Reading the World

      Reading Dana Gioia's “On the Importance of Reading,” I found myself muttering a confession – “Guilty!”
     She indicts young people (but her point could apply to my generation as well) for their obsession with entertainment and sports celebrities, and turning their backs on literature. At best, she says, they're Webmongers who “pull something from here and there,” (p. 21) a bit like people at an all-you-can-eat buffet who want a taste of everything, but never really focus on much of anything. As a culture, she laments, we've lost the ability to savor our food, so to speak, since reading for pleasure has all but bitten the dust.
      I say I'm guilty because, though I love literature and majored in it as an undergrad, my interests have been, though I can't say why, more in creative expression – songwriting, fiction writing – than in reading. When I do read, it's often psychological or spiritual self-help or a biography. Where's my thirst for the next Gatsby? I look around for someone to blame, but I come up empty-handed.
     Like Gioia, I weep for the loss of national interest in the arts. As a lover of the arts – especially songwriting and films – I've often felt a misfit in a mass of sports and reality TV devotees. As a (backsliding) lover of literature, I've often felt like a leper in a nation that seems to despise books – unless they're made into blockbuster films. Certainly this national disdain for the arts is the most significant headwind we face in helping students learn to embrace reading.
      Perhaps the NEA's pro-reading campaign, “The Big Read,” is moving in the right direction. Jolliffe and Harl's artcle, “Studying the 'Reading Transition' from High School to College” resonates with Gioia's emphasis on modeling reading for our students, as does Gee's “What is Literacy?” Gee points out that students learn valuable meta-cognitive skills from teaching, but that the most practical education comes from giving students exposure to material and letting them practice on their own.     
      According to this philosophy, reading classes, insofar as their attempts to impart reading skills, only take time away from allowing students to truly immerse themselves in reading for pleasure – the best way to promote acquisition, as opposed to learning.  Aside from guiding young primary school readers in the fundamentals, Gee makes a compelling point that such discourse is best acquired without any instruction.   Personally speaking, my love for books came from my high school's outside reading requirement. Coerced to choose books I liked, I was amazed that reading was fun.
      Jolliffe and Harl suggest a major obstacle blocking high school and college students from deeper engagement with reading, especially course texts, is their inability to see the practical benefits. Wherever possible, the authors recommend teachers make explicit the connections between course readings and future applications.  In a world where students are increasingly driven by financial concerns, these applications need to be clear. (I can relate.   Keen to understand the payoff, I was always the lone student in my algebra class asking, “But when are going to use this?”  Stumped, the teacher stalled and stammered but could only offer, “It's required for trig.”)
     As English teachers, to the extent that it's possible, we need to show students how improved reading and writing is vital to their success in the workplace, in critical thinking (to defend themselves against less than scrupulous marketeers and politicians), and to, as Gioia reminds us, pursue beauty in the arts, including literature, as a “necessary component of a life of self-realization.” (p. 19)
      In finding common ground with our students, using electronic media in the classroom seems the most obvious place to start, whether we're hoping to ignite their interest in course readings or help them develop a love for pleasure reading, much as Jolliffe and Harl posit. Blessed as we are at State with iLearn, we might assume that all colleges are on the same (web)page, but a bit of research suggests other institutions may have a ways to go.  For my money, blogging is the essential component of any course aimed at promoting an expansion of student consciousness into the realm of the academic discourse community.
      It just makes sense to meet students on their own terms – which echoes Paolo Freire's piece, “The Importance of the Act of Reading.”  He emphasizes (again and again!) the necessity of beginning instruction with students' reading of the world around them, and that the act of reading books is then just a logical expansion of that healthy curiosity.  It's essential to present reading and writing as tools for students to discover their own voices, express themselves and speak out against injustice wherever they find it.
      A question: Gee says that, generally speaking, a discourse is mastered through acquisition, not learning, and that school exposes students mostly to learning, not acquisition. How true is this?  What of the lessons students learn from teachers' own modeling of attitudes and of discourse?