Readicide by Kelly Gallagher

Kelly Gallagher’s Readicide was a hard read for me. This book explains how the love for reading slowly dies as children get older because of the systematic way reading is used in the school system. He explains in detail the many ways schools are creating this heartbreaking hatred of reading in students. Because of state tests and the way the system works, many schools value test-taking skills over the development of actual reading. Gallagher even mentions that some districts are “banning” novels from being taught in the classroom because they are not practicing critical thinking skills and need more time to read material that will be on the tests. This lack of knowledge on the matter is frightening to me. When I was reading this book, all I could think was, “How am I supposed to stand up for what the children need when truly most of what is being taught is just to get the students to be able to pass a test?” It all seems so ironic. It’s depressing, to be honest.

            To make matters even more depressing, Gallagher explains how novels are often over-taught, chopped up into over-analyzed, boring lessons that completely disrupt any sort of reading flow. Gallagher mentions how he came across a 122-page teaching guide for To Kill a Mockingbird. This guide was created to teach the book over weeks and weeks of lessons. Gallagher writes, “The value in teaching this book is not simply to provide our students with a slice of cultural literacy or to teach them to recognize literary elements such as foreshadowing. The value comes when we use this great book as a springboard to examine issues in today’s world” (66-67). As I went through high school, I loved to read on my own. I hated almost every book that was taught in school; I now know why. There was no “reading flow” for me when I read books that were taught in high school. Reading those books meant worksheet after worksheet analyzing characters and themes and plot, etc. Any enjoyment that could have been had was striped away. There was almost certainly no real connection being made between the events in the book and what was going on in the world at the time.
On the flip side, as an English major, I see the benefit in teaching those literary elements to students. So, my question is how can I find a happy medium? Gallagher gives good ideas in Readicide, but I am still not convinced that implementing a few strategies here and there will make that big of a difference when it comes to students’ hatred for reading. I will just have to wait and try some of the strategies out when I have my own classroom. For now, I will question the way novels are often overly-taught in the classroom, or under-taught, and understand that I have the power to take a stand and hopefully inspire a few students along the way that reading isn’t so bad after all.