每日精读-070820-<The dreaded summer reading list> from <USATODAY>

 

 

The dreaded summer reading list

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Many high schools students — and their parents — are wringing their hands these days over that yet-to-be-finished required reading. But perhaps these lists are, well, boring. We English teachers, in the face of stiff competition from iPods, Facebook and video games, need to be more open-minded as we seek to pry open young minds.

By Patrick Welsh

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a mother who had been battling her 15-year-old son about finishing the books his high school assigned for "summer reading." But when Carol Beehler, of Montgomery County, Md., told me the title of the required book, I couldn't help but sympathize with her son, Andrew. Most boys this age are not exactly going to be rivet ed by Out of Africa — especially during the summer.

(Illustration by Karl Gelles, USA TODAY)

"The whole process shouldn't be adversarial, with parents forced to make kids finish books they have no interest in," said Beehler, an avid reader and graphic artist.

The Harry Potter craze aside, there is a general assumption that young people are not reading as much as previous generations, but Christina Gutierrez, a reading specialist at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., where I teach English, is not so sure. "They are reading bits and pieces from their computers all the time. ... And many are devouring illustrated manga (Japanese for comics) books, science fiction and romances that their teachers never heard of. Graphic novels are flying out of our library."

Maybe it's simply time for the purist s to get real. English teachers, myself included, like to feel that our students' lives would not be complete unless they end up appreciating the classic novels and poems we love. When my friend Dan Solomon, a graduate of a top law school and a CEO, told me he had never heard of Yeats' poem The Second Coming, I was aghast .

"How could his education be complete?" I thought. In truth , Dan was doing just fine without Yeats.

As we compete with iPods, Facebook, YouTube, Nintendo Wii and cable TV's 500 channels, teachers need to become more creative in vying (vie= competitive rival ) for students' attention. To paraphrase Wordsworth: The (electronic media) is too much with us. So with the increasing teen popularity of chick lit, fantasy and humor, there's a real need for us to widen our list of possibilities.

Otherwise, kids will come back to school without having touched their assigned reading — but armed with book summaries from sparknotes.com, bookrags.com or another of the online "study guides" that give them enough information to feign knowledge of the books.

'A tension'

Just ask Mike Bleger. He is an avid reader, but when he was in my English class, he was often  — Faulkner's Light in August, for instance. Bleger, who graduated from Ohio's OberlinCollege a year ago and is working for a start-up Internet company, thinks teachers are too caught up in what they see as more or less classic works.

"There has always been a tension between low art — the stuff coming out of pop culture — and high art, or what teachers call the classics," says Bleger. "But the pattern throughout history is that much of today's low art ends up being tomorrow's high art . The problem is that too many teachers look down on, or don't even know, what is good in pop culture, retreat to the classics and end up turning off their students."

He assures me that if I assigned the graphic novel Watchmen, students would be engrossed by it. When, a little sheepishly, I told my former student that I had never heard of Watchmen, he told me to look up Time magazine's list of the greatest novels written in English since 1923.

Targeting 'reluctant readers'

Unspoken in the discussion of summer reading is that many kids are very poor readers. This is especially true in a school like mine, where 41% of the students are eligible for free or reduced lunch and more than 28% come from homes where English is not the first language.

"You can't just throw a book at these kids and expect them to read it. It would be like giving me a tract on nuclear physics and telling me to go home enjoy it," says Gutierrez. "Study after study tells us that reluctant readers need books that are relevant to their lives."

Even so, most teachers and education bureaucrats go blithely on as if nothing has changed in the past 50 years. Turning students on to literature and making them lifelong readers seems to be the last thing on their minds. It doesn't help that in some school systems — such as Fairfax County, Va. — the religious right and groups such as Parents Against Bad Books in Schools have had principals so spooked that teachers cannot assign anything the least bit controversial. Clever teachers have to fly under the radar by "suggesting" that students read a book like Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, which is near the top of the PABBIS hit list.

The hysteria over Harry Potter shows that kids will read, and that despite all the distraction s in their world, they can still be transported into the imaginative universe that only fiction, only words on a page, can create.

But unless teachers start leading kids to books that will truly engage them — and not just the classics — the only reading most of them will do during the summer will be the online summaries that will soon be downloaded in thousands of homes around the country.

Patrick Welsh is an English teacher at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

NEW WORDS:

wring their hands

wring  [ ˈriŋ ]

vt. 尽力索取；拧 ( 出 ) ；搓 ( 双手 ) ；扭断

(idm 习语 ) ,

wring one's `hands squeeze and twist one's hands together as a sign of anxiety, sadness or despair 搓双手（以示焦急﹑ 难过或绝望） : It's no use just wringing our hands we must do something to help. 咱们光急得搓手没有用 -- 得想办法帮帮忙 . ,

wring sb's `neck (infml 口 ) (used as an expression of anger or as a threat 用作气愤或威胁用语 ) strangle sb 掐死某人 : If I find the person who did this, I'll wring his neck! 我要是找出这是谁干的 , 我非掐死他不可 !

yet-to-be-finished

pry open young minds

pry  [ prai ]

vi. 窥 ( 刺 ) 探，打听 vt. 撬动 ( 开，起 )

sympathize with 同情，怜悯；体谅，赞同

rivet n. 铆钉 v. 吸引 ( 注意力 )

avid a. 渴望的

purist 纯粹主义者

aghast a. 惊骇的 ~ (at sth)

In truth 的确，事实上

Vie (vying) 竞争

To paraphrase

Feign vt. 假装

Engross vt. 全神贯注 an engrossing story 引人入胜的故事

Tract n. 传单，小册子；大片 ( 土地或森林 )

Eligible [ ˈelidʒəbəl ]

a. 有条件被选中的； ( 尤指婚姻等 ) 合适 ( 意 ) 的

Bureaucrat / ˈbjuərəkræt; 官员（尤指墨守成规的） :

Blithely adv. 愉快地 , 快乐地

Lifelong a. 终生的

Hysteria [ hi ˈstiəriə ]

n. 歇斯底里症，过度兴奋

distraction n. 消遣，娱乐，精神涣散

 

SENTENCE:

To paraphrase Wordsworth: The (electronic media) is too much with us.

But the pattern throughout history is that much of today's low art ends up being tomorrow's high art.

Unspoken in the discussion of summer reading is that many kids are very poor readers.

 

STUCTURE:

Main point:

Teachers had better be more open-minded to pry open students minds instead of forcing them to read required books, which students take no interested in.

1.       required books are boring for students.

2.       students are able to get information from electronic media.

3.       Teachers had better open their mind and add books students interested in to required books.

Argument

l         Students- even some parents- are afflicted by the dreaded assigned books.

l         Students read a lot through electronic media

l         Much of today’s low art ends up being tomorrow’ high art

l         Some student are poor readers.