Post 6: Readicide

I believe that Readicide is a huge problem in our schools today.  Children are growing up reading old time literature that is assigned to them that they have to read.  Kids are being forced to read and heavily analyze books that they have no interest in.

 While most of the school assigned books that are of literary fiction, we should be reading more genre fiction.  The books assigned for kids should be modern, new books that they actually have an interest in.  For example: a sixteen year old girl would much rather read The Hunger Games instead of Macbeth.  The students have a bad attitude towards the book before they read the first page. 

The language in older books is also much harder to comprehend and needs to be heavily analyzed.  Odds are that the student will spark note the entire book and still pass the given test.  I agree that a school’s reading list should include a fifty-fifty split with literary fiction and genre fiction.  I do believe that some famous older books should be read, but at the same time that shouldn’t be the only types of books we read.  If the reading has zero interest in the students, they will only turn to spark notes and won’t read a page of the book itself.  I know that from experience; I am guilty of spark noting an assigned book and I know that about half of my peers are as well. 

It is important that kids read books while they are in school.  Kids need to explore all the different types of literature and styles of writing.  They need to form their own opinions, not just the same opinion that most students have, which is “I hate reading”.  That seems to be the only opinion you hear from kids now a days.