{"id":2782,"date":"2008-07-28T08:13:19","date_gmt":"2008-07-28T08:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/07\/28\/reading-is-reading-but-books-a\/"},"modified":"2008-07-28T08:13:19","modified_gmt":"2008-07-28T08:13:19","slug":"reading-is-reading-but-books-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/07\/28\/reading-is-reading-but-books-a\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Is Reading, but Books Are Not Fungible"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times<\/cite> front page yesterday sported an article with the oh-so-hip headline “Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?<\/a>.” This turned out to be impressively stupid even by the standards of articles with clumsy slang in the headlines:<\/p>\n

\n

Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among educational policy makers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association. <\/p>\n

As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Look, I’m as big a fan of books as anyone– I’m writing one, and I do it sitting in a room with several hundred hardcovers (the paperbacks are upstairs). But this is idiotic. Reading is reading, even if it’s done on a computer. Even if it’s done on fanfiction.net.<\/p>\n

But the Times<\/cite> treats us to several pages of hand-wringing about whether reading on-line really “counts.” Which does allow them to write the article about and for their core demographic of wealthy white suburbanites, which is great for the marketing department, but it kind of misses the real problem, namely the people who don’t even read on-line. Spending hours on fanfiction.net doesn’t indicate a highly developed critical faculty, but the essential process of reading and evaluating stories is not medium-dependent.<\/p>\n

Of course, it’s not entirely surprising that the parents in the story aren’t comfortable with that, given that they don’t even realize that books aren’t fungible:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

Web junkies can occasionally be swept up in a book. After Nadia read Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir “Night” in her freshman English class, Ms. Konyk brought home another Holocaust memoir, “I Have Lived a Thousand Years,” by Livia Bitton-Jackson. <\/p>\n

Nadia was riveted by heartbreaking details of life in the concentration camps. “I was trying to imagine this and I was like, I can’t do this,” she said. “It was just so — wow.” <\/p>\n

Hoping to keep up the momentum, Ms. Konyk brought home another book, “Silverboy,” a fantasy novel. Nadia made it through one chapter before she got engrossed in the Internet fan fiction again.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I shouldn’t be too harsh– she did get it right once. But honestly, books are different. Just because somebody read two books in a row and liked them, doesn’t mean they’ll read just anything you put in front of them. Silverboy<\/cite><\/a> may be a fine book, but nothing in its plot description suggests that it would appeal to someone who likes Holocaust memoirs.<\/p>\n

If a kid likes Holocaust memoirs, it’s not like there’s a great shortage of those. If you really want to shift her tastes from memoir toward fantasy fiction, there’s always Briar Rose<\/cite><\/a> by Jane Yolen, or The Red Magician<\/cite><\/a>, which probably push some of the same buttons.<\/p>\n

This is the core problem with “Must-Read Books” lists– books are not fungible. You can’t draw up a list of Great Books that will appeal to absolutely everyone– different things appeal to different readers, and one person’s Great Book will be a dreary slog for someone whose tastes run in a different direction. If you want to nurse along somebody’s interest in reading, you need to work with what you know of their tastes, not just hand them acclaimed books at random.<\/p>\n

If the kid likes Holocaust memoirs, give her more of those. If you want to get daring, try some different types of memoir. If you want to move her toward fiction, give her memoir-ish fiction.<\/p>\n

For that matter, if she likes fan fiction, give her some tie-in novels. Wear a bag over your head while you’re in the store, and pay cash if you’re embarrassed to be seen buying them. You may think they’re trash, but kids who start out reading trash often graduate to better stuff– the important thing is to get the habit set.<\/p>\n

Too many parents and teachers fail to grasp this point. I sometimes think that a great deal of the problem we have with reading in this country is the result of horribly misguided reading assignments for impressionable school kids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times front page yesterday sported an article with the oh-so-hip headline “Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?.” This turned out to be impressively stupid even by the standards of articles with clumsy slang in the headlines: Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it… Continue reading Reading Is Reading, but Books Are Not Fungible<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,18,13,37,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-books","category-education","category-pop_culture","category-society","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2782\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}