Readicide is a reality. Teachers often hear the moans coming from students as they hear "next week we will be starting Hamlet.” Why is that? It’s because teachers force students to read books that frankly seem less interesting than a detailed book describing how paint dries. A little over exaggerated, I’ll admit, but at times it feels that way. Teachers every year hit students hard to look for that complexity or analysis of symbols within a stale piece of text. I feel as though it takes even more fun out of the reading than it already has.
Now here’s another idea. Let’s say we do a 50/50 of literary fiction and genre fiction. Who’s to say that in genre fiction novels there are no symbols to be analyzed or passages to be scanned for literary devices? Plus students will be able to stay engaged with the story/plotline while having a slight decrease in annoyance to annotate and analyze the text.
In order to keep students educated, reading needs to stay around longer. In order for that to happen, schools need to ease up on their literary fiction reading, simply because it discourages students from outside reading. Perhaps English classes should not be reading Twilight or other books with a pointless outline, no offense to the die-hard Twilight fans, but books that have an interesting plotline intertwined with a little complexity. I think it’s the perfect blend
First of all, I love your writing style. Very whimsical :) Second, I think you make a good argument regarding the 50/50 idea. In my post, I was more towards the "stick with the classics" side of the argument, but I think that if schools are to pick more complex stories than Twilight, then the 50/50 idea could serve a good purpose.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your point about keeping kids interested in reading for enjoyment. It's also a fantasic idea to read more literary fiction, other than twighlight ofcourse because genre fiction books do have content.
ReplyDeleteI love how you said "It’s because teachers force students to read books that frankly seem less interesting than a detailed book describing how paint dries." I could not have said that better myself.
ReplyDeleteI agree that if you want to keep people reading you have to keep them interested.
ReplyDeleteI'm starting to see where Hannah gets her style from! I agree with you in every aspect of this. A lot of these classics are getting harder for us to get through the more time goes on and it's starting to show. A society of readers is an educated society, and an educated society doesn't repeat as many mistakes from the past.
ReplyDeleteI agree a lot with your first paragraph and with the 50/50 idea
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