In Defense of School Books
So there was this article about a middle school teacher who, instead of assigning a book for the class to read, told every kid to pick a book they wanted. And this led to, among other things, a blog post that stood up against class-assigned reading. The post contained a lot of criticisms of school-assigned lit that I'd heard before, and some of them really annoy me. So I'm writing my defense of school assignments. Warning: my defense is probably about as long as some of those assignments!
Am I the only person who liked books she was assigned in school? I know I'm not.
There's this annoying false binary that always gets set up, as if you either have to read Moby Dick or Twilight but never both. As if you can't support *both* having certain things assigned to you and reading whatever you want as well, both for recreation and even possibly for school credit.
I have no patience for the idea that people should be judged on what they enjoy reading (okay, unless it's, like, hate propaganda they read because they agree or whatever). Reading a particular Harlequin romance that you loved over and over does not say anything except that there's something in that book you enjoy reading. It doesn't mean you wouldn't be able to understand anything "more serious." Nor is there much good in forcing yourself to read something "more serious" when you really want to read that Harlequin again. I don't think that things that are regulars on school curriculums should be seen as books that are more worthy, as if someone can't really consider themselves well-read unless they have read these particular books. That was certainly clear whenever the last "100 books" meme was going around, a community of big readers hadn't read a lot of things on the list, not because they weren't big readers but because they didn't happen to be interested in or hadn't read those particular books.
But I think it's silly to act as if there's no point to studying a book as a class, or even picking for study some of the books that usually get picked for those things. For instance, in the blog post against assigned reading, the author put down teachers teaching "symbolism" by pointing out that they really had no idea what was going on in the author's head so should stop pretending they did. Now, on that I agree. I can remember, as a 9th grader, telling a teacher that I didn't believe that Nathaniel Hawthorn put all that fire imagery into The Scarlet Letter on purpose. I figured a lot of it was unconscious.
But that's not what teaching symbolism is about. It doesn't matter whether the author intended to use "fire" here or "water" there. It's about pointing out that hey, all this fire imagery in Scarlet Letter suggests some meaning given the context, as does all the use of water imagery in Quentin's section of The Sound and the Fury and isn't fiction cool because of that? Brushing stuff like that aside as all nonsense reminds me of that weird anti-meta attitude some people have, where they tell people that analyzing a book/tv/movie whatever is pointless or pretentious and ruins the thing so that people can't just "enjoy it."
Speaking as a former English student, I had no problem whatsoever with the idea of a teacher guiding me through analysis as I was learning (I still do) and it never made me feel like my own opinions didn't matter. It didn't get in the way of me reacting to a story in my own way. In fact, in the end it probably made me more confident in my own opinions by giving me a way to understand and communicate them besides "I just liked it" or whatever. It was a great antidote for the "It's my opinion and therefore has to be taken as proven with evidence" idea.
A lot of the books I read in high school seemed chosen partly because they made for good analysis for beginners. They often raised clear ethical questions that were played out dramatically and could be discussed, or had strong images that made it easy to talk about symbolism. They're just often stories that make it easier to talk about story and word choice and the context of the time it was written.
Then there's another reason why those books everyone reads are important, and yeah, this can get tricky. Culture is shared. It's not just a highbrow thing. We refer to books/movies/tv whatever that other people know to communicate, and if you understand the reference it makes the communication easier. There is no fundamental difference in the use of a reference to Paradise Lost and a reference to The Simpsons, no matter how subtle, if you are familiar enough to catch the reference. We do it all the time.
An example that pops into my head, for instance, is that literal version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" video: "What kind of private school would let in these kind of guys?/It started out as Hogwarts now it's Lord of the Flies./ I hated that book!" That's two references to books the viewer is assumed to know. There's the reference to Harry Potter, because of the connection to the old-fashioned private school (meaning UK public) setting, and then Lord of the Flies, which is a reference to another book about British public school (meaning US private) students, only in that book they become crazy savages. That's followed by the "I hated that book!" line, which adds another level of reference by telling us that the speaker assumes we know LotF is often read in school and therefore we can empathize with being forced to read it even if you don't like it. Not recognizing the reference doesn't make you stupid or illiterate, or keep you from understanding everything else in the song, but it's nicer to get the reference and therefore the meaning that reference is shorthand for (and to get the joke). Those old Warner Brothers cartoons are funny whether or not you get the 1940s pop culture references, but they're that much better when you do get them.
When I imagine being just told to pick books I wanted to read in middle school, my reaction is not completely positive. Not because I don't like to read books of my own choosing--I do that anyway. But I also would have relied on school to fill me in on what books are influential or excellent or considered important in a specific way that will mean they're good to know. If that sounds snobby, it probably can be--it's not like there aren't plenty of children who, when given a chance to pick their own book, choose books they think make them sound smart because they're famous so they can brag about it. (I worked in a children's bookstore. On the NYC's Upper West Side, that's not uncommon.) But it doesn't have to be snobby.
As I said, I don't really believe a person should be considered more intelligent--or more pretentious--because they happen to have read or enjoyed a book that's gotten a rep as being "serious literature." But I feel like it's sort of unfair to pretend such books don't exist when they will probably come up later-as a kid I would want to know that.
