2018 School Spending Survey Report
>And if you're not an English major?
>The discussion about Shakespeare reminds me of something a friend of mine said she was going to do while taking some extended leave from employment: she was going to read Ulysses, because she thought it was something every educated person needs to have on their read-that list.
Maybe, if I'm on a very small, very deserted, Irish island, Ulysses might make its way on to my list--it's not that I'm planning not to read it, but the fact that I haven't doesn't make me feel incomplete. Time spent feeling guilty about the books you don't get to is time wasted not reading something else.
I wish (and maybe this could be my next job) high schools offered their seniors a class in Reading. Not literature (although I hasten to add that I think they should be studying that, too), but a class instead designed to demonstrate the breadth and methods of reading in one's life quite apart from the pursuit of educational degrees. The students would learn about the different genres of popular fiction, for example; cross gender boundaries by reading Danielle Steel and Tom Clancy; go on a field trip to a book store and library to learn how to browse. Slow readers could learn techniques for speeding up (if they so desired); grinds could be taught to relax; fluent readers could be challenged to stretch their preferences. Everybody would learn how to skim. Students could practice giving and receiving book recommendations. They could learn to give up on a book that isn't working for them and how to stick with something that might prove rewarding. You could survey magazines from Car & Driver to Granta; find out how to parse product manuals.
For me, gym class finally became almost bearable in twelfth-grade, when the emphasis shifted from team sports to what the teacher called "lifelong activities" like running, golf, and tennis. For all those people not going on for a B.A. in English, why can't we do the same for reading?
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Anonymous
>This is what good elementary school teachers WANT to do. What Ms Rylant says is that she got to look explore her own horizons with the endless time of childhood first.Posted : Apr 29, 2007 03:06
Jenny
>This is exactly what good elementary school teachers do - teach reading strategies and help students expand their horizons.Posted : Apr 29, 2007 02:03
Anonymous
>I think joy is unstructured and unscripted. I remember when the ALA was doing posters encouraing kids to read and getting well-known writers to contribute why they thought children should. Cynthia Rylant said that she didn't think children should be encouraged to read. They should be encouraged to play. To go outside every day and play and play hard to their hearts' content. That she never read any kids' books until she went to college. Up until then she read only comic books. Then she discovered reading. I admired her for saying it and the people making the posters for using it. If you gave a class on how to play what a dreary dismal failure it would be. How great it is to find joy in anything. Like Michaelangelo's Sistine chapel with man reaching fingertip to fingertip with god. Who are we to teach that. Everyone finds it alone.Posted : Apr 29, 2007 02:48
Roger Sutton
>I like it, Melissa, although I suspect it's an English class by another name, what the "skill-practicing" and "analysis and interpretation." I'd want it to be all about the enjoyment and usefulness. It's also designed for poor readers, whereas in my dream class we would bring the good and not-so-good together. (Maybe I'm still trying to get the bullies to like me ;-)Posted : Apr 28, 2007 04:34
Melissa W.
>It sounds to me that such a project would HAVE to be diguised as a pass/fail class in order to keep the school administrators' and other teachers' and parents' and the rest of the status quo's "teachy" feelings fulfilled, however.And I think that's what this course description is doing, with the sop to Pennsylvania Academic Standards. And while it isn't Roger's ideal, it's a step toward acknowledging the importance of popular (ie: pleasure) reading.
Posted : Apr 28, 2007 02:03