Do school reading lists do more harm than good?

Question: Do school reading lists do more harm than good!?

In college I was very proud of the speed with which I could write a properly structured, well-referenced essay!. That skill had nefarious origins -- I acquired it by writing many of my friends' high school English assignments!.

They all tried to do their own work, and almost failed the class!. Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy and Coleridge were too much for them!. Very few of these people are willing to pick up a book voluntarily after that!.

My question: Is there a better way than this!?

For example, if students were required to read and interpret a certain number of books per year, but could choose ANY book that was written at an appropriate level (no picture books), do you think they would learn and retain more!? Or do students gain more from Tolstoy even when their only goal is a passing grade!?

What would you do to improve the required reading lists!?Www@QuestionHome@Com

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

School reading lists are being tossed around like toilet paper!. A year on Yahoo! answers and I am guilty of so many homeworks done and so many turned down!. Good questions (like yours) come rarely!

Coming back to your question, school reading listrs I think are a boon!. At least schools try to inculcate the habit of reading students!. They make them aware of such and such writers are good and should be studied!. They polish their brains!. There are so many many who grow up ignorant of a certain Dickens and a certain Tolstoy!. For them Shakespeare is just an item of General Knowledge and to be studied by nerds!. Failing at all to see the practicality and wisdom and fun of Classics!. How can anyone deny that!?!?

On the flip side, their methodolgy is absolutely wrong!. Children take them for granted, because the schools are willing that!. Being here I get the impressions that the teachers are demanding too much of an analysis from sudents which they are totally ill-prepared to do!. There are students who ask "What are the gothic elements in Wuthering Heights!?" and as a clarification add, "What is Gothic anyways!?" Wasn't it their teachers duty to tell them what Gothic is before giving them the books to find such elements!. Its like sending someone to fetch apples and he doesnt know what apples are!. The sad thing is you know that he doesnt know!. What are the teachers doing!?

No reading list will be difficult if it is properly put down to the students!. You simply cannot write up the books you like "a few Jane Austens, a few Dickens, a few Shakespearean Sonnets" and hand them to the students to read in their vacations!. Where are the vacations!? Its all Vocation!? Sorry, but asking students to read is not like this - as if asking your boyfriend to buy this lipstick and that chocolate!.

Again "certain number of books" is the wrong thing to do! It must be ONE book!. Not more!. I would specifically like it to be ONE classic and one text book!. The text book containing a few short stories from Masters and fw read-worthy poems!. Not the poems they give them to read!. I once got an email from a student asking for some poem's interpretation!. I had never heard that poem or the writer and thankfully hadnt! It was so useless! Or, I entirely missed the point! Poems should be like Wordsworth Daffodils, Rainbow etc!. Something that makes sense and teaches to the students that literature can be eating in small bites instead of big and terrible gulps which get stuck in the throats and have to be thrown back by slapping the back (as happened to your friends!)!.

Hope I made my point!!!

EDIT___________

ANY book as you say, I dont think is a proper!. Students have a tough job selecting a book!. And moreover, they may pass out with lousy books - what the gain!?!?!? Its good that someone with experience gives them the reading material but how I consider it should be done, I already said!.

TW KWww@QuestionHome@Com

I think your other idea, to let students choose the books(within boundaries) is a much greater idea!. Of course, I'm biased because I love to read yet found most assigned books to be incredibly dry or downright uninteresting!. They should still try to get us to see the "underlying, underlying themes" of those "classics", but maybe not have us do it ourselves!. This is because it's true that the majority of us are just trying for a passing grade!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Of course students gain things from classics even when their only goal is a passing grade!. Even if they don't really read the book, they're still getting things from discussion in class!.

I think reading lists need to be more balanced though!. Or possibly give a choice from a list of books, and say they need to read five or ten books off a list of say thirty to fifty books!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

I think there should be school reading lists!. But I think they focus on the classics to much!. I mean, I think it should be evenly devided!. Like, maybe!.!.!.!.!. Romeo and Juliet, Great Expectations, 1984, Of Mice and Men, Flowers for Algernon, Speak, Burned, etc!., or something like that!. Something there to catch students' attention, but some emphasis on the classics as well!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

I absoulutely hate school reading lists!. Especially summer reading!. The books are good but you're trapped picking some dumb book that doesn't even interest you!. Then you don't enjoy reading and it's a chore and instead of something fun!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

I am a middle school Science teacher, who also happens to love reading!. In general, a lot of the problem with student learning is univeral!. It stems from students not being interested in the subject material, or the subject material not being made interesting enough!. Learning about "boring" material can be fun, if it is made to be so!. It really depends on the way the material is presented to the class!.

