Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader, presumably designed to kindle a passion for the written word, may have arrived in the nick of time. A recent survey by the National Endowment for the Arts concluded that young adults devote less than seven minutes a day to “voluntary reading.”  Mark Twain said that the man who doesn’t read has no advantage over the man who cannot read. Take it from a dyslexic who always burned to learn more about the world: the ability to read is a precious skill, and I think it’s a shame that our society teaches children to dislike reading.

Part of our failure to teach reading is actually a failure to sell reading. We pretend that television and video games and other forms of entertainment draw children away from the written word, but that’s a smokescreen. Any good businessperson knows that competition is a positive force. Our children are taught to avoid reading because we position reading as a chore rather than a privilege.

Because I was a late reader, I first noticed the problem in college, where professors said things like, “Do you see how the river represents both sexual liberation and the ruthless indifference of nature?”  No, I didn’t, and I wondered if the professor saw that the river was also a river, moving fast and presenting a grave threat to the characters who must cross it. The professor seemed to teach from some secret symbolism codebook, and did his best to convince us that if we were enjoying the story, we were missing the point.

Reading well does require skills. One outstanding high school teacher in Ojai, California explained that he and his peers are well aware of the challenge:

If students don't learn to pay close attention to what they read, if they merely skim for literal content, they'll remain unable to perceive the underlying motives of all kinds of messages that they will encounter. Using district-mandated literature allows us to teach these skills because everyone is literally on the same page.

Yet when I think of some of the best reading experiences I had when I was younger, they were all self-directed. I read No One Here Gets Out Alive because I was interested in Jim Morrison, and then I read the books that he had read while he was wandering around Venice Beach, such as Sartre's The Age of Reason. I can't think of any other way I might have been led to read such a book at that time.

So a balance is necessary, a balance between school-directed close reading activities and student-directed reading experiences. But here is a key factor: to stand a fighting chance, teachers have to be allowed the freedom to teach books that they can present with enthusiasm. 

Enthusiasm is a powerful selling tool, and in our marketing dominated society, I believe the benefits of reading must be sold; not the way a man in plaid sells a used car, but the way vendors at the Farmer’s Market sell their beloved produce; with genuine passion for the nourishment and the nourished.

Politicians and administrators boast of taking a more businesslike approach to teaching, seeking accountability through testing. They do not appear to understand how great a role enthusiasm plays in life and business; it isn't on the test. If schools really want to adopt more businesslike standards, they should choose the well-proven best practice of empowering frontline coworkers to respond to customers’ needs. In other words, give teachers and students more flexibility in the management of curricula. By now, J.K. Rowling’s success should have proved to everyone that reading flourishes if children are ALLOWED to enjoy it first and dig deeper later.  Well, maybe she hasn’t proved it to everyone. Those responsible for how we teach reading appear to be slow learners.