I’ve been thinking about this article, and the conversation here, quite a bit over the last day or so. My younger son, currently a HS senior, used to love to read. He’d read all kinds of books, long ones, short ones, fantasy, history, science, whatever, he loved it all. He loved English class. Now, however, that’s really changed. I truly think that AP Lang and AP Lit have ruined his love of reading. All the focus on close reading of the text has really just made it so he doesn’t enjoy the text anymore. English is now his least favorite class because doing the analysis is so mindnumbing to him. He’s struggling to keep up, not because he can’t do the work, but because he hates the way it’s being structured. They just finished reading Beowulf - he got a perfect score on the in class socratic seminar, he can discuss the themes and ideas in it in detail, but he failed on the two homework assignments where he had to do analysis of specific lines of the text - largely because he turned it in late since just doing it was so painstaking to him.
So back to the article - I think the challenge is how we’re discussing reading. His teacher, at back to school night, bragged (at length, it was kind of off putting, to be honest) about how he competes with the other AP Lit teachers in the school and nearby schools to have the highest percentage of students get fours and fives on the exam, and how he teaches so they will perform well on the exam. I suspect that’s where this focus on close reading and analysis comes from. But it’s taking away some of the fun of big picture discussion and thinking big thoughts about themes. Sure, he can support a statement with a quote, but is that the point? And is that maybe part of what this discussion is (or should be) about? It’s not just the rise of smart phones and social media. But with the focus on learning how to beat a test, we’re missing out on some of the higher level and, frankly, more interesting conversations about literature, and how to think about it and discuss it and learn and grow from it.
My kid, who used to devour books - both for fun and for school - now looks at every English assignment as a chore to be slogged through, and it makes me so sad. He can read books for assignments, but he really doesn’t want to now, because all the joy is gone.
While I agree and lament all of the above, I don’t think that the way that high schools teach literature has changed radically (other than perhaps more excerpts and fewer whole books if the article is to be believed) so I am not sure that an emphasis on close-reading in AP and other advanced literature courses is driving any decrease in kids reading for pleasure. As much as I love books (and words), I never considered majoring in English for all the reasons you list and I went to high school more than 30 years ago.
This is exactly what my daughter told me (I posted above). She still loves to read but hates the close reading approach to analysis that’s required in schools. She now hates her English classes even though the stuff they read is great. It makes me sad.
Another kid in a different public school (also good, but larger, and with a broader cross section of students) did have the experience of reading excerpts instead of whole books to allow teachers to more effectively meet testing standards. So I’m not saying it doesn’t exist – but that kid wasn’t a big reader (of fiction) even before he started high school…he chose the school in part so he could focus on math and avoid novels. It’s possible though that an approach to reading focused on small-scale style and structural approaches to texts is part of what turned him off too.
He does still read for fun, when he has time. But he’s got a tendency to re-read some of his easier “airplane fiction” type books, rather than tackling some of the newer (and potentially more challenging) books he’s gotten. He’s still reading, and reading a lot, but it’s like he’s just not wanting to do anything that feels like it could be his English classes, because that’s so not fun.
The kind of deep reading and analysis that takes place in LitHum or similar is not necessarily what is taught in AP Lit/Lang. partly because 15-17 year olds lack the maturity and life experience to identify and work through many of the themes contained in the books in question.
And frankly, LitHum is legendary even among Ivies for its difficulty and how it “breaks” students with the amount of reading. So it feels a bit disingenuous to have a LitHum professor’s comments feature so prominently in the article.
Final point on LitHum is that even at age 18, many students still don’t have the emotional maturity to understand and make connections with all the themes that are covered.
If our high school students are expected to bang out a minimum of 8 AP classes and a hearty schedule of sports and ECs, when are they supposed to have the kind of gonzo life experiences that are actually what give people the ability to understand these texts? It’s a bit counterintuitive to me.
If AP Lit is supposed to prepare students for deep reading and textual analysis, it also makes a measure of sense to me that they would work with excerpts rather than entire texts in order to cover different styles and time periods. My D is taking it this year and so far they’re doing a really (really!) deep analysis of metaphysical poetry. Not exactly riveting material for a 17 yr old
I tend to agree that reading has a lot of intangible benefits like increasing empathy and curiosity and imagination. For people who read, it’s one of those things you just know to be true. As a kid, I was encouraged to read whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. So, it was a lot of Sweet Valley High and VC Andrews, but by golly I am a lifelong reader now and will probably be buried with a handful of my favorite books
I too see this as a direct reflection on parenting. We all have seen and/or should know the statistics on the benefits of reading with our children for at least 20 minutes a day. And frankly, it doesn’t matter what we read as long as we read with our children and have them read to us. I fully understand that at some point this drops off as our kids become fully proficient readers. Schools will adjust their curriculum, but the benefits of reading with our children will not diminish and in fact likely become more critical.
I can’t see the article outcome as a reflection of my parenting because that reality is just too painful to bear. My son refuses to read anything for fun, hasn’t read a novel in over a year, despite my begging and bribing. This is a formerly homeschooled kid who used to check out 50 library books a week, who was read to every day of his life until 7th grade, who has seen his mom read 100 books a year, every night, no tv, no kindle, library books in piles all over the house. I attend author events, signings, I booktok etc.
