Beyond ABC’S

If I asked most students if they like to read outside of school chances are they'll say no, and I don't blame them. Reading and literacy are given a bad rap as soon as kids start to learn about it. Before I started school I would go on weekly trips to the library with my sister and they introduced me to a whole new world—shelves upon shelves of different stories to read and new information to learn. I instantly fell in love. But that was before I started school.

When it comes to learning literacy in schools it's very formulaic, almost robotic—memorizing grammar rules, sentence starters, and punctuation. From such an early age we are coded to be these reading and writing machines that must follow the rules of literacy. Even when it comes to independent reading in school we are given the illusion of choice, when in reality our books were already chosen for us as early as kindergarten students are given a “reading level” from A to Z that showcases their skills. They are also only allowed to pick books from their specific level to read and are often discouraged and told to "stay within their level" or "maybe try a level up". Though I condone that it's important to challenge your brain with higher-level literature, I still insist that discouraging students from reading books they want to read is one of the many reasons why most students will say no when asked if they read outside of school. We just weren't programmed to. 

As stated in James Paul’s What Is Literacy? “ There is also the problem with “reading class” that it stresses learning and not acquisition”. I like to think of learning in this context as programming because of how easily children's minds can be molded into anything. Without even knowing, teachers can easily ruin reading or make it fun. As I said before, I loved reading as a child but when school changed things. Reading started to turn into a chore with all the worksheets and repetitive questions I had to answer. “What is the main idea of the text?” “What is the theme/lesson learned?” It was like working in a factory line of boring repetitive writing with no relatability; eventually, once middle school came I just stopped reading like most students do. Unless it was required for schoolwork it just never seemed interesting. This made all reading I had to do either for school or personal reasons seem like a grueling task with no meaning.

  Luckily visits to the library never stopped and I fell in love with reading again. How? Because it was introduced properly as a life skill and hobby rather than just a set of codes that needed to be memorized to do well on standardized tests. Librarians will always take into consideration what people like no matter what your skill level is and they don't push them into reading books they don't want to. I loved graphic novels as a kid but for some reason, many adults didn't view them as valued reading material. My whole life I have heard people say that graphic novels "aren't real books" so I, along with many other kids, was pushed to read lengthy chapter books or nonfiction, which strained my relationship with reading and literacy as a whole. Telling kids what is and isn't considered literature makes them assume there's a “wrong way” to read when this isn't true. We should show children that reading can open up new worlds for them and help them discover more things. Not that it is something that can only be used to constantly analyze and write essays about. It's dangerous to give reading such a negative image, making it seem dull, uninteresting, and useless. Reading is one of the primary ways to acquire knowledge no matter what is read. If children see one of the most powerful tools in literature as “useless” it will greatly limit their access to information resulting in an inability to navigate and understand the world properly. Having the future generation who will be leading countries and making laws clueless and uneducated is a huge recipe for disaster.

Moreover, I was introduced to books I could relate to and properly represented people like me. As a kid, reading took me into different worlds where imagination knew no boundaries. The issue was I was the one watching. I could never see myself as these characters who would fight dragons or do magic, and it's not because I didn't want to but because I never looked like the people the authors described. I did not have pale skin with blonde hair and green eyes. If this was an issue in libraries at the time, imagine how it is in schools. The literary canon that students read in schools has a poor representation of the students as people and they can never relate to them. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who grew up reading Western literature with little to no representation of people like her, was thrilled when she found books written by African authors who had characters she could relate to saying, “I went through a mental shift in my perception of literature. I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature.” Giving students this feeling while reading could be what solves the problem of uninterested students in English classes. Instead of having the same literacy cannons that were written years ago, students should read more modern books with better representation in their classes to engage students into reading more and enjoying it.

While a process like this takes years and won't be easy, getting kids to read more will greatly brighten our future as these kids will be our future leaders. Reading not only enhances cognitive skills but also improves empathy and creativity.  If we have more children reading, we could create a brighter, well-rounded society that features well-educated adults who will pass on their education to future generations. This foundation could be laid simply by picking up a book.