Why Should Students Read Literature?
By Jill Jenkins
In education
today, focus is teaching students to acquire a list of skills so they can
successfully complete an end of the year test.
Is that really all it takes be an educated person? In today’s Language Arts classes instead of
reading entire pieces of literature, the students read excerpts from novels,
excerpts from speeches, excerpts from articles and answer specific questions
that require the child to review the piece and select specific
information. It is called closed
reading. I call it closing minds. The truth is you can teach that list of reading
and writing skills and still use entire pieces of literature. Not only will student have a sense of accomplishment, but teachers will be giving your students the skills
they need and so much more.
Remember
back to your youth, the lessons that you learned from great pieces of
literature were more encompassing and life important than an end of the year
test. I still remember reading James
Hurst’s, “The
Scarlet Ibis,” a beautiful short story about a
brother’s guilt over his younger brother’s, Doodle’s, death. Although the story is packed with vivid
descriptions and imagery, its message is one that a child can carry with him
for life. First, the story helps the reader develop empathy for the struggles
of the disabled brother. Second, the
major theme is whether pride is a positive force or a negative force:
This lends itself to discussions
about whether pride is a good quality to have or a bad one. The teacher can have the student select
specific examples of how the narrator’s pride in Doodle helped Doodle and how
it eventually led to his death. This is
a subject that they can relate to since many parents push their children out of
pride. The students should be able to
personalize the story and develop a greater understanding of their own
life. Third, the conclusion of the story
of the narrator collapsing across Doodle to protect his “fallen scarlet ibis
from the heresy of the rain,” always makes the class cry. I remember crying when I read it as a junior
high student and every year I have taught it (almost 40 years) I have the same
emotional response. Literature allows us
to feel. Feeling and showing that
emotion helps student become more emotionally mature. There is research that people who are
emotionally mature are more likely to succeed in life. Literature emotionally
engages students like no “closed reading” assignment can. With a little effort there are so many of the
reading, writing and speaking skills that can be taught with this story.
Reading
entire pieces of literature can help students deal with problems in their
personal life. A quality education should prepare people for more than a
career. To be perfectly honest, most of
the careers that exist today didn’t exist when I was in middle school. This means we are preparing students in our
class today for a world that we cannot even imagine. We do know that they students will live in a
world with other people and we know that there are some fundamental lessons on
how to deal with betrayal that they might learn from reading The Once and Future King by T. H. White. The book explores
what it means to act civilized even when one is betrayed by the people loved
most. I know this book was my anchor during my divorce. I drew strength from
the words of Langston Hughes, “I, Too,
Sing America.” Literature can help
us overcome our darkest days.
Students
learn ethics from literature. For example, To Kill A Mocking Bird by Harper Lee
teaches students that one must always do the right thing even if it costs your
family dearly. Atticus Finch, a southern lawyer, who represents a poor black man accused of raping a poor white woman
suffers ridicule and harassment, but with dignity he carries on honorably. He is not only a great role model for his
children, Jem and Scout, but for the reader as well. The Help
by Kathryn Stockett is a more contemporary novel that discusses discrimination
in our society and the main character overcome the problems with honor and
dignity. Teaching students how our
society has changed because of the noble, honorable actions of its citizens is
an important lesson. I love to share with my students that Charles Dickens
changed the laws on child labor with his book, Oliver
Twist. Writing
is powerful tool and so is literature.
Giving
students a sense of history is another important role of teaching
literature. Books like Cold Mountain
by Charles Frazier can teach students how the Civil War affected real
people. History classes can seem like a
dusty text-book full of unfamiliar places and dates to a middle school student. Novels can help students understand that the
events were real and they had both positive and negative effects on the people
who lived through them. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich
Maria Remarque is another book to teach about World War I or The Red
Badge of Courage by
Stephan Crane is another depiction of the Civil War. Poems like Wilfred Owen’s poem, “Dulce et Decorum Est” creates a vivid image of a soldier’s death from mustard gas
during World War I. Students might be
horrified, but war is never pretty and it can help them understand the
sacrifice soldiers have made throughout our history.
Literature
can give students insight into other cultures and other human suffering. For example if you want students to
understand some of the current struggles in Afganistan, Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner
can
help students understand its political, culture and historical and social
problems. The Poisonwood Bible
by Barbara Kingsolver can help
student understand how the geography, politics and culture affects lives in the
Congo. Literature can open new worlds
and people to students that textbook excerpts cannot.
Teaching
literature can give students not only a connection to that past, but show
students that we are not all that different.
Which teenager students has not fallen desperately in love, which
teenage student has not disregarded their parents’ wants and advice to behave
dangerously, which teenager doesn’t’ have a friend who is always joking and one
who is always fighting? They all need to
read William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. How can we call students culturally literate without
a little Shakespeare in their lives? Since the new Common Core requires that
ninth and tenth grade students understand the literary device “allusion”,
teaching a broad-base of different literary genres and examples seems important.
Without a being culturally literate that literary device is rather
useless. Students would have no base of
literary knowledge.
Literature
weaves a rich tapestry in our lives. It sparks our imagination by showing us
people and places both familiar to us and unfamiliar. It teaches us that all of
human kind is connected in our hopes, our joys, our sorrows, our needs and our
troubles. It teaches us where we have been and where we might be going. It teaches us what it means to be human and
values that we should uphold. Literature
allows us to feel, and to have empathy for others and maybe even for ourselves.
Literature gives us the lessons to hold us together during difficult trials in
our lives and tools to handle those problems.
An education should be more than a list of reading skills; an education
should teach us how to behave as human being in a complex society.
