What should schools do to get their students to enjoy reading? I think that the answer is pretty clear; genre fiction is what we like so it is what we should get. Now I know that this sounds bias coming from a student, a hater of Shakespeare, a Spark-Noter, but as a student I believe that it should be our say anyways.
Gallagher’s argument of Readicide is completely accurate. Schools should stop teaching so much literary fiction; I mean a little goes a very long way. For example, a new Shakespeare play every year of high school is kind of ridiculous, and I have yet to be in a class where more than one person enjoys reading the works of Shakespeare and interpreting his everlasting Old English language. Genre fiction is what kids in this century will appreciate and be able to relate to.
Most literary works we read in school are old, and students’ automatically associate old things with boring things, so, before the teacher is even done announcing the title to the class, we are already completely against the idea. These literary novels have nothing to do with this day and age and don’t prepare our generation for what we are going to encounter when we get older. Seriously, killing the king of Scotland to become king yourself…why must we know about this? Genre fiction seems to better apply to our future and get us ready for what is to come while also presenting problems that we might encounter during this time period.
Now, I am not saying that all literary works need to be removed from the curriculum; however, not every book we read in school needs to be a literary one. Schools should keep the literary books that are tolerable for students, like The Color of Water and In Cold Blood and remove from the list the ones that send students to the computer screen rather than the book itself. Because, even though literary novels tend to be boring, they are also excellent sources of respectable writing that is a necessity when a student will need to write for themselves in the future.
A 21st century reading list should look a lot like the ones that we receive in this Best Sellers class. Students are given the option to read whatever they choose, be it literary or genre fiction. In this class we still dig deep into topics but the topics are more modern and are easily discussed, whereas the topics we discuss in a regular English class seem dull, pointless and not nearly as profound.
Genre fiction enlightens, entertains, and gets students wanting to do their homework as well as read. And after all, isn’t that the point of assigning books to read in school in the first place?
I like how you said we should still keep some literary fiction because even though it may be boring at times it can teach better than a genre book.
ReplyDeleteI agree because kids then have options and probably won't get bored.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we should have genre fiction books in school. Many students would enjoy reading a lot more if they were actually interested in the books they were reading.
ReplyDeleteI agree that reading a new Shakespeare play every year is ridiculous, we only need to read one to understand the time period, writing style, etc.
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