Genuinely curious.
There were a lot of times in my elementary school (I'm in my 20s now) when the teachers would give us – kids, – an impossibly long list of books we had to read during summer, or books we had to read in a week or so during some studies (and then instantly have a test on it) and then yell at us if we were late or haven't understood something from the books. As well as the literature teacher just being completely disinterested in the subject or interested herself but unable to make us interested and thus being boring.
This caused me to despise reading for a very long time. There was a moment where I only read comics and just almost physically couldn't read any of the classic literature.
It took a few very specific and quite modernly written books to get me back into reading and for me to finally understand the wonders of this medium.
Did something like this ever happen to you?
by IronTownPictures
28 Comments
I didn’t enjoy reading books for assignments, purely because they were being dissected and had to be read at a pace that I didn’t set. As an adult, I’ve returned to several of those books and enjoyed them much more now. My favorites to come back to are Lord of the Flies and Pride and Prejudice.
7th 8th 9th and 10th grade my class was required to read lord of the flights, wrote several essays on sections of the book several tests, i havent read a book since 2010, 10th grade. i hated that book so much the first time i read it
You sound exactly like my sister. Got totally turned off of reading in school and didn’t start reading for pleasure until she was well out of school (ten years or so).
It’s hard in school when it’s all about what you have to read instead of what you want to read. I remember an English teacher asking me what I thought of the book I was reading for free time. When I admitted I didn’t like it, she said I should return it and get something else. It blew my mind to hear an English teacher say I didn’t have to finish a book.
Now, I remind myself that reading should be enjoyable and if it’s not I need to change something.
lol no, i was a kid of immigrants who did not speak english at home. my school did this fun thing with french and english books where they increased difficulty by level and you got stickers as you progressed. when I could read at a decent level (seven-ish) with a high enough vocab, I picked up fantasy through harry potter, developed a fascination with history, comics, etc.
Very common, even as an adult when you are studying a subject you love at university. You can get burnt out, post graduation, I couldn’t pick up a book for at least a year. And I didn’t want anyone to tell me what they were reading either!
I have never re-read a book that was required reading. OTOH, I regularly re-read pretty much all of the other books I’ve picked up.
I‘m one of those weird people who really enjoyed reading books in school.
I loved dissecting the books, talking about them, interpreting them and picking apart every single sentence.
I actually quite miss this kind of literary discussion
No, school caused me to love reading.
Actually, I had only a few friends, so I used to choose one book in the library and read while other people were chatting.
School helped me to like books, but I avoided social interaction, which was bad, but less social anxiety.
Somewhat?
I was a massive reader since early childhood, so I had my head in a book (including during those classes).
It did kill my want to try reading any classics for several years though, after sitting through Shakespeare (and only doing Romeo and Juliet several times, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream once), a billion russian classics and national poets and short stories I found incredibly boring. Only ones I found interesting was the old greek classics.
We never touched on any other influental works aside from those. I think if we got to go through some more varied material it wouldn’t have been so bad, like a Jane Austen novel, the Count of Monte Cristo, the Great Gatsby, Frankenstein, Little Women…
It was like the professors were set on only covering what stuffy elitist old men considered proper literature and nothing else. Looking back I’m astounded at how many great authors and classic works that shaped whole genres of literature and later film we completely ignored.
I have always loved to read, but hated the required reading given to me in school. I still refuse to read Hawthorn or Irving.
Grad school did this to me. I went a couple years without reading any books. Then little by little I went back to loving it because it was up to me what and when I read
Not really. I didn’t start reading until I was an adult because my mom really wanted me to read so she turned reading into a chore and put it in competition with hobbies I already naturally enjoyed.
As far as my school went highschool made it so that half the time you could choose from several diverse books to do reports and essays on so this allowed students to discover reading niches.
No. I loved it. It was genuinely my favorite thing aside from acting I did in school. I was embarrassed that the books I read were like Magic Tree House or Hardy Boys. I wanted to stop reading children’s books and grow up. I wanted to explore what the classics were and why they’re so beloved. Finding themes in To Kill A Mockingbird or whatever book was the funnest thing to do in school that I couldn’t get in trouble for. Except for the time I got in trouble for reading in another class and later that day I won an award for reading and that same teacher presented it. She was laughing as she gave it to me.
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2
Its easy for an educator to spoil something a student otherwise enjoys. We all have different tastes and ways of learning and its nearly impossible to reach every student.
What kept me reading, despite my early teachers, was having a brother into D&D, a librarian mother, a dad into sci-fi, and a nerd step mom Id swap books with.
Admitredly thats a lot of support, and I was very lucky, but the point is that there are a myriad of ways to find your way to something you enjoy even if society’s main path might deter you.
People talk about school “ruining reading” for them a lot but honestly I’d wager a guess that a good portion of those people would also find that basically *anything* that required vigorous effort like school would “ruin” reading for them as well. It’s just that school is a fairly universal thing that takes a lot of time and effort for a period of years. I was a music major, and *that* “ruined” music for me for a while. It’s just normal desire to keep work and play separate, and possibly burnout.
School ending (university or HS) also usually coincides with people turning to adults and becoming completely in charge of their own free time. Most people develop some bad habits in that time from the loss of structure, and end up having to regain the good habits again as they get a bit older.
