“Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.”~Sir Francis Bacon There is beauty in this 3 step plan when followed in the classroom but oh so very difficult to do.
I have sympathy for the difficulty, but I know teachers that are doing it and doing it well. My dad is 82 and still teaching English. He retired but couldn’t help himself and came back to keep going.
Bless your father! I retired early for family crises and began my life goal of writing but returned during Covid and stayed on for two more years. Back to my novel now, but posts like these make me cry. I miss the ah-ha moments—like when the boy whose grandparents took the door off his bedroom and made him read Ethan Frome over the weekend. He told me it was a “kick-ass” book —hand up for every discussion—new insights from his perspective. It changed me. Or the time a student, who read a critical article on tanistry (I hadn’t read) for Macbeth told me with such passion, “it changes everything!”—I read the article, and it did!
Thank you Mr. Miller and Mr. Ryan for the inspiration!
I’m a homeschool mom of three boys (ages 15, 13 and 10). It is fascinating to me that they have been totally immersed in books their entire lives. I read to them for hours each day even before they were born. They see my husband and I read and discuss books and enjoy book clubs. We visit libraries and book stores at least once a month, if not weekly. We still do a daily read aloud with them, sometimes met with much eye-rolling. We have an extensive home library with books in every room.
The fascinating aspect of my boys growth is that I have seen their time spent reading by choice ebb and flow over the years and through the seasons.
“Forced” reading has paid off in these early teen years when they would rather be doing almost anything else.
It at least keeps them between the pages a little! I require 30-minutes a day minimum.
I am noticing that even for my very well-read young men, who do know the love and joy of a great book, the pull of social experiences and physical exertion through sports and adventure often trump curling up with a good book in their choice time.
Observing myself and my boys, I realize that, like water and electricity, humans tend to take the path of least resistance. The choice/opportunity is ours’ as educators to provide much needed resistance training for the brain!
I will continue to require daily reading and discussion even if it is not what they would choose. I do so in hopes that they will continue to grow into capable and competent communicators and thinkers!
#CanonChat is beautiful resistance training. Learning about that makes me sad that I am not on Twitter. Maybe someday on Substack?? LOL! Thank you for what you do!! I am glad there are still teachers fighting for quality reading opportunities! With you in the fight!!
Yes, this great. I think the prime place to engender a love of literature is the home. Some folks will never grow up to be readers—that’s the breaks, and everyone’s different. I’ve got five kids. My middle son, read voraciously in middle school, found football, and then lost all interest in books. The rest of my kids love it. I read to my daughter every evening, and it’s a highlight of our day. But none of my kids read what I love or see literature quite the same way. It’s a very individual thing—and should be.
I bow to no one in my appreciation of the Classics, but I don't think they are the place to start encouraging students to read. Time has set up barriers to comprehension, not only of the language but of the historical and societal milieu in which classic stories are set. The problem is that there is little or nothing in the literature of today that is apt to naturally lead an eager reader backward into the canon as their love of reading matures.
And I think we have to be very careful when it comes to teaching the classics as an approach to reading. There are, I think, three main causes of the decline of reading: the first being the rise of alternate forms of entertainment, the second being postmodernism, which has killed the classical notion of story and storytelling, and the third being the teaching of English, itself quite a recent addition to the curriculum.
The problem with teaching literature is that it changes reading from an immersive experience of a story, which almost everyone enjoys, to an analytical examination of a text, which very few people enjoy. Those who do enjoy the analytical examination of a text seem to imagine that most readers love reading in the same way. This is false, and teaching children that this is the right way to read is not going to lead them to the classics; it is going to lead them to TikTok.
Which leaves us with a dual problem. First, that there is not much to say in a classroom that inculcates a love of immersive reading, and nothing at all to set exam papers on. Second, that postmodernism has left us with very few contemporary texts that might either encourage immersive reading or lead people back to the classics.
I have great sympathy, therefore, with people trying to tackle the problem in the classroom. But ultimately I think it has to be addressed in the bookstores and in the publishing houses, and in a revived spirit of classical storytelling among contemporary authors.
Some truth there for sure. But Matt’s own classroom would argue against a hesitance to teach the classics. His students are reading East of Eden—hardly an easy text—and many love it. I don’t think the classroom is the only or even most important place to inculcate a love of reading; as far as I can see, that’s the home. But schools play a part, and good teachers are still having a go of it.
Besides, this isn’t a binary. There are plenty of wonderful 20th century books—modern classics—that resonate with high-school students. My 25-year-old son still talks about Ernest Gaines’s A Gathering of Old Men, which he read at 16 for English. There are countless books like that: Their Eyes Were Watching God, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color Purple, The Great Gatsby, Slaughterhouse-Five, Kindred, Lord of the Flies, A Clockwork Orange, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Things Fall Apart, and on and on.
“Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.”~Sir Francis Bacon There is beauty in this 3 step plan when followed in the classroom but oh so very difficult to do.
I have sympathy for the difficulty, but I know teachers that are doing it and doing it well. My dad is 82 and still teaching English. He retired but couldn’t help himself and came back to keep going.
