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Here We Go Again
July 10, 2007
Reading Declining, Even Harry Can't Help, Woe Is Me
Here we are racing to the greatest single book sale in publishing history, and the New York Times asks us to pause and question -- is Harry really helping. "Potter Has Limited Effect on Reading Habits," the article on July 11 announced. According to stats quoted in the article, the older kids get, the less they read for pleasure. Dana Gioia of the National Endowment for the Arts weighed in on exactly that point. And, once again, missed the point. Because, as (to the Times's credit, they reported), Michael Kamil, a professor of education at Stanford, “I don’t want to deny that you should be reading stories and literature. But we’ve overemphasized it." Instead, he told the reporter, children need to learn to read for information.
And that gets to the point the article missed -- reading for information is a form of pleasure. Reading for information in assigned classroom reading could also be a form of pleasure -- not just by using historical fiction, or novels about scientists, but simply by using nonfiction books that assume gaining information is a pleasurable activity. Thinking is pleasurable. Learning new things is pleasurable. Figuring out how to do stuff is pleasurable. Our best students are swamped with assigned reading -- another fact the supposed decline in reading stats miss. The crucial thing we need is better nonfiction in the schools, not to wring our hands over the fate of fiction.
We have simply phrased the problem the wrong way -- not pleasure reading versus school, but better school reading -- that is to say, better nonfiction.
Posted by Marc Aronson on July 10, 2007 | Comments (1)
