think Bradbury, by criticizing teachers, is biting the hand that feeds him.
But I'm still not done with Bradbury! In Fahrenheit 451, his character Guy Montag is told time and again that we once had all the books we needed, but the world still ended up in a mess. Why? People quit reading them on their own! They didn't need the firemen. The culture picked them up, entertained them, swept them along, kept them frantically busy all the time, and people just didn't care to read anymore. Bradbury predicted all this more than 50 years ago! Why does he believe that a modern 12-year old is going to fall in love with reading just because I hand him a book? Oh, sweet irony!
4) People no longer form opinions; they just accept someone else's as their own. Sadly, they usually just accept the opinions of those who talk loudest...like Rush Limbaugh. Why read if you can listen to him? Why check his facts? He's trustworthy, right? And, anyway, I'm busy.
5) Most students no longer eagerly try to answer questions or participate in discussions. They wait to be told the correct answers so they can write them on their tests and worksheets. Sometimes they cheat, but the means justify the ends. A student I like very much told me so at the end of last term, and it made me sad. I believe this attitude is a product of a culture of non-readers.
In conclusion, I believe that to read is to care. To write well is to care. To make a difference is to care. But there is no extrinsic reward for caring anymore. You seldom get paid to do it. AND I JUST WANT YOU TO CARE! Caring is its own reward, and it will make your life so much richer than any e-mail, text message, TV show, or video game.
For most of you, the acronym CTR has a certain religious significance. Here's my equally heartfelt version:
Care! Think! Read!
posted by MRT at 12:48 PM
4 Comments:
Mr. T! You finally posted the results up!
I agree that not enough people read nowadays and when I read this blog a certain phrase came to mind-"give man a fish and he's full for a day-teach him how to fish and he's full forever." Only in this case the phrase would undergo a little variation and look like this- "give man a movie and he's entertained for a hour-teach him to read and he's entertained forever."
If only the latter were true! But sadly enough, that is not the case.
By the way,I've moved my blog to www.holmslice.blogspot.com
-Tanner
Great points!
The sad thing about reading is all the sterotypes that come from it. I have a friend who loves reading, and that's about all he does! He gets called a geek or a nerd every day. But even after all of that he never gave up reading. Don't worry Mr. T there are still a few of us readers out there!
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