“The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books: To read a book, it helps to have read a book in high school.” by Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic published October 1, 2024.
Once again, high school English teachers are pinned as the problem of America’s “reading crisis.” This clickbait headline will affirm public opinion that our current education system is failing students (at least in reading), and though not directly stated (and I’m for sure overly sensitive), teachers are not doing their jobs. Interestingly, I agree with many of Horowitch’s arguments – students are reading less books in school primarily due to testing, technology is an issue, and students are more distracted in general – but I also think the argument was oversimplified and want to address a few ommitted points.
I was one of the two unnamed high school teachers interviewed for this article. I received a call from a friend at NCTE who asked if I would speak with Horowitch and spent 35 minutes on the phone with her on September 9th and followed up with a few more thoughts via email the next day. The other teacher, Carrie M. Santo-Thomas, responded with her thoughts in The Atlantic Did Me Dirty shortly after the story was published. I loved reading Santo-Thomas’ response and agreed with so many of her ideas even though I never felt wronged. In fairness Santo-Thomas invested far more time with this project than I.
Since the release of the article, I have thought so much about what’s happening in my classroom and how I’m sending students to college. Are we reading enough in class? Are we reading the “right” books? Are my students really reading? How am I teaching reading? And maybe most importantly do students value reading?
First – my bit in the article: “An Advanced Placement English Literature teacher in Atlanta told me that the class used to read 14 books each year. Now they’re down to six or seven.” As Swift would say, “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.” Here’s, however, the context of that quote which I explained to Horowitch. When I inherited AP Literature 13 years ago, the class read 14 books. This seemed too many for the way I wanted to structure class, and I cut the reading list to 8 my first year. This year, students will read a total of 7 books (Brave New World, Frankenstein, Hamlet, and Fences as a whole class novels/plays, the poetry collection Counting Descent, and a choice novella and a choice dystopian novel). In full transparency, this number is up from the past couple of years due to instructional shifts during the pandemic. Seven books in one year (block schedule where I see my students every other day) feels right for me and my students.
So yes, we are reading less books, but one lesson I’ve learned the longer I teach is less is sometimes more. We are accomplishing our class goals without a mountainous workload; it’s just not necessary or practical in today’s school setting to overload students who are already overscheduled. Rigor, which in the last decade has been a big push, is not more texts but rather what we’re asking students to do with those texts. However, this is where the issue becomes complex: by reading less books in class, students in general are reading less which is most likely part of the issue the professors in the article note. And while I structure my class around deep reading (less texts but doing more with them), I do believe there’s benefits to reading widely as well.
Another thing I wonder about is how we’re teaching reading in high school. In my class reading lessons have shifted from plot-oriented to skill-focused lessons. By providing instruction on specific skills such as structural elements, characterization, figurative language, etc., students have tools to enter a text and make meaning of it. I’ve had a lot of success with these lessons, but these lessons make the assumption that students are good readers (which is a fair assumption in an Advanced Placement English class). I’ve realized that I need to have more conversations with students about the actual act of reading. To do this I talk about how driving on curvy mountainous roads is different from driving on wide open straight roads.
These images start the conversation about reading speed and how mature readers adjust their speed based on the passage. We also talk about specific reading strategies such as chunking a text, annotating, deconstructing sentences for understanding, and self-questioning, and I’ve found that these conversations have been just as valuable in student learning as the skill lessons which leads me to believe that we abandon reading instruction far too early in education.
Another point in the article that is worth addressing is the quote about what types of books are being read. Horowitch writes, “For years, Dames has asked his first-years about their favorite book. In the past, they cited books such as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Now, he says, almost half of them cite young-adult books. Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series seems to be a particular favorite.” I wonder if students are just reading less canonical books or the books that many professors deem college worthy. I frequently see students with unassigned books opened and reading for pleasure. I’ll also add that this year our school has required students to lock phones in Yondr pouches during the day, so students are less distracted and have more time to read. I ask students each year to make reading recommendations for our faculty and am always surprised to see what books students recommend. High school and college instructors need to widen the canon to not only include more diverse voices but different genres of literature as well.
Finally, the problem is far bigger than the classroom that’s addressed in the article: society as a whole does not value reading like it used to. Each year a new article is released stating that Americans are reading less – pick a year, pick any news source, and you’ll find something to support this. I have surrounded myself with a group of book-loving friends who are always talking about books but wonder how many students are listening to conversations about books in their daily lives. I remember Shanna Peeples once saying that as English teachers our job is selling literature to students; I’ll take this a step further and add that our job is not selling literature to students but to society as a whole. I hope that in the future we will see a shift from STEM (STEAM – whatever, it’s all the same) education to a more holistic approach that includes and values the humanities instead of positioning them as an afterthought. Until then I will be working overtime to promote and value a culture of reading both inside and outside of the classroom. (I am actually speaking on this topic later this month and will follow up with some action steps).
I’ll close with this quote from author Katherine Patterson: “It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading. Something that will stretch their imaginations—something that will help them make sense of their own lives and encourage them to reach out toward people whose lives are quite different from their own.” My hope is students leave E216 feeling that they were given something worth reading and they are better students – and more importantly people – because of it.
Susan Barber teaches AP® English Literature at Midtown High School in Atlanta, Georgia, and serves on the AP® Literature Development Committee. She is the coauthor of The Norton Guide to AP® Literature: Writing & Skills (2022), forthcoming engaging lessons book with Brian Sztabnik (Corwin), ELA consultant, and speaker. Susan is most proud of the work she does on a daily basis in E216 and never tires of the beauty and chaos of the classroom which are chronicled at MuchAdoAboutTeaching.com.