While some of the books presented at the middle/high school level can be interesting to read, many of the students haven't developed a love for reading!. I think they would be best served by being allowed to pick books that are interesting to them (at an appropriate level) and let the teacher approve the book for them to read!.

The teacher could always have a list of books/classic books available to their students, and require them to choose a certain number of them per year!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.with the key being "student choice!." That way, they would still read some of the books that are required now, but they can pick one that sounds interesting to them!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.they will get a lot more out of it in the long run!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

I agree with you completely!. Some of the books they assign students to read are either very boring or very hard!. Just last term we had to study Macbeth and half the class couldn't even understand what was going on; my friend and I were always explaining certain concepts and scenes to them!. I wish that they could include a wider variety of books so as to give students a better understanding of literature and novels in general!. They are almost certain to hate books if they have Tolstoy, Dickens and Shakespeare shoved down their throats at such a young age, those books should be assigned to senior students!.

Thanks for the great question!

:)Www@QuestionHome@Com

I somewhat agree with what you're saying!. I live in Small Town USA, so our schools probably don't even know what a reading list is!. As a result, most kids and teens still don't know the difference between "your" and "you're" (bugs the crap out of me!), who Geoffrey Chaucier is, or even (and this amazes me) where the library is! It's terrible! We have books that we are assigned to read during the school year, but most people just buy the essays off of older kids and turn them in!.

In addition to not having a school reading list, the teachers who assign books to read pick books that are either too easy, too hard, or inappropriate!. When I was in the sixth grade, we had to read "Tom Sawyer"!. We were ELEVEN!. We had no idea what Mark Twain because Old English was like a foreign language to us!. Another incident was in the fourth grade--our teacher assigned us to read "Are You There, God!? It's Me, Margaret" by Judy Blume!. The school board roared that it was inappropriate!. The teacher's job was threatened, and we never got finished with it!.

What really bothers me is how when teens do decide to read, they only read crap like "Gossip Girl", "The Clique", or "Twilight"!. Those books have NO vocab, NO good plot lines, and are basically TV shows in print!.

When kids are forced to read, they really can't enjoy the book because they know it holds the fate of their grade!. They think of it as a "have to do" type thing, and it's boring to them!. Once they found out they've passed, they completely forget everything they've ever read!. They don't gain anything from it except the promotion to the next grade!.

What I would do to improve the required reading list is, like you said, give them a list and have them choose, that way they don't feel so forced!. Shakespeare is a bit heavy for on-level high school students!. Hemingway and Faulkner would be, in my opinion, better choices!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

When I was in school, the class was inevitably divided into two groups: the "lower" reading levels, and the "upper!." I fell into the uppers, and I hated it! While the others were reading delightful stories about trying to cheat in a jumping frog contest, or about a brave little friend named Riki-Tiki battling a monster named Hag, we were forced to plod through Shakespeare, Marlowe, Hardy, et al!

I agree that there's no reason to subject kids to the tortures of "Literature" when any reading is better than no reading at all! Why not let kids read Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, or even Ian Fleming!?

Of course, there are those who feel that if a 16-year-old doesn't know whom Iago is, then they'll never get to college because it's too late to start learning!. If kids have never been exposed to the villain of "Othello," by mid-high school, then they'll never catch up to those who have!.

So go figure!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Is the problem really the reading level or literary content of the works or is it that we don't teach kids to inspect the meat and meaning of a text!?

As someone in elementary education I've always felt like we would be able to get much more positive results in other subjects if we were to attempt to teach logic and critical reasoning from pre-K up!. Even kids in the gifted program don't get rewarded for being insightful or coming up with unique BUT LOGICAL interpretations!. Either we have the deconstructionist "every answer is a good answer" crap or you have the recitationist disinterest in anything that cannot be thoughtlessly regurgitated by a computer!.

