Learning for fun vs learning “because you should”–thoughts on the literary canon

Double post!  Love playing catch-up!

I was browsing through a random pile of books in the library the other day and came across an old favorite of mine–one of Bill Watterson’s many Calvin and Hobbes collections.  For the life of me (and I did spend some good time searching yesterday!) I cannot find the actual strip on the internet, but here is the premise:

Calvin and Hobbes see a snake. Hobbes asks if it’s poisonous. Calvin wonders how you know. Hobbes suggests that if it bites you and you die, it’s poisonous. They watch it move along, wondering how it glides. Calvin sees it flicking its tongue and wonders why they smell with their tongue. Hobbes asks if they have eyelids. Calvin wonders how it swallows something bigger than its own head. Hobbes says that Mom might get them a book so they’d know the answers. As they run to the house, Calvin stops. It’s summer, and he’s on vacation. He doesn’t want to learn anything. Hobbes says if nobody makes him do it, it counts as fun. With that, Calvin and Hobbes get a book and learn about snakes.  (source)

It is this unadulterated voracity for learning that totally sums up my early relationship with classic literature, or any reading, for that matter.  For a LONG time growing up, I could not meet a book I did not like.  I read Goosebumps, Fear Street, and the Hardy Boys; I also delved into boxes in the basement that held books from my parent’s school days.  Soon the worlds of Twain, Vonnegut and others became my own.  Even books at school couldn’t deter my love for reading.  I was determined to read as much as I could, because I was under the impression that reading made you smart, especially if you read the right books.  

This “easy path” through my reading experience lasted until about my 9th grade year, when the books started to get a little more challenging, and we had to think about them much harder than ever before.  I was still determined to read as many of the classics as I could, but I would likely now put off a few until later–maybe I’d like them better as I got older. And then I began to hit some novels that I had–gasp!–an extreme distaste for (off the top of my head, I particularly remember Crime and Punishment and The Invisible Man being particularly “unreadable” during my sophomore year of high school).  At first, I was puzzled–was there something wrong with me because I didn’t like these books?  (Alright, so it was probably more like “everyone else is crazy, these are crap!”–I was 16).  

Looking back on that experience now (and the several other distasteful run-ins I have had with powerful, card-carrying members of the Western canon), I feel for my students that cannot get in to the literature, no matter how many opportunities or angles my colleagues and I provide for those students to experience some part of the literature in a manner that is in some way “on their level.”  Reading doesn’t necessarily have to be an enjoyable experience for learning to take place, but like anything else, it certainly wouldn’t hurt for reading to be enjoyable, especially seeing that it is something rather essential for success in the classroom (if I figure a way around it, I’ll be sure to let you all know).  

There’s much more to be said on this, but I’ll end with just a few more thoughts (and perhaps come back later).  First, I think that Prue’s comment on my wiki-post this week was exactly right–who says newer books can’t be just as useful in producing knowledge, or whatever it is we want our literary texts to do, then our “tried and true” members of the canon?   My curriculum is more or less chosen for me, although I do try to sneak some more modern texts in whenever I get the chance, and the students typically appreciate it.  

My last thought for now is this: I think there are far more students of the English language these days who are the opposite of where I was as a student then there are that are similar to myself.  That is, while there certainly are students out there eager to tap in to the depths of wisdom held by Milton, Shakespeare, Melville, Hawthorne, etc. etc. etc. (ad nauseum?), I think there are far more that are turned off by this type of reading for any number of reasons.  Which only creates bigger problems when we try to cram more down their throats.  I would rather get a kid to read a novel that “may not teach him as much” than have him pick up great literary insight from Sparknotes.  

Happy reading!