Another thing that sometimes turns people off "serious books" is the idea that the language is too sophisticated or foreign to modern ears. And yes, that might be off putting to a reader at first. But the truth is, "more sophisticated" is often just about habit. A kid who's exposed to more formal or old-fashioned language early won't hear it as sounding as strange as someone who's just encountered it. So, really, making sure language sounds "the way kids actually talk" all the time isn't a particularly good goal. Nobody needs to be taught what they're already doing. Are you really keeping those books away because kids naturally won't like them, or are you preemptively deciding they shouldn't like them?
I'm probably going to sound like a curmudgeon here, but there's something really silly about arguing: “Yeat yeah, maybe I'd like a school assigned book and maybe I wouldn't if I read it on my own, but it's the assigning it that's a problem. I shouldn't have to read it, reading should always be about enjoyment!” Because that seems to go beyond not being counterproductive and get into being dangerously eager to please. School isn't always about entertainment. For some kids it will never be entertaining. Sometimes we study things we don't immediately like. Is that really so oppressive, to approach schoolwork as work? (Using Tom Sawyer's unspoken definition of the word--look, I just made a literary reference to a book Americans are often expected to be somewhat familiar with, even if they haven't read it: "Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and…Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.")
Often it seems the theory at work is that people are made to hate reading by being forced to read books they don't like. While I'm sure many a bad teacher has had many a bad effect on a student, it still seems a little precious to worry about assigning books because what if one kid doesn't like it and then decides to never read anything ever because you ruined it for him?! It always seemed to me, for instance, that the point of the study of literature was to impart a love of literature. If it didn't, why would so many people who love reading fiction fill English Departments later on? Seems to me if the idea is to teach people to be more comfortable reading different kinds of books so that when they choose their books for pleasure they've got fewer limits on what they can enjoy. Not just so they can enjoy the "classic" dead white guy lit they "should" read, but also books that challenge that model and are about completely different people written in completely different styles.
Like I said, I totally support people and kids reading what they want for their own pleasure. I just completely reject the idea that school reading is exclusively about making somebody love to read for pleasure, or that assigning books is bad because it kills anything they got out of that. Especially since, as I started by saying, I loved plenty of books that I got assigned in school, books that I might not have read if somebody hadn't told me about them in school. (I actually liked Lord of the Flies and The Scarlet Letter. Go figure. And even the ones I didn't like much I didn't hate so much it was an enormous chore. Much less one that would make me swear off books completely. In fact, it's by trying different things that you develop your own taste. I'm totally in favor of letting every kid/person figure that out personally--it's subjective. But I see nothing wrong with using a school-setting to introduce some of this material, or even particular kinds of material. Do people worry that teaching math or science kills interest in math and science?
Am I the only person who liked books she was assigned in school? I know I'm not.
There's this annoying false binary that always gets set up, as if you either have to read Moby Dick or Twilight but never both. As if you can't support *both* having certain things assigned to you and reading whatever you want as well, both for recreation and even possibly for school credit.
I have no patience for the idea that people should be judged on what they enjoy reading (okay, unless it's, like, hate propaganda they read because they agree or whatever). Reading a particular Harlequin romance that you loved over and over does not say anything except that there's something in that book you enjoy reading. It doesn't mean you wouldn't be able to understand anything "more serious." Nor is there much good in forcing yourself to read something "more serious" when you really want to read that Harlequin again. I don't think that things that are regulars on school curriculums should be seen as books that are more worthy, as if someone can't really consider themselves well-read unless they have read these particular books. That was certainly clear whenever the last "100 books" meme was going around, a community of big readers hadn't read a lot of things on the list, not because they weren't big readers but because they didn't happen to be interested in or hadn't read those particular books.
But I think it's silly to act as if there's no point to studying a book as a class, or even picking for study some of the books that usually get picked for those things. For instance, in the blog post against assigned reading, the author put down teachers teaching "symbolism" by pointing out that they really had no idea what was going on in the author's head so should stop pretending they did. Now, on that I agree. I can remember, as a 9th grader, telling a teacher that I didn't believe that Nathaniel Hawthorn put all that fire imagery into The Scarlet Letter on purpose. I figured a lot of it was unconscious.
But that's not what teaching symbolism is about. It doesn't matter whether the author intended to use "fire" here or "water" there. It's about pointing out that hey, all this fire imagery in Scarlet Letter suggests some meaning given the context, as does all the use of water imagery in Quentin's section of The Sound and the Fury and isn't fiction cool because of that? Brushing stuff like that aside as all nonsense reminds me of that weird anti-meta attitude some people have, where they tell people that analyzing a book/tv/movie whatever is pointless or pretentious and ruins the thing so that people can't just "enjoy it."
Speaking as a former English student, I had no problem whatsoever with the idea of a teacher guiding me through analysis as I was learning (I still do) and it never made me feel like my own opinions didn't matter. It didn't get in the way of me reacting to a story in my own way. In fact, in the end it probably made me more confident in my own opinions by giving me a way to understand and communicate them besides "I just liked it" or whatever. It was a great antidote for the "It's my opinion and therefore has to be taken as proven with evidence" idea.
