English teachers are starting to let their students pick their own books, according to a Sunday front page story in The New York Times. The story profiles a teacher who is using that method with her seventh and eighth graders. It's a fascinating piece of reporting, you should read it.
I have mixed feelings about it, though. I think the research pretty clearly suggests that readers get better by spending a lot more time reading (duh), and that struggling readers who pick their own materials are significantly more motivated. Still, I think there's so much to be gained from students sharing a common literary experience. (Right, my Romantic Poetry classmates?)
The story did note that some teachers mix methods, allowing students to pick their own books at times while also assigning everyone the same book at least once during the year. I like that.
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2 comments:
Fascinating article, but I find it disturbing. Did you notice the quotation from Mark Bauerlein of Emory? He's a very sharp guy. I do understand, in a way, his desire to salvage any kind of reading habit from the TV-and-internet dominated pop culture. But in the end, I think this approach is misguided.
'Choice" reading has always been a huge part of elementary school curriculum. That's the age when it's more appropriate. I think the problem is that we are rapidly approaching a point when a large number of our middle schoolers and high schoolers are no more mature or educated than the elementary students of two decades ago. Therefore, teachers are trying to transfer elementary methods up to the high school level. It's essentially remedial education.
That leaves the question that I mentioned the other day on my blog. Is it better to try to do anything we can to teach an entire generation that lives for passive, mindless entertainment? Or should we hold to an objective standard?
As a teacher, my answer was to do whatever I could in the classroom. But I don't think that would have extended to throwing out all classic reading assignments. The kids' brains need to be stretched. Without engaging that higher-level material, they will never mature in their thinking. Reading The Kite Runner is not educationally equivalent to reading Oliver Twist.
That's interesting about the standards essentially slipping down the grade scale. It reminded me of K's comment of Jane Austen being the new Shakespeare, and Shakespeare being the new Chaucer.
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