A few years back I read Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, Herman Melville’s 1851 epic for the first time. It was not a novel I was assigned to read in high school. As a man in my forties, I would argue that this is the great American novel. If I and been forced to read it at 16 I don’t think I would have liked it. Turning the pages, I kept asking myself why do we MAKE kids read great works of fiction?
Listen, I am a trained educator, and an avid reader. I know the arguments for teaching reading (I have studied educational theories from the ancient Greeks up to the things being released in our lifetime including offshoots like “unschooling”). I also read a lot, I usually read somewhere between 80 and 90 books each year.
We should encourage everyone to read good books, but reading is more than understanding the words and the stories that are in a book. I did a quick Google search which suggested that the vocabulary of Moby Dick is written at a 4th Grade Reading Level. Yet, Melville did not write this book for 4th graders, or even high school children. It is written for adults wrestling with adult problems. A child can gleam truths for Moby Dick. It is hard for me to see how a child can understand the full breadth of emotions and ideas talked about in this book without having lived life.
This is true about many great books. I was assigned to read Great Expectations by Charles Dickens in high school. I didn’t like it. That is actually an understatement, “I didn’t like it” so much that I have not read a Charles Dickens novel in 30 years. Realizing that this was a hole in my knowledge, I just started rereading this book and found the first few chapters hilariously. I look forward to finishing it and even trying a few more Dickens novels.
It is good for people of all ages to challenge themselves, but for those who read a book before they were ready, I hope they try it again. Actually, I hope people normalize rereading great books even if they think they understood them the first time. I have benefited from rereading things like Don Quixote, The Brothers Karamazov, Ulysses and the Bible. Why do we MAKE Kids Read? I hope people read books because they want to, not because a school curriculum forces them to do so.
I think we make kids read for three main reasons. The first is to work their imaginations: when you read a novel, your mind’s eye provides the illustrations. But this faculty works best only when exercised regularly.
The second reason is to build up the reader’s mental database of words, idioms, and modes of verbal expression. Well-read people can express their own ideas and feelings more effectively and accurately, even to themselves. The old Sapir-Whorf hypothesis shouldn’t be taken too strongly, but everyone has experienced that phenomenon where you learn a new word, then you end up mulling over the concept behind the new word and thinking about things you otherwise wouldn’t have.
The third reason is to build cultural literacy. Having a common set of references is an important factor in maintaining social cohesion. With novels having been largely replaced by other forms of media, this third reason may now be entirely outmoded.
Thank you for responding! I agree that reading does all three things that you listed. My question is, do people who are required, or even forced, to read something getting the same benefit as someone who wants to read something, and wrestle with the text? I think all of society has lost something because we don’t have cultural touchstones, but should we force someone to have a cultural understanding? I don’t honestly know where I land on this idea.