Reading ought to matter. It ought to lead to something, result in something, have some consequences. Throughout history, groups in power have understood that. Because they knew, they refused to let some of the people learn to read. In this country, those denied reading were enslaved people. If the enslaved could read, then controlling them would be that much harder. So, teaching slaves to read was a crime in many places and a slave who could read was a criminal.
That understanding of the power of reading is obvious today in many countries where girls and young women are still denied the right to learn to read. Why? Because reading has the potential to empower individuals; individuals who can make their own decisions and decide their own fate, who are less likely to accept subservience as their fate in life.
We delude our students if we, by constant repetition, persuade them that the consequences of reading are either passing or failing a test, and nothing more. If all they do is commit to memory the details of a text, so that they can recall names, places, events, and sequences, fill in the blanks, or match the items on Friday’s quiz, then they won’t have realized reading’s potential. If reading is about moving from one leveled reader to the next, if it is about showing some sort of mastery on some state test, then we still have withheld the power of reading. Even if, in response to your assignment, they write a summary of what they have read, or a brief essay that you have demanded, they will only have scratched the surface of the possibilities that lie in the simple act of opening the book and taking in what they find there.
Encouraging students to take responsibility
Reading conceived simply as a required task with assignments to be completed or tests to be passed will likely remain somebody else’s work, the teacher’s, and not the student’s. What we hope for in teaching is that students will take on reading as their work, work they do willingly, even happily, a task that seems less a task because they enjoy it.
And so we want them to enjoy opening a book, to learn to love the simple act of reading. But we want more than that. We want them to learn that beyond simple pleasure, the act of reading enables us to see differently, to think differently, to feel differently. It’s not simply that reading informs us and delights us; it is that reading changes us. Or, put more accurately, it is that reading offers us the opportunity, if we are willing to take it, to change ourselves. Reading that might lead to change, if students are aware of and open to that possibility, is likely to matter more to them, to mean more in their lives. And if it does, they may learn to love it, and may do it for the rest of their lives. That might yield for us a more educated, thoughtful, and reasonable society.
Consider tenth-grader Ben. Ben told us he hates to read. “Just don’t like it at all,” he said. We nodded, “Ok.” Then we asked him what he didn’t like about reading. “It’s boring. Nothing happens.” We nodded and agreed that boring books are the worst. “Yes!” he said. Then we suggested, “Why don’t you just skip the boring books? Why don’t you read the ones that aren’t boring?” He stared at us. “It’s like Brussels sprouts,” Kylene said. “I hate those. But I’d be silly to say I hate all vegetables.” He stared. “It’s like reading doesn’t do anything,” he said. “It won’t do anything,” Bob agreed. “But it can help you decide what you want to do about something.”
We talked a bit longer and discovered he was really interested in why his high school newspaper had to have all the articles in it approved by the teacher sponsor. “And if she doesn’t like it, then the story doesn’t go in. Isn’t there supposed to be a freedom of the press?” he asked. He wasn’t on the newspaper staff and wasn’t looking to be. But he was interested in writing an editorial about it. “Why don’t you do an internet search to see if other high school newspapers have faced similar issues? That way your opinion could be backed up by what others have faced.” He nodded and declared, “That could be cool,” and went off to track down articles. Later he showed us a folder with eleven articles he had printed, read, and annotated. “That’s a lot of reading you’ve done,” one of us said. “Yeah, but this was good reading because it counted. You know? It was, like, reading for a reason, but not the teacher’s reason. Like, to complete an assignment. It was, like, you know, real reading.”
Ben reminded us not only that we should avoid using “like” as punctuation, but also that we should not say that reading changes us; instead, it is more accurate, more honest, to say it enables the reader to change something, it places in her hands the intellectual tools by which some something is transformed, if only slightly.
The ultimate purpose and promise of reading: Change
What might “real reading” allow and invite us to change? First and important, it might enable us to change ourselves. It might give us the opportunity to hold in our hands our thoughts, our values, and our assumptions or beliefs, and stare at them in quiet. Doing so, we might reflect on their adequacy and accuracy and then decide, with the clarity of vision that quiet reflection might give us, that what we have brought to the text could be reshaped. We might find that the text reshapes it little, perhaps simply confirming what we have already thought and come to trust, and perhaps giving us more reason to continue thinking what we have always thought.
We might, on the other hand, find that the text causes us to change, perhaps drastically, our thinking. We might find that we have a new perspective, new information. Perhaps it gives us the information needed to do something, just as it did Ben when he read about a problem and then moved to writing about it. We may find that it leads us to reject ideas we had held and perhaps valued for ideas that seem stronger and truer. We might not be happy giving up cherished notions, but as literate adults we know that holding on to old beliefs when a new one is more substantial, more accurate, is simply to admit that we prefer ignorance over knowledge. Or, if not ignorance, then stubbornness. Knowing means we can change; knowing and not changing suggests something about us, something about our character, our ethics, our courage, our willingness to stand against some or many when that is needed.
Teaching, especially language teaching, should yield people who seek such change, who strive to bring their language and the physical world in which they live into some harmony with one another, with the ultimate goal of improving the quality of life for us all.
Forged by Reading is our effort to help you convince your students that reading can lead to change, that it can empower them to take some control over their own thinking, and thus perhaps over their own world.