John Ramsey Miller
I got this e-mail the other day from a college student:
“I love your writing. Since I was little I hated reading books. I absolutely hated it. But the first time I read one of your books, I was hooked. So far I have made it through Inside out, Upside down, and Side by side. Not once have you disappointed me. Usually when I read your books, I have some sort of background music playing which really adds to the intensity, just like in a movie. Usually I just play the song “Anxiety” by the Black eyed peas and it’s so far worked pretty well. My goal is to try and hopefully read all of your books by the time I’m done with college. Thank you so much for your writings.”
Naturally I’m flattered, but ultimately I wonder why has he hated reading since he was little? Leaves me thinking if maybe it’s the music he’s really enjoying.
Some few do manage to live forever through their work, although I doubt they are aware of it. We can’t physically live forever, but a person’s work can live on after them, and that may be one of the reasons we write, or design buildings, or paint, or quilt, or run for political office. Last week, with the death of Edward Kennedy, I was thinking about politics, and how the four presidents whose faces are carved into Mt. Rushmore will certainly be there staring out at the landscape long after people forget who they were, and possibly even after there are no people left to puzzle it out. I was considering the great statesmen and orators I’ve seen in my lifetime, and the sorry crop of legislators I see in office now. Perhaps it has always been the case that there are a few shining examples of solid thinkers and unselfish statesmen, men and women of conscience and always doing what’s best for the country, and the rest have always been minor players (if not intellectually or morally subpar to the standouts of history). Conservatives and liberals may argue to the last man standing over which of their own were the greatest hits in legislative history.
In talking to students recently I got the impression that a lot of them think books are taught in classrooms based solely on the importance of the author’s work to dusty academics, and not how relevant their work remains, and certainly not based on what benefit students get from reading them. Let me say here that I think literary history is every bit as important as the U.S. history or art, politics or of music. I think every student ought to understand how important the first amendment to the Constitution is, and how censorship by one group has threatened the free exchange of ideas for all people.
Might it be better if literary history was taught the way art history is taught where students learn a little about a lot of artists and why their work was relevant to their period as well as ours. Do students need to read Beowulf, or won’t Cliff Notes Lite do for most of the classics. You don’t get two artists like Degas and Picasso in a semester’s worth of art history classes. In my mind, Melville, Poe, I get a picture of a bunch of now-dead authors on a carousel that has been turning faster and faster for centuries and decades until they are hanging on by their fingernails.
In high school I read Hawthorne and Melville, but what average high school student would read MOBY DICK were it not out of academic necessity. For me, reading the classics––especially CATERBURY TALES and any Shakespeare play was like taking Cod Liver Oil. If the idea is to instill an enjoyment in reading, toss them CARRIE, INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE, BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS, BELOVED, SOPHIE’S CHOICE, BULLET PARK, IN COLD BLOOD… make your own list. Save the true Classics for lit history and college courses. I think the idea is to get young people reading more than spending their free time glued to TV or computer screens where their minds aren’t making pictures to accompany the words.
I guess when reading is homework and the books more or less inaccessible and seemingly irrelevant to someone’s life, you are making pages filled with words an enemy. You say Beowulf and kids see spider webs. Some old peg-legged guy (an obsessive, self-destructive, revenge-seeking whale hunter) chasing the object of his rage across the oceans means less to most kids today than it did our grandfathers. We all have white whales that we are chasing, or running from.
As writers we understand the importance of celebrating great writing, and great ideas, and want to know how literature affected or reflected the time. So, do you believe educators should keep pushing the classics, or put more emphasis on works more relevant to the lives and interests of our young?
I do think we should focus on instilling a love of reading in students before moving on to advaced topics, like Shakespeare. It should start well before high school though. I remember the librarian in my elementary school reading a new story every week, and after that some of us willingly checked out other books while we were there, and not just to complete a book report. I moved to reading adult books in sixth grade,Marion Zimmer Bradley, because my teacher loaned me a copy after class, thinking I would like it. She was right–I read it over and over. My personal library is now huge. That sixth grade teacher set an example we should all follow–read a good book and pass it along to the young people around us. Don’t rely on the school curriculum but on reader’s passing on their own joy of reading. You can’t imagine someone would want to read a classic unless theyfirst like reading.
Unfortunately, many of the classics are taught as if it they were a requirement that needed to be fulfilled–not something interesting. At least that was my experience.
I remember teachers going on and on about the the meaning or symbolism of this and that. Completely lost me because I don’t read into anything like that. To me, if the room is red, that’s what color is was painted. I might think it was the fashion of the day, but I would never even consider that it was symbolism for X. I have no doubt this is why students think of these books as “dusty academics.”
In high school, I did have an excellent teacher who made Julius Caeser fun to read. We went through the entire play in class, and he gave us the context and the history of the time.
Unfortunately, he was the only one who did this. Everyone else told us to read the book and then analyzed the symbolism. I read All Quiet on the Western Front as an assignment. Wouldn’t that have been a good opportunity to discuss World War I? Or Sherlock Holmes (not one I read in school), comparing it with Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, and even modern puzzles like forensic crime and archeology.
Looking at it from the adult perspective today, I wonder if all the symbolism talk is like what turns up in the art community–the less someone understands a work, the more they talk nonsense about it.
Linda Adams
http://garridon.wordpress.com/
John, I think the “classics” should be a part of a well rounded education. There’s a lot to be said for “exposure”. You might not like everything you’re exposed to in school at the time, but the human brain has a wonderful cataloging system. Retrieval and making a connection later in life is always possible. Without the initial exposure, the connection and chance for a new-found appreciation might never happen.
This is only speculation, but perhaps children who don’t grow up read to and reading at home and are only exposed to the ‘classics’ at school are the ones who hate to read. We read to our children alot and bought them plenty of books as they grew into them (usually several ‘grade-levels’ ahead). They have never been without literature since, and even had a bit of appreciation for what they were forced to read for class. My daughter eventually got her degree in Literature.
Perhaps the schools need to make sure they include some fun reading in the syllabus. But as with most things, much of the blame can be given to the parents.
Oh, this was interesting. Now I know what to talk about with my son as we drive him back to college.
And I agree with Lorel. A lot of kids, another of my sons included, got put off reading by being taught to associate it with reading “old boring stuff.” Maybe they’d even have liked the old boring stuff if they’d learned to like reading first.
American public schools do a wonderful of beating the love of reading out of students. Little kids love to read; learning to read is a big deal to them, and they’re happy to show it off every chance they get. We manage to break them of it by high school, if not earlier.
The classics are important, but not until the reader is ready. Some may never be ready. Schools have to decide whether a person is better off if he was forced to read beyond his interest or comprehension, thus ensuring he never reads anything he doesn’t “have” to, or if they should break things up a little and let the students’ ability, like water, seek its own level.
I know which way I’d vote.