Bless your father! I retired early for family crises and began my life goal of writing but returned during Covid and stayed on for two more years. Back to my novel now, but posts like these make me cry. I miss the ah-ha moments—like when the boy whose grandparents took the door off his bedroom and made him read Ethan Frome over the weekend. He told me it was a “kick-ass” book —hand up for every discussion—new insights from his perspective. It changed me. Or the time a student, who read a critical article on tanistry (I hadn’t read) for Macbeth told me with such passion, “it changes everything!”—I read the article, and it did!
Thank you Mr. Miller and Mr. Ryan for the inspiration!
I’m a homeschool mom of three boys (ages 15, 13 and 10). It is fascinating to me that they have been totally immersed in books their entire lives. I read to them for hours each day even before they were born. They see my husband and I read and discuss books and enjoy book clubs. We visit libraries and book stores at least once a month, if not weekly. We still do a daily read aloud with them, sometimes met with much eye-rolling. We have an extensive home library with books in every room.
The fascinating aspect of my boys growth is that I have seen their time spent reading by choice ebb and flow over the years and through the seasons.
“Forced” reading has paid off in these early teen years when they would rather be doing almost anything else.
It at least keeps them between the pages a little! I require 30-minutes a day minimum.
I am noticing that even for my very well-read young men, who do know the love and joy of a great book, the pull of social experiences and physical exertion through sports and adventure often trump curling up with a good book in their choice time.
Observing myself and my boys, I realize that, like water and electricity, humans tend to take the path of least resistance. The choice/opportunity is ours’ as educators to provide much needed resistance training for the brain!
I will continue to require daily reading and discussion even if it is not what they would choose. I do so in hopes that they will continue to grow into capable and competent communicators and thinkers!
#CanonChat is beautiful resistance training. Learning about that makes me sad that I am not on Twitter. Maybe someday on Substack?? LOL! Thank you for what you do!! I am glad there are still teachers fighting for quality reading opportunities! With you in the fight!!
Yes, this great. I think the prime place to engender a love of literature is the home. Some folks will never grow up to be readers—that’s the breaks, and everyone’s different. I’ve got five kids. My middle son, read voraciously in middle school, found football, and then lost all interest in books. The rest of my kids love it. I read to my daughter every evening, and it’s a highlight of our day. But none of my kids read what I love or see literature quite the same way. It’s a very individual thing—and should be.
I bow to no one in my appreciation of the Classics, but I don't think they are the place to start encouraging students to read. Time has set up barriers to comprehension, not only of the language but of the historical and societal milieu in which classic stories are set. The problem is that there is little or nothing in the literature of today that is apt to naturally lead an eager reader backward into the canon as their love of reading matures.
And I think we have to be very careful when it comes to teaching the classics as an approach to reading. There are, I think, three main causes of the decline of reading: the first being the rise of alternate forms of entertainment, the second being postmodernism, which has killed the classical notion of story and storytelling, and the third being the teaching of English, itself quite a recent addition to the curriculum.
The problem with teaching literature is that it changes reading from an immersive experience of a story, which almost everyone enjoys, to an analytical examination of a text, which very few people enjoy. Those who do enjoy the analytical examination of a text seem to imagine that most readers love reading in the same way. This is false, and teaching children that this is the right way to read is not going to lead them to the classics; it is going to lead them to TikTok.
Which leaves us with a dual problem. First, that there is not much to say in a classroom that inculcates a love of immersive reading, and nothing at all to set exam papers on. Second, that postmodernism has left us with very few contemporary texts that might either encourage immersive reading or lead people back to the classics.
I have great sympathy, therefore, with people trying to tackle the problem in the classroom. But ultimately I think it has to be addressed in the bookstores and in the publishing houses, and in a revived spirit of classical storytelling among contemporary authors.
Some truth there for sure. But Matt’s own classroom would argue against a hesitance to teach the classics. His students are reading East of Eden—hardly an easy text—and many love it. I don’t think the classroom is the only or even most important place to inculcate a love of reading; as far as I can see, that’s the home. But schools play a part, and good teachers are still having a go of it.
Besides, this isn’t a binary. There are plenty of wonderful 20th century books—modern classics—that resonate with high-school students. My 25-year-old son still talks about Ernest Gaines’s A Gathering of Old Men, which he read at 16 for English. There are countless books like that: Their Eyes Were Watching God, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color Purple, The Great Gatsby, Slaughterhouse-Five, Kindred, Lord of the Flies, A Clockwork Orange, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Things Fall Apart, and on and on.
There isn’t one response to the reading crisis, but there’s no reason to give up on schools. And read this exchange with Josh Philips on the same: https://www.millersbookreview.com/p/joshua-d-phillips-wrestling-coach-bets-on-tolstoy-and-dante-to-save-the-classics-and-young-men
What a fascinating and inspiring interview. Thanks to both of you.
Matt is inspirational. I ran into him on Twitter and have been nothing but impressed by what he’s up to.
Fantastic. And he's a Van Halen enthusiast, which places him on a higher plane.
What’s not to love?!
Excellent. Many thanks for this.
My pleasure!