We don't teach inspection or introspection and so of COURSE it's going to be a difficult and unpleasant skill to preform in later years !.!.!. no one wants to do something that makes them feel clumsy!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

I think your idea of your own choice is a good one, however maybe they should have to read a certain amount of shakespeare etc!. I personally enjoyed these authors so it's hard for me to give an unbias opinion!.

I'd say somethng like 2 compulsory books and -- amount of your own choice!.

The only thing with this is, people will stick in their comfort zones and only read football books or romance!.!.!.there would be no variation so are they really extending their knowledge/love for books!?

I think schools put too much pressure on people and it forces them to hate books, but going to far the other way could make them ignorant to so many amazing classical writers or genres!.

There should be a healthy balance!.

This is a good question!. I'm looking forward to reading other responses!!Www@QuestionHome@Com

Actually, most school reading lists are compiled precisely because they are the easiest works to do critical analysis of!. They've been widely studied and written about, the concepts being taught at lower levels are easy to grasp and identify, and they are usually considered works that people will be better off for knowing later in life!.

On that note, I've often thought that teaching the mandatory texts on a more concept oriented basis would be helpful!. Not just giving a list of terms and sending students out to hunt down examples, but explaining the term, pointing it out in every day life as well as familiar texts, discussing it's origins and uses - really getting down and into it, then having a student write a paper that demonstrates an applied understanding of that in another text from the same period would be helpful!. I've also thought it would be fun to allow students to choose off a list of good contemporary stuff and write papers on them analyzing and identifying the same stuff from the classics they have to study!. You could require five done for 20 points each and count it as a test grade!. I think that would just help people understand that the concepts they are taught in literature: A) Still exist and are widely in use, B) Branch way beyond literature into everything pretty much!. I had to define Simulacrum to my class like they were people who've never heard the term before and I used a Dove commercial where they show the process of taking a model and making her a cover photo on a magazine!. It was perfect!.

I think it could be improved, but I also think the lists can be helpful!. More than anything it has to do with the attitude of the student (and skill of the teacher)!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

i think reading lists aren't good!. i wish u could choose ur own books, within reason!. if i get into the book they assign then i do well on the essays for that book!. last year my teacher gave us a lot of books that no one could really get into and everyone didn't do well with these books!. one other thing that's bad is summer reading lists!. my school isn't good about handing them out and notifing everyone about them!. most people don't find out they had to read until the first day of school and then have to finish a 900 something page book in two weeks!. to improve reading lists i think teachers should give students the right to pick their own books, again within reason!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Well, I enjoy most of the books I read on my summer readings lists!. But I pretty much know what the problem is!. The reason why most students don't do it isn't necessarily because of the book, but becaues they have to analyze the book!. That takes all the enjoyment out of reading, which is sort of an oxymoron to what schools are trying to do!.

I love analyzing what I read because it helps me with my writing!. But not everybody's going to become a writer or do something involving literature or English!.

Even if we did let students choose books that suited their interest--regardling the reading level of the book, of course--I still don't think it would help matters because they would still have to analyze those books, which means they wouldn't even enjoy the books that they wanted to enjoy in the first place!.

It's the problem with schools!. They're trying to furnish a love of reading within students' minds, but if students have to analyze what they read, that love of reading is turned off immediately!.

I never quite understood what the purpose of analyzing a novel was!. I believe that if you get the basic message of the story, point of the characters and plot, you're good to go!. But when you analyze you look behind that, and that's where most students flounder because they don't want to go into all the nitty gritty details!. Face it!. Analyzing novels at such a deep level isn't a career outside of being a literature teacher!. Since when are most of us going to need to analyze The Great Gatsby right on the spot after college!? We aren't!.

All in all, there isn't really anything you can do to improve the required reading lists!. Most students who love reading often enjoy books on the reading lists!. Students who don't love reading will probably never enjoy any books period!. I know one friend of mine who enjoys the Harry Potter movies, but won't even pick up the book to see how empty the movies are compared to the books!. He will never love reading just because school ruined his love for it!. Same with a couple other friends of mine!.Www@QuestionHome@Com