Reluctant Readers and Required Reading

As an avid reader I find it hard to conceive of a life without books, but apparently a good percentage of the population abandon books, especially fiction, as soon as their formal education ends, regardless of whether that occurs when they drop out of high school or graduate college. Given the competing demands on our time it’s perhaps not surprising – movies, television, video games and social media all offer ways of relaxing and escaping from the humdrum of everyday life without being tainted by memories of dreaded schoolwork. Certainly the emphasis on reading as a precursor for success in school and college brings with it the danger of turning what should be a pleasurable activity into just another requirement, while the link between school and required literature has surely truncated as many reading lives as it has created.

I have always loved books and so, as a kid, looked forward to the day when I could actually choose to study English Literature as a separate subject in my school in England. Imagine, I thought, taking a class in something you loved; how perfect. Except it wasn’t. Up to that point (about the age of fourteen) I’d mostly read novels. The introduction to Shakespeare and poetry was different and relatively interesting, but the fiction on the required reading list was enough to turn even the most dedicated reader off. Don’t get me wrong, these books are all considered classics, but no consideration seemed to have been given to the age of the reader. I remember ‘Far from the Maddening Crowd’ (Thomas Hardy) and ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’ (John Fowles) in particular, both of which I have been unable to revisit, since their very titles conjure up memories of struggling to stay awake through class as we picked apart sentences and paragraphs of tales that did nothing to inspire enthusiasm in a teenager. If it did that to someone who loved reading, I shudder to think how it affected those who had opted to take the subject because it was the only remaining class available on their schedule. I can well believe that some of those students never went near a library or bookstore after leaving school.

There was one novel which seemed more age-appropriate, in that it was about children, but I have to say that ‘Lord of the Flies’ (William Golding) terrified me. I’d been at school long enough to know how nasty kids could be to each other, but this was just in another league, and to make matters worse, we were also required to sit through the movie which, although probably tame by today’s standards, left several students feeling ill.

I might have read any of those novels at a later age and appreciated them, and I’m sure they’re appropriate for college courses, but why force those kinds of novels on young students whom you are trying to imbue with a love of reading? Surely we should be aiming for books that capture the student’s imagination and make them want to seek out more, not turn them off for ever.