Emma Li

The bottom line is this: students need to like the books they read to nurture their love of reading and procure the best results learning-wise. Administrators who decide each class’ reading list should focus on choosing books that will be popular with students.

I step into my room, glancing at the piles of books littering the floor. Most are assigned reading for English class. A few are books that I’ve selected for myself, untouched and collecting dust. I sit down and skim through my required reading. Eyes glazing over halfway through, I decide to take a procrastination break, pulling out my phone and scrolling through video after video to ease the boredom.

This routine is one that many high school students struggle with when it comes to pleasure reading, but it doesn’t seem to affect younger kids as strongly. The 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment concluded that attitudes toward leisure reading soured in students at higher grades. At my elementary school, reading came about as a result of pure interest. We freely explored our classroom bookshelves, eagerly thumbing through the pages of any book that piqued our interest. When assigned reading was introduced in higher grades, the lack of freedom and tedious, often dull books gave me less incentive to read. Burnout, higher exposure to instant gratification and a general unwillingness to complete assigned tasks resulted in a shift in my opinion of reading. No longer is reading a fun hobby; it has now been forever branded as work.

High school English classes are one of the sources of the problem. Assigned reading is generally hit-or-miss in terms of enjoyability. When I don’t enjoy the required reading, I usually don’t care about its deeper meaning. My (least) favorite example of this is Home Fire. Though the book was about a very resonant topic, I felt that the unnecessary romance took away from the more important conflicts of the novel. As a result, every chapter was a slog, and when asked to analyze it, I felt that I had nothing to say.

Forcing an essay out of a student who feels apathetic about a piece only results in resentment and an empty essay that repeats obvious truths. Though the student practices logical reasoning, they do so in a way that doesn’t enrich their understanding, or does so in a surface-level way. Rather, that student will go home with a negative attitude towards reading that might persist even beyond high school.

Though liking a book is subjective, genuine enjoyment of a book generally leads students to be more inclined towards discussing it and writing about it. My favorite successful assigned book is Frankenstein, which I read last year. I enjoyed it for its still-relevant themes (such as nature vs nurture) and gripping storytelling style. Most of my classmates also liked it. Everyone had much more to say about it, which made class discussions and brainstorming much more fruitful and helped me write my essay easily.

The bottom line is this: students need to like the books they read to nurture their love of reading and procure the best results learning-wise. Administrators who decide each class’ reading list should focus on choosing books that will be popular with students. Using student feedback in the form of end-of-the-year polls can increase student engagement and ensure students are reading the most interesting books. After a few years of trial and error and consulting English teachers, administrators should be able to compile a list of successful books that they can use.

It is our lack of freedom with reading material and the way we are taught to approach books as work obligations in high school that not only affects the quality of our work, but also how we view books in general. Reframing how we approach reading in school is the final step we can take to reviving childhood attitudes towards reading.

Even if certain books are not very fun to read, I find that treating them like a book I’d read for fun helps me. I can read them curled up on my bed and talk about funny characters with my friends. I can make minimal annotations, and when I write about them, I can pretend I’m just jotting down notes about certain themes that I find interesting. There are also always interesting aspects of books, so I try to focus on those if the rest of the book seems dry. Small changes that I make in my reading process help make the experience more fun and engaging, which encourages me to open up a new book on the weekends.

In the busy landscape of high school, students don’t need more pressure to read boring books that spoil their learning experience and just add to their workload. Instead, a more relaxed, enjoyment-centric attitude toward reading in classrooms will naturally lead to better essays and make it more likely that students will continue reading even after high school.