September 9, 2009

The Importance of Reading and Writing

Greetings!
With the beginning of a new year it seems as though there has been an inundation of discussion and discourse on the topic of young people and reading. I am always intrigued by the topic as it is one area where, I am sure, our schools are failing-- and thus, creating a vicious cycle which will only weaken our social system, from the work-force and economy to the leaders we create for political and industry leadership.
Bottom line: for some reason there is a large percentage of students who think that it is okay to NOT read. With great sadness I believe that this is a group of young people who will, many of them at least, look back in retrospect on their teenage years and wish they would have had a book in their hands. Or, perhaps, their ignorance won't permit that. Regardless, it seems that the subject has been appearing quite often in the headlines. Some of the better articles that I have seen are linked below:

Each of the short essays is on a different aspect of importance in the educational journey of young people, written wonderfully by a long-term professor at one of a number of distinguished institutions. I implore you to read them all (which would take, perhaps, 15 minutes). But if you have to choose just one, I recommend the brief essay, Off-Campus Life. However, they're EACH wonderful.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/opinion/06collegeadvice.html?em

This is a wonderful post by Stanley Fish (who also had the first short essay in the above link). The problem that occurs- and that which Fish points out- is that the lack of reading does not just affect the student. The obvious lack of reading carries over into his/her writing, verbal communication, vocabulary, effect on others, all-around competency, etc . . .  I believe it's something that needs to be taken very seriously. Fish follows up on this post with 2 more posts on the same topic, eloquently titled "What Should Colleges Teach part 2 and part 3).
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/what-should-colleges-teach/

This was just a very interesting post which highlighted the different sides of the debate on whether or not summer reading is healthy. Bottom line: OF COURSE summer reading is healthy. What would be unhealthy about reading? Ever? There's something inherently sad about the fact that this is even up for debate. See for yourself. But I think that giving the students a summer off of reading as if we are treating it like a chore and not a pleasure, is the worst example of reinforcement I could imagine.
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/the-crush-of-summer-homework/?scp=2&sq=lack%20of%20reading%20skills&st=cse

I recently asked a good friend, who is a Professor of English, whether she has experienced these issues since she began teaching over 10 years ago. Her response was simple: She told me that she 'cannot take the time to revise papers as she used to because, although the university continues to boast higher admission standards and "more intelligent" incoming classes each year (higher SAT/ACT scores and GPA's), her students demonstrate a lower level of understanding of how to form a sentence, let alone a decent argument.' In other words, we are sending our students off to college-- they are graduating from our high schools-- without the ability to write a thesis statement and supporting ideas.

Reflect on this and think about the last time you read a student's writing and were impressed. Let us not lower our standards.

Thanks for reading. I always love hearing from my readers so please do keep your emails coming.