"I don't like reading," my friend said to me one morning as she refused my book recommendation. Shocked, I stopped waving my worn copy of Watership Down in her face and stared in amazement.
How was this possible? My friend is intelligent, well-spoken, and a fervent debater. As I probed further, she explained her dwindling interest in the written word and told me that when she was younger she enjoyed reading. However, as high school began and the amount of work and time spent reading mandatory texts grew, her independent reading deteriorated.
Horrified at the possibility that my favorite pastime was quickly becoming obsolete, I did some research. Frequent and sensible complaints included that in school, books that kids don't like must be finished and thoroughly imbibed. Far too few kids encounter books they really enjoy. Even for the most avid reader, being forced to slog through a dense and uninteresting book would inevitably cause some resentment.
Another problem which I have often encountered is that there is very little wiggle room for opinion in high school English. Don't like Catcher in the Rye? You just don't appreciate good literature. Find Macbeth long and arduous to read? Your mind isn't sophisticated enough to appreciate Shakespeare. Students are made to feel guilty for enjoying 'low brow' books, as if a preference for Harry Potter over Heart of Darkness indicates a fatal character flaw and a prediction of quickly declining intellect. Who is going to choose a hobby for which they are constantly shamed and belittled when they can just as easily reach for the remote?
However, the most obvious and unavoidable conclusion is that schools teach kids that reading is a chore. The book reports, the daily reading quizzes- all of it sends the message that reading is something to be feared and not taken lightly. Really, whose fault is it that Sparknotes is ubiquitous?
I have often felt that I am missing much of the joy I could be getting out of a book by reading it in class instead of on my own. Forced to milk each passage for every possible interpretation, weighted down by monstrous essays with claustrophobic deadlines and with the dagger of a daily quiz pointed constantly at my throat, it was difficult to sit back and enjoy the acute pleasure of the story. Perhaps if schools allowed students an occasional break from testing and word by word analysis, they wouldn't just read for the grade. Whatever happened to Drop Everything And Read?