I identify with the parent who said it keeps them up at night. My child refuses to read and there’s nothing I can do. Painful. I’m sure I’m not alone but I don’t get to be smug in how I did all the right things to raise a reader. I did all the right things and it didn’t work.
I have mixed feelings about the literary analysis/close reading issues brought up here.
On the one hand, when it completely saps the enthusiasm out of a reader to approach a challenging book- or even an easier read- it’s clearly detrimental.
On the other hand, there are VERY few things in life which are not enhanced by some knowledge base- and the deeper and wider the base, often the more rewarding it is.
You can show up at a museum and see one of the versions of Monet’s Water Lilies and think “Wow, pretty colors” and enjoy the visuals the way you enjoy a neighbors snazzy new couch or a pretty floral arrangement.
Or, you can study the history of art, understand what a radical break Impressionism was, why it represented an important movement, where Giverny is and how did it inspire Monet, who his contemporaries and precursors were- and have a deeper (dare I say more enjoyable?) experience looking at a colorful painting. Ditto for Handel’s Messiah- it’s got some iconic and “singable” tunes, some fab percussion, and hey, it’s fun when everyone stands for Hallelujah. Or you can study music theory, gain an understanding of Handel’s role in the development of Oratorio, do a deep dive into the relationships between composer and ruler/aristocracy in Europe and why it matters, etc.
So sure- go read Jane Austen and fall in love with the plot lines. But there is a reason why some works of literature are popular in their time and then fade into obscurity, and some only grow in their stature within the literary canon. And in my mind, it’s hard to tell the difference unless you’ve been exposed at some point to the types of deep analysis, “academic” approaches to literature.
I speed read now. I plow through beach reads, pure trash, Scandinavian Noir (my secret obsession) etc. But I can appreciate an actual work of literature when the stack include something truly phenomenal. And I attribute that to my AP English teacher 50 years ago.
He may come back to it. I also homeschooled my son, read to him every night, took him to the library every week and got piles of books. He was a voracious reader. Then 7th grade he stopped. Social media, games, friends, music all took the place of reading for pleasure. I did not homeschool for high school and in summer after 10th grade he was assigned Crime and Punishment. All of a sudden the reading spigot turned on and I am loving our conversations about books again!
It’s also a skill that is actually quite transferrable to other disciplines as it develops analytical skills and argument development (providing evidence, discussing evidence, moving methodically through and constantly questioning things, what they mean, how they create that meaning, etc). I actually think it’s a very important skill - not just in understanding literature, but in learning how to analyze in general.
I think the issue is that there are two kinds of reading: reading for pleasure and literature as an academic discipline. Sort of like there are computer games you play for fun, and there is computer science where you must learning coding and other such things. When you study literature as an academic discipline, you must learn analysis. When you read for pleasure, you don’t need to do that - you can just read for yourself, or you can join a book club if you want to discuss with others in a more generalized, free-form, social way. But these are different things and I think people resist that idea because there is style a sort of prejudice against literature as a “real” academic subject, in the way that math or engineering is seen as real and worthy of academic study. People can admire the beauty of a bridge, but if you want to build one, you must learn the elements of engineering. Anyone can enjoy a good book, but to fully understand its composition and meaning, you must learn the elements of literary analysis, including close reading. Both are fine, but they are different things. No one questions that when it comes to engineering, but they often do when it comes to literature. Or, like, no one complains that “my kid took a coding class but they didn’t just sit around playing Mario Kart.”
I think there needs to be a balance here. A superficial glossing over a novel obviously would not be appropriate for an AP class, but like the previous poster’s child my son has complained about the joy of reading being suck out by over analyzing every passage. For example his teacher requires them to have at least one annotation on every page of the novel, even if he didn’t see anything significant in that section. So the kids create annotations that they don’t even feel is true (“the tree symbolizes strength here” or something else trite). He hates that.
To add insult to injury, these don’t get graded (how could they). The teacher just picks up the book and flips through to see that it is annotated. So they aren’t getting to share the things that spoke to them and the teacher is maybe only seeing their most surface level observations.
I agree with you and it’s a shame your son finds the process so demotivating.
My parents were both teachers, and during the “great throw out” which happens after the second parent dies, we were sorting books (thousands of books, so many books) and as the donation pile kept growing we discovered annotations (some dating to the 1950’s-- remember when you got a book and you put your name and the date in it?) which were-- alternatively- hysterically funny and very moving and poignant. My siblings and I were astonished.
Here’s Mom calling Hemingway a lightweight and a fraud on page 37. Here’s Dad underlining a passage in Faulkner “You aren’t as erudite as you think you are- this entire passage is an anachronism” and so on. Hundreds and hundreds of books they enjoyed-- with their own “stream of consciousness” for the next generation to ponder!
If you recall, @blossom , we’ve been told here on CC many, many times that the Humanities don’t matter and you can take care of all of that stuff in high school.
Shockingly, that doesn’t work.
Not my kids. They were all good math and science students, but I made sure they were literate.
