[CALIBK12] no truce

[Mary Ann Harlan]

I find this a fascinating post, thanks.
But what really struck me is the notion that reading for information is not
pleasure reading.  I am not suggesting that this was your point, but ithe
early part of this post does illuminate a bias that many librarians and
English teachers possess regarding reading fiction and nonfiction.  Richard
Rhodes, Pultizer Prize winning non-fiction writer, speaks to this societal
bias when he discusses his concerns with the term "non-fiction", the prefix
somehow subtly suggesting that this genre is "less than" fiction. He prefers
the term verity.   It is my problem with the NEA report regarding literary
reading in decline.  When did we decide that only literary reading is
important?  And that by the way is a rhetorical question.  (BTW I am aware
that AR provides tests for informational books).
 In discussing literacy in this country we get all mixed up - we have media
reports about how kids don't like to read - based on research that fails to
take into account magazines, digital texts, newspapers, non-fiction and we
have media reports bemoaning our illiteracy as adults based on research that
many adults are functionally illiterate when it comes to interpreting a
credit card application. (Have you tried to read a credit application
recently?)  Literacy is not a final position, it is a life long act of
achievement, and it requires exposure to many types of text, with a variety
of depth. We, in general not this specific list, need to embrace this, and
stop arguing about different pieces of the literacy pie - in this particular
argument of mine literary v. informational
As adults we get to choose what to do with our free time.  I read - in the
past week I haven't opened a book, but I read about 5-6 hours a day right
now.  I enjoy what I read but I wouldn't call it literary, and it certainly
isn't fiction.  Mark Aronson makes a case that it is why boys don't read -
this predilection for fiction in schools and libraries.  In terms of
examples, I see readers all the time, they'll spend hours reading about a
topic that interests them - sports, games, gossip - all online.  And yet
they tell me they "hate reading".  They don't.  They hate reading as defined
by their teacher, fiction or even if they're lucky narrative non-ficiton.
Oh - and they don't necessarily have nice things to say about their AR
experiences in elementary and middle school either.  Most likely because of
the implementation - read fiction, read at your level, etc.
At the end of her post Mary says there are 1000 different readers with 1000
different needs.  This is the argument we, as a general society, need to
understand.  We should examine our own biases, and do our best to meet those
1000 different needs, without allowing our own passions interfere with how
we meet those needs or we won't actually meet them.  Yeah, I know the
Herculean nature of that task.

Mary Ann Harlan

On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 9:24 AM, <mhofwriter at aol.com> wrote:

> I wish I thought it was as simple as lots of early exposure . . . . though
> I agree the the more exposure kids get, the better.  But I believe it is a
> factor, not a "solution."  When I was doing research on reading before I
> began teaching, I was floored by the early research on aesthetic vs.
> efferent readers.  It explained so much that had driven me nuts about my own
> kids for years.  Let me explain.
>
> Our first child, Rob, was clearly very bright.  I read to him when I was
> pregnant.  I read to him from the day he was born.  Since I virtually live
> to read and I seem to have a latent performer gene, it was sheer joy.  I
> couldn't wait for him to be the voracious reader I am so we could talk
> books.  Never happened, and I couldn't figure out why.
>
> Our second child, Cameron, came along six years later.  I've often had a
> bizarre image in my mind that Cameron might well have emerged from the womb
> frantically searching for something to read. Of course I read to him--not, I
> admit, as enormously as I'd read to Rob, but read to him I did.  But he'd
> yank the book from my hand and tell ME the story . . . by the time he was in
> first grade he'd plop himself down in the kitchen every evening and read
> books to me while I made dinner.
>
> Our third child, Catherine, was much the same as Cam.  She arrived (six
> years after Cam--it seemed to be a pattern between graduate degrees) and
> she, too, was enthralled by the printed word.
>
> So what are they doing now?
>
> Rob is a 41 year old attorney with an MBA and two additional MAs.  The kid
> WAS bright.  He also has never once in his life read a novel unless it was
> under duress, and the pain was felt by all who had to live with him.  He's
> the purest efferent reader I ever knew.  Simply doesn't understand why
> anyone would waste their time reading fiction.  If it doesn't have a very
> specific and practical use, he simply doesn't see the point.  And God knows
> I've tried.  Sure he reads and clearly reads well.  But only in the form of
> news reports, research (he's a research attorney), contracts, tax codes, and
> all the other kinds of informational reading that has me sound asleep by the
> second paragraphy.
>
> Cam is a 35 year old classical pianist with a doctorate in piano
> performance and accompaniment.  He has a very understand wife who realizes
> that all Cameron needs to be blissfully happy is a keyboard and an endless
> supply of literature.  He once even toyed with getting a degree in
> literature back when he was young enough to think he might actually get paid
> to read, but he settled for musical virtuosity instead -- but he always as
> at least three books going.  When I got my job as a librarian, he looked at
> me, wide-eyed, and said, "You're going to have your own library?  Oh my
> God!"
>
> Cathy is 29, married with two preschoolers (who have, it probably goes
> without saying, bulging bookcases of children's books at home and at Mamou's
> house--I'm Mamou).  Cathy is getting her teaching credential, having given
> up (for the moment) earlier dreams of a PhD in philosophy -- at least until
> after the kids are grown.  She, like her brother and her mother, always has
> books going.
>
> Until I understood that readers fall on a continuum between efferent
> (informational) reading and aesthetic (experiential) reading, I felt like a
> failure with my number one son.  I wasn't.  And I learned from the
> experience.
>
> People are different.  Some people love to read and some read so they can
> get the information to get something done.  Nothing I could have done would
> have made Rob an aesthetic reader.
>
> Every day I deal with a thousand enormously varied kids at my school.  I
> see so many teachers banging their heads in frustration because nothing they
> do, no matter how hard they try to make the kids see how much fun reading
> is, gets kids to love to read.  Many, perhaps most, just don't -- unless
> it's strictly informational and has a direct purpose.
>
> That's why a program like AR has worked so well for them.  They get the
> concrete feedback they need, because they aren't having fun.  Their feeling
> of worth, of accomplishment, comes from completing a task that has a measure
> -- there seems to be, in fact, a correlation between kinds of readers and
> competitiveness (though that's only a wildly unscientific observation on my
> part).
>
> The problem is, of course, that AR or Reading Counts, or any similiar
> program that measures reading practice is also awfully expensive.  If you
> can't afford it (and who can these days unless you're just adding quizzes),
> there's no point arguing about it.  You do the best you can with what you
> have.  Push the non-fiction with kids like Rob.  Find practical hooks.  If
> you think you're going to seduce them into loving novels, I fear you will be
> among the head bangers who feel like failures.
>
> As for this old broad, I'm retiring at the end of the year.  Hooray!  Yes,
> I like AR, but I loathe the increasingly lock-step education kids are
> getting.  Truth is, folks, for all the rhetoric on all sides, if anybody
> REALLY knew how to teach kids to read and love it, there would be no
> controversy.  If you have a thousand kids, there are a thousand different
> needs and only a limited amount of what you can do will be the answer for
> all of them.  So, please, just throw yourselves into your work, love the
> kids, and do your best with what you can get.  If you can afford AR, great.
> Make it a useful adjunct, not a reading instruction program, because it
> isn't.
>
> Good luck to all of you . . . and don't kill yourselves trying to do the
> impossible.
>
> Mary Hofmann
> Rivera Middle School
> 945 Buena Vista Drive
> Merced CA 95348
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-- 
Mary Ann Harlan
maryann.harlan at gmail.com
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