Personally, I think that I’m just cautious of this rhetoric because there is an enormous anti-intellectualism movement happening right now, and there has been for a while. Yes, people may have some of the fun of reading ruined for a while when they have to do it for school, but what’s the alternative? That we never force school children to read or analyze books? We already have a literacy crisis happening.
It kind of sounds like you just had some bad teachers if they were yelling at you for not understanding. That doesnt mean the issue is reading in schools any more than a math teacher yelling would make the issue math in schools.
Being able to read things you don’t enjoy is also an important skill. School isn’t there just to show you fun stuff.
Pretty sure this is common.
I was a book fiend as a kid. I would read anything in front of me. Then along came Junior high and the “read these chapters and write a 150 word essay on the theme”.
**Yawn**.
Didn’t read a book from about seventh grade through eleventh grade, when I had a stellar literature teacher who did away with “what is the theme” and instead moderated a solid classroom discussion.
Weirdly, this did not happen to me. I liked reading as a kid and read everything…except those summer reading lists which contained books that in my opinion were supposed to teach you things that due to the structure of school the teacher didn’t really have time to explain. So you skimmed it, or used (man I’m old) the Cliff’s Notes and memorized just enough to pass the test they were going to give.
But those books – Lord of the Flies, 1984, Animal House, To Kill a Mockingbird – did have lessons. If you had week of classes to discuss. But teachers don’t have that kind of time. And we were teens, and we were NOT listening.
What we needed then – and what we need now – were/are contemporary versions that contain the same concepts and provoke the same thinking.
School reading classes remind me of if extremist metalheads controlled music class at school.
Death metal is the only good music and if you don’t like it, you don’t like music. Then they complain that kids end up hating music.
If we allowed kids to read whatever they like, we’d have so many more adults reading.
As it is, you have to happen upon interest in reading again to get back into it.
Literature is an art, let kids find what they like in those classes and support their choices.
Hot take:
Instead of expecting children to engage with important works of fiction, schools should just give them shit that they would _already_ want to read. Like, the kids like _Star Wars_ or video games or TV shows like _Euphoria_ or whatever? Give them the book equivalents of those things, like _Star Wars_ novels.
Yeah, people should engage with challenging works instead of staying in their comfort zones. But accessible media is the gateway drug to that shit.
Who is more likely to go on to read Dostoevsky? A kid who was turned off reading by being forced to read a book that just wasn’t meeting them where they were at, or a kid who fell in love with reading by reading _Assassin’s Creed_ novelizations? Probably the one already in the habit of reading. Because readers read and non-readers don’t.
So, yeah, if you ask me, grade-school reading lists should be full of accessible fiction that mirrors what kids already like consuming in other media formats. They’ll find their way to the literary stuff eventually.
I was a bookworm most of my childhood, even through high school. Always had a book (or 2 or 3) to hand. Then college hit and the amount of assigned reading was so massive, I had no time for enjoyment reading so I got out of the habit. About 5 years after beginning my career (as a teacher), I picked up an Agatha Christie. It was a perfect “gateway drug”. Amusing and interesting but you could put it down and walk away if needed. I started working through all the Agatha Christie novels and rediscovered my love for reading. Now I usually have one fiction and several non-fictions in progress at any point.
I always hated reading growing up. Turns out I hated being told what to read. As an adult I completely read between 25-60 books a year. I owe a large part of that to being able to put down books I don’t like as soon as I stop liking them. So I’ll end up actually picking up at least 100 books a year but putting them down quickly and moving to the next one if I don’t like it. A ton goes into my willingness to read a book but mood has a lot to do with it.
I’m sure there’s a good way to recreate this type of reading habit in children I’m just not sure how feasible it is for most schools
I was so shell-shocked from my science degree I didn’t read for over a year.
Considering I went on to get an MA in Literature…no. There were reading assignments I didn’t enjoy, of course, and especially in high school. A good English teacher really makes all the difference. I had a couple of absolute duds and a couple of real standouts, but I have always like reading for fun.
I will say, it’s very unlikely your summer reading list was truly impossibly long, unless you were assigned Ulysses, Paradise Lost, and In Search of Lost Time or something. Reading 3 to 5 novels of average length over the summer shouldn’t really be a challenge.
I’ll preface with I had great teachers who really did have a passion for the works discussed and honestly did their damnedest to make it all interesting. My issue was with the structure and expectations.
It didn’t make me *despise* reading, but it really didn’t push me to actually read the assigned books themselves either. Between band, hockey, homework for 5 or so other classes, etc., *what time do you expect me to read all of this with???* I didn’t learn to read faster, I learned to pick up on summaries better. Hell, I took a test on Hamlet that I got an A on because I’d heard along the way that Hamlet was basically just the Lion King but more depressing.
It did little to foster a love of reading at all, just taught me how to navigate assignments without actually doing the required reading. Which is a great life skill, but not so much a reading skill.
But I get it, there’s finite time for teachers to get through the books they have to cover for the year too, and they’re just doing the best with what they have to go on. Props to the ones who made class interesting even if I had little to no idea what was going on in the book!