The Classroom as Reading Space
One of the first things I realized when I started teaching was that the students were not doing the reading. Given that I was an English Teacher, that was problematic. It’s a bit hard teaching the beauties of Shakespeare or Tolstoy to students who haven’t read Shakespeare or Tolstoy. What they read instead, I soon came to discover, were online summaries of the assigned readings, which were replaced after a while by video summaries. That was when they bothered to do any preparation at all; as often as not, they would simply ignore the reading assignments altogether, and willingly accept the hit to their grade when quiz time rolled around.
The culprit behind this aversion to reading was, of course, the screen – the television screen, the phone screen, all the many screens. The flashing, screaming onslaught of sound and image for hours a day, for years on end, eventually wears down the capacities for concentration required of any high level reading. Nothing was more obvious to those of us who labored in the classroom than that such a process was playing out deep within the brain-cases of most of the students seated around us.
Nonetheless, those in charge made little effort to confront this state of affairs. They seemed to regard the impoverished literacy we were all seeing as some unfortunate but none too consequential trend among contemporary students, like too great an enthusiasm for Pokemon cards, which we might all shake our heads at, but should not fuss over too much. As though literacy was just one of many skills to be imparted in a school. As though there was any such thing as an education which was not built on a foundation of advanced literacy. As though there was such a thing as an educated person who had not – or could not – read fine books. They simply accepted the current situation, blind to the absurd pretence of running a school in which students did not read.
Well, I did not accept it, and since undertaking my current role as head of a classical studies program, I have sought for ways to ensure that our students are reading the material we are assigning. Adolescents do not stop being adolescents once they are enrolled in a classical school, and the temptations and distractions of modern life do not fall into abeyance the moment they enter our doors. Left to their own devices (and I use the word advisedly), most of our students would likely fall into the same habits of reading aversion as their non-classical peers. The only thing that will make a difference is a willingness on the part of we, their instructors, to confront and overcome that aversion.
There are several different methods that we have experimented with, but the one that seems to bear the greatest fruit is the simplest and most straightforward – we read a significant portion of the material together in class with our students. Seated in a circle, each student with a text in hand, we have them take turns reading from the material, clarifying and discussing its meaning as we go. Rather than crossing our fingers and hoping that our students will put aside their Nintendo Switch for half an hour and do their reading assignment at home, we take that half hour in class to make certain that they do.
Of course, we do not suppose that we can read the entirety of a work like the Iliad or Crime and Punishment together with our students in class. The goal is to read enough in class to generate the momentum for the students to willingly continue the reading on their own. So we generally start off reading together, establishing the tone and direction of the text together, and addressing any particular difficulties that emerge from its reading. Then, as we make our way through the text, we will intersperse a limited number of reading assignments to be read at home with the reading of passages in class, typically those that are key to the thematic development of the work. I would never claim this approach has served as a panacea, but we do see higher rates of reading from our students when we approach the text in this manner.
The obvious objection to this method is that it takes up class time that might be spent on other things. We are fortunate in working with a block schedule that allows us ample time to do those other things, even while devoting a considerable portion of the period to group reading. But even if this were not the case, it hardly makes sense to regard time spent reading in class as time subtracted from other forms of instruction, since all forms of instruction in a humanities classroom presuppose regular reading on the part of students. Nothing else will get done properly if reading does not get done first. Ideally, yes, it would be wonderful if our students came to our classes prepared with the reading assignments every day. But that is no longer the world we educators work in. We can either continue to bemoan this state of affairs, or take practical steps to address it.
But I would not want to justify this method as some sort of necessary evil. To the contrary, I have found that reading together with the students in class enhances the text in numerous ways that would not otherwise be the case. For one, students have the opportunity to hear literary works that were often meant to be heard. They can catch the rhythm and the intonation of the language in ways that would elude them through silent reading at home. They learn that reading a work is a form of interpretation, and of course, they become acclimated to speaking aloud to a group of their peers.
The discussions that result when we read together in class arise more organically than when I come in prepped to lead a discussion on a reading assignment. Rather than me pre-selecting the passages for the class to focus on, we wind up focusing on the passages that attract the attention of the students as we progress through the text, the passages that impress, surprise, bewilder, annoy, confound, or inspire the students themselves. Almost always, as a result of these spontaneous responses to the text, the conversation goes in directions I would never have thought to steer it on my own.
This immediate encounter with the text often becomes an occasion for the students to grow immersed in the twists and turns of a plot, or the slow development of a philosopher’s train of thought. As this happens, a palpable interest - and on the best occasions, an excitement – gets expressed by a handful of students, which piques the enthusiasm of other students, until the larger part of the class has caught the intellectual passion of those first few. I have watched this dynamic play out numerous times in class; as we read together, the engagement and interest of a few inspires their peers, and motivates them to engage with the material in a more concentrated manner. This too is an experience that students cannot have when reading on their own.
For all these reasons, in-class reading has become an established practice in our program, and will continue to be so. But the most compelling reason of all lies simply in the fact that this approach provides us with the one certain means of ensuring that our students are encountering the wise and beautiful works on our curriculum, and encountering wisdom and beauty is the sine qua non of our whole course of study. If we believe, as we do, that there is a tremendous value in experiencing the words of Homer and Plato and Dostoyevsky, then we must make it a priority to ensure that our students do so.
The reading of good books is not one of many educational practices, that can be safely neglected in favour of other practices. The reading of good books is the heart and soul of education. That is what educators in the classical tradition have always believed, and it is up to us to do whatever it takes to make sure that it remains that way.