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Sunday, August 30, 2009
Let Them Choose What They Read
The New York Times reports on the growth of reading workshops in secondary schools, an approach to reading in which students are allowed to choose the books they wish to read rather than reading books assigned to them:
In the method familiar to generations of students, an entire class reads a novel — often a classic — together to draw out the themes and study literary craft. That tradition, proponents say, builds a shared literary culture among students, exposes all readers to works of quality and complexity and is the best way to prepare students for standardized tests.
But fans of the reading workshop say that assigning books leaves many children bored or unable to understand the texts. Letting students choose their own books, they say, can help to build a lifelong love of reading.
Choice, however, should not be unlimited:
Literacy specialists say that giving children a say in what they read can help motivate them. “If your goal is simply to get them to read more, choice is the way to go,” said Elizabeth Birr Moje, a literacy professor at the University of Michigan. Ms. Moje added that choices should be limited and that teachers should guide students toward high-quality literature.
Though research on the academic effects of choice has been limited, some studies have shown that giving students modest options can enhance educational results. In 11 studies conducted with third, fourth and fifth graders over the past 10 years, John T. Guthrie, now a retired professor of literacy at the University of Maryland, found that giving children limited choices from a classroom collection of books on a topic helped improve performance on standardized reading comprehension tests.
Comments
Higher scores on standardized test do not
indicate more educational benefits, especially as
such tests increasingly omit more accurate
indicators of improved critical thinking skills
like essay-writing. Giving students choices in
reading material also has the psychological
effect of saying that it is okay to refuse to see
things from different viewpoints than one’s
own or to challenge oneself to grow and learn.
The bar does not need to be lowered, the students
need to put down their iPods, turn off “American
Idol,” and stop gazing in their MySpace and
Facebook vanities, and actually try using their
minds as much as they can.
The NYT also has a piece this week on a system school districts can use to allow students wide choice in reading matter. But there’s a catch. The computerized list assigns points to books, and most districts tell students to read books totaling so many points a term. One of the Henry Potter books gets more than four times the points that are awarded for Heart of Darkness (I guess it’s lots longer). The author of the essay is disturbed by the idea, and I side with her. See “Reading by the Numbers,” Susan Straight, August 27.
Also, you don’t need to pay tuition or operate a school to form or join a reading workshop, group, or circle.
The reading group is a great idea but it’s different from studying Literature and it’s not a cure-all, however un-pc that sounds. It almost seems as though reading can’t just be what it always was i.e. fun and a way of understanding the human condition, ‘a hand across the generations’ as Alan Bennett says in ‘The History Boys’.
BTW, this is slightly off topic, Bill, so hope you don’t mind but I get really frustrated by reading being turned into some kind of ‘therapy’ (I think it’s even called ‘bibliotherapy’ actually); people have read to feel better for a long, long, time, no-one needs to teach them this.
If I wanted to recover from an illness, I’d see a doctor; if I wanted to pass an exam, I’d go study; if I wanted to share a love of books, I’d join a reading group. These things aren’t new or mutually exclusive but they are being taken to be so which is ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’ imo!
I’m a little behind on this thread, but…
As a secondary (public) school English teacher, I have to say that reading workshops are a useful tool in the English curriculum repertoire.
Those alarmists who fear that the classics will be utterly forgotten need not be too worried. Most teachers (in my experience) who offer choice to students do so in conjunction with the traditional assigned texts. I think something that many outside of education forget is that a large number of kids we find in our high school English classrooms are not readers--either they struggle with the very process of decoding, or they simply have not developed a love for the activity that we readers of the Valve clearly possess. Offering choice is a way to engage those students. This is a way of luring them away from Facebook. The best curriculum of classical, timeless texts is useless if students won’t read them.
After all, now that Reading Rainbow is off the air, somebody’s got to guide kids in making choices about what to read… and guide them *to* read.