At many, many places of employment, you can set yourself apart from the crowd by being a good writer and speaking concisely and clearly with a good range of vocabulary. It still matters.
I sympathize with people who say their kids don’t like close reading.
However.
It has been the core of the discipline of literary study for a very long time, and remains so—at least since the early 20th century in the UK (I.A. Richards, William Empson) and the US (Cleanth Brooks, William Wimsatt, the list is long). Brooks and Robert Penn Warren’s textbook Understanding Poetry came out in 1938 and was a dominant curricular force for decades. And close reading has extended into recent approaches— deconstruction, cultural studies, and various kinds of historicism. There’s a brand new book about its continuing relevance by a Yale prof named Jonathan Kramnick.
So maybe the answer is that your kids just don’t like academic literary study? That’s fine. If they don’t, they don’t. I don’t like studying chemistry, but I like a good hamburger and a beer, which are both made of chemicals.
Secondly, I reject the idea that close reading is boring, tout court. For some people yes, but I think it can be the most interesting thing there is. And after a certain point, it becomes the only way to understand literature in any depth (combined with thematic, cultural, historical, and philosophical/theoretical study).
A random example: on the first page of Emma, Austen writes: “Sorrow came—a gentle sorrow—but not at all in the shape of any disagreeable consciousness.”
What? How can sorrow not come as disagreeable consciousness? Isn’t sorrow by nature disagreeable? The answers to these questions take you deep into Emma’s character, how she manages her emotional life, what emotions she is conscious of and not conscious of, how emotions work, and a million thematic questions besides. Such odd sentences are the heart of what makes Austen great.
Or you can just skate past them and get on with the plot.
This! I love reading but I’ve never had a desire to be a serious literature student. My way of accessing books is different and that is OK.
I just don’t think textual analysis is a new part of high school English curricula. So if significantly fewer kids like to read for pleasure these days (and I understand that not all posters agree that kids are turning away from reading), I think there are other explanations for that change. The focus on analysis in the classroom may have turned off some individual kids, but I suspect that most of the shift is being driven by other factors. Maybe kids “these days” just like other pastimes more.
I get your point, and I agree with you, but I’d push back on the build a bridge analogy simply because I am not so sure that an author needs to be a strong literary scholar to be a wonderful novelist or poet --it is helpful but I’ve read transcendent work by authors who have not had much of a formal education beyond high school and I’ve read pretentious prose by some with doctorates in comparative literature.
So yes, I think that anyone “can enjoy a good book, but to fully understand its composition and meaning, you must learn the elements of literary analysis, including close reading.” However, I think that the elements of literary analysis are more key to the scholarly study of literature than to the craft of creative writing. Good authors are generally avid readers. They are not always literary scholars themselves.
Your parents might have liked this little essay in celebration of their margin notes. In it, the author talks about the experience of trying to consolidate her book collection with her husband’s. " We had been married in this loft, in full view of our mutually quarantined Melvilles. Promising to love each other for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health – even promising to forsake all others – had been no problem, but it was a good thing the Book of Common Prayer didn’t say anything about marrying our libraries and throwing out the duplicates"
By far the hardest task came toward the end of the week, when we sorted through our duplicates and decided whose to keep. I realized that we had both been hoarding redundant copies of our favorite books “just in case” we ever split up… We each owned copies of about fifty books in common. We decided that hardbacks would prevail over paperbacks unless the paperbacks contained marginalia. We kept my Middlemarch , read at eighteen, in which were registered my nascent attempts at literary criticism (page 37: “Grrr”; page 261: “B***###t”; page 294: “Yccch”); George’s Magic Mountain ; my War and Peace . Women in Love generated the most agonizing discussion. George had read it at sixteen. He insisted that whenever he reread it, no edition other than his original Bantam paperback, with its psychedelic cover of one nude and one seminude woman, would possibly do. I had read it at eighteen. I kept no diary that year, but I had no need of one to remind me that that was the year I lost my virginity. It was all too apparent from the comments I wrote in my Viking edition (page 18: “Violence substitute for sex”; page 154: “Sexual pain”; page 159: “Sexual power”; page 158: “Sex”). What could we do but throw in the towel and keep both copies?
The original article that started this thread referenced an NPR interview, and one of my favorite answers from that interview was about the value of annotations. Unfortunately, on more than one occasion, I have come across a passage in a book that reminds me of a friend or family member. So I’ve written down some memories or “inspired” idea about that person in the margins or the back cover. All well and good until (forgetting my personal annotations), I have leant the book to very person in the marginalia. Luckily, it has never been one of my snarkier annotations, but that is dumb luck. I have had a couple of people who upon returning the book, questioned why their names and notes about them appeared in the text.
Fair enough, and obviously the vast majority of high school students don’t grow up to be authors anyway, but I do believe it is something students should be exposed to simply as part of a broad education. Many people go through life without ever using the skills they learned in geometry, but most people accept that taking geometry and learning its basics are part of a standard secondary education. So why not literary analysis? Why does only literary analysis get this kind of pushback? You don’t (often) hear, “My kid loved math until he had to do geometric proofs. Why are they killing his love of math by making him do this?”