A lot of the books I read in high school seemed chosen partly because they made for good analysis for beginners. They often raised clear ethical questions that were played out dramatically and could be discussed, or had strong images that made it easy to talk about symbolism. They're just often stories that make it easier to talk about story and word choice and the context of the time it was written.
Then there's another reason why those books everyone reads are important, and yeah, this can get tricky. Culture is shared. It's not just a highbrow thing. We refer to books/movies/tv whatever that other people know to communicate, and if you understand the reference it makes the communication easier. There is no fundamental difference in the use of a reference to Paradise Lost and a reference to The Simpsons, no matter how subtle, if you are familiar enough to catch the reference. We do it all the time.
An example that pops into my head, for instance, is that literal version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" video: "What kind of private school would let in these kind of guys?/It started out as Hogwarts now it's Lord of the Flies./ I hated that book!" That's two references to books the viewer is assumed to know. There's the reference to Harry Potter, because of the connection to the old-fashioned private school (meaning UK public) setting, and then Lord of the Flies, which is a reference to another book about British public school (meaning US private) students, only in that book they become crazy savages. That's followed by the "I hated that book!" line, which adds another level of reference by telling us that the speaker assumes we know LotF is often read in school and therefore we can empathize with being forced to read it even if you don't like it. Not recognizing the reference doesn't make you stupid or illiterate, or keep you from understanding everything else in the song, but it's nicer to get the reference and therefore the meaning that reference is shorthand for (and to get the joke). Those old Warner Brothers cartoons are funny whether or not you get the 1940s pop culture references, but they're that much better when you do get them.
When I imagine being just told to pick books I wanted to read in middle school, my reaction is not completely positive. Not because I don't like to read books of my own choosing--I do that anyway. But I also would have relied on school to fill me in on what books are influential or excellent or considered important in a specific way that will mean they're good to know. If that sounds snobby, it probably can be--it's not like there aren't plenty of children who, when given a chance to pick their own book, choose books they think make them sound smart because they're famous so they can brag about it. (I worked in a children's bookstore. On the NYC's Upper West Side, that's not uncommon.) But it doesn't have to be snobby.
As I said, I don't really believe a person should be considered more intelligent--or more pretentious--because they happen to have read or enjoyed a book that's gotten a rep as being "serious literature." But I feel like it's sort of unfair to pretend such books don't exist when they will probably come up later-as a kid I would want to know that.
Another thing that sometimes turns people off "serious books" is the idea that the language is too sophisticated or foreign to modern ears. And yes, that might be off putting to a reader at first. But the truth is, "more sophisticated" is often just about habit. A kid who's exposed to more formal or old-fashioned language early won't hear it as sounding as strange as someone who's just encountered it. So, really, making sure language sounds "the way kids actually talk" all the time isn't a particularly good goal. Nobody needs to be taught what they're already doing. Are you really keeping those books away because kids naturally won't like them, or are you preemptively deciding they shouldn't like them?
I'm probably going to sound like a curmudgeon here, but there's something really silly about arguing: “Yeat yeah, maybe I'd like a school assigned book and maybe I wouldn't if I read it on my own, but it's the assigning it that's a problem. I shouldn't have to read it, reading should always be about enjoyment!” Because that seems to go beyond not being counterproductive and get into being dangerously eager to please. School isn't always about entertainment. For some kids it will never be entertaining. Sometimes we study things we don't immediately like. Is that really so oppressive, to approach schoolwork as work? (Using Tom Sawyer's unspoken definition of the word--look, I just made a literary reference to a book Americans are often expected to be somewhat familiar with, even if they haven't read it: "Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and…Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.")
Often it seems the theory at work is that people are made to hate reading by being forced to read books they don't like. While I'm sure many a bad teacher has had many a bad effect on a student, it still seems a little precious to worry about assigning books because what if one kid doesn't like it and then decides to never read anything ever because you ruined it for him?! It always seemed to me, for instance, that the point of the study of literature was to impart a love of literature. If it didn't, why would so many people who love reading fiction fill English Departments later on? Seems to me if the idea is to teach people to be more comfortable reading different kinds of books so that when they choose their books for pleasure they've got fewer limits on what they can enjoy. Not just so they can enjoy the "classic" dead white guy lit they "should" read, but also books that challenge that model and are about completely different people written in completely different styles.
Like I said, I totally support people and kids reading what they want for their own pleasure. I just completely reject the idea that school reading is exclusively about making somebody love to read for pleasure, or that assigning books is bad because it kills anything they got out of that. Especially since, as I started by saying, I loved plenty of books that I got assigned in school, books that I might not have read if somebody hadn't told me about them in school. (I actually liked Lord of the Flies and The Scarlet Letter. Go figure. And even the ones I didn't like much I didn't hate so much it was an enormous chore. Much less one that would make me swear off books completely. In fact, it's by trying different things that you develop your own taste. I'm totally in favor of letting every kid/person figure that out personally--it's subjective. But I see nothing wrong with using a school-setting to introduce some of this material, or even particular kinds of material. Do people worry that teaching math or science kills interest in math and science?