Forcing the Classics

It's happened to everyone. At least I feel fairly safe in assuming that. A book is assigned in school - or perhaps for summer reading, and you have to force your way through it. Maybe you skim it. Maybe you don't read it at all. You decide that it is the most horrid thing ever written and can't figure out why anyone would want to read this book, or anything by this author ever.

Chances are the book in question was a classic.

Classic starts to equate in your mind to "boring."

You see other books labeled "classic" and you ignore them, because you have learned that classic equals boring.

But what if the book in question wasn't really boring? What if it wasn't poorly written? What if you, as  student, were just not ready for the insights the book revealed about human nature.

What if.

What if you read the book years later as an adult and are amazed at the power of the language, at the imagery at the depths of the insight?

What if you get it when you are an adult?

But what if you never pick the book back up, because you've already read (or skimmed) it and already know it's boring. Why then, you'll be missing out on something big, and you'll never know it.

My daughter had to read All Quiet on the Western Front in 7th grade. She hated it. I'm pretty sure I read it in high school and thought it was boring. I just re-read it last week and loved it.

I understand the desire of teachers to want to introduce their students to a variety of literature. I get that. But sometimes I think we do students a disservice by forcing them to read books they are not ready for.

Is there an easy answer to this? Probably not. But I do think we have to stop making reading novels feel so much like work, and let it be fun. This is one of the reasons why YA literature is so important for kids. It's something that they're much more apt to get. It's something that can be fun. And when something is fun you want to do more of it.

And reading should be fun.

And classics are fun too - but not when read at the wrong time.

So, what is your take on this - are we ruining classics for students by forcing them to read them when they don't really understand them, or are we making sure they leave school with a well-rounded introduction to literature. And does it have to be one or the other?

Summer Reading

We're winding down our school year here. I know a lot of people are already out of school for the summer, but we have a week to go. And then it's time for fun and relaxing summer reading, right?

Sort of.

Both of my kids have reading assignments over the summer. Nothing too big - they have two assigned books they need to read and they need to write a 3 page essay comparing the two that is due on the first day of school.

In reality, it's not that big an assignment. I remember having longer required reading lists than that, but I don't recall having to write an essay.

But, here's my question. Are required summer reading lists a good thing or not?

On one hand I can see that making sure students read over the summer is important. Reading is a skill like any other, that always benefits from practice and exercise. Children who don't open a book for the whole summer are doing themselves a disservice.

But is it necessary or desirable to require that specific books be read? Why not let summer be the time when students can explore wherever their interests lead them?

To be fair, for the most part our district simply has a suggested reading list for each grade. It's only the honors English classes that need to do the specific assignment.

But that raises another point: the students in the honors classes are the ones most likely to be reading anyway, why force a specific assignment?

So, what's your take? Should students have summer reading assignments or should they be allowed to simply read whatever catches their interest over the summer?