posted on 12 Oct 2018

Reading anything is better than reading nothing. But is that true?

It’s the start of another university academic year and I’ve got used to asking the new first years a couple of very basic questions: how many of you read for pleasure and how many of you never read if you can avoid it? Each year the pendulum swings a slightly  more in favour of the latter proposition.

I will then spend a little time, hopefully without being too judgemental, explaining to them that it’s going to be very difficult indeed to get their degree without doing a reasonably robust amount of book reading – not just internet searches and website regurgitation but real book reading. I try to make that message more palatable to them by explaining that reading – especially academic reading – is a skill they need to learn and that that task might be made easier if they got into the habit of reading stuff they liked, fiction for example. To help that process I’ve tried to integrate fiction into the formal reading list and explain that these too can be cited in their essays as legitimate sources of views and ideas. I’m not sure any of this makes more than a scintilla of difference to the reluctant readers.

Amongst the wider community that does enjoy reading there is often an evangelical desire to get the reluctant readers to ditch their devilish stubborn refusal to read books and to move onto the side of the angels. I’m struck by just how much of the case for reading seems to be predicated on research that emphasise a scientific (or sometimes pseudo-scientific) body of work that proves that reading is good for you. All sorts of claims are made for reading and they may well be true; I suspect they are – it promotes brain development, fends off Alzheimer’s, cures depression, builds empathy, makes you socially compatible and on and on and on. Read these articles and you’ll be hit by a positive tsunami of worthiness. And it all sounds more than a little bit…… preachy. I can see that a non-reader on the end of all this self-help improvement stuff might well step back and ask the reading advocate to just give it a rest because they’ve got some t.v. to watch.

Even the advocates of the desirability of children reading for pleasure who set out their stall against the dull utilitarianism of how phonics and grammatical structures dominate reading in the school environment, struggle to break free of the ‘reading is good for you’ evangelism. Michael Rosen does, I think, get to the heart of it when he says:

"How does reading for pleasure do its magic of enabling children and school students to access education - as all research evidence on the matter shows?
There are some answers that I wouldn't argue with but are a bit limited in their view, like: 'reading for pleasure widens readers' vocabulary' or, 'it enables readers to empathise with others' and so on. Just to be clear, I don't disagree with these but I think we should look further in the matter.”

His digging deeper into the issue leads him to this important observation:

“the really important thing we do (is) to understand what we're reading. In an ideal world, classrooms would be full of the sounds of children and students sharing interpretations - indeed as some (many?) are. Reading is potentially a gateway into developing our powers of interpretation.”

So regardless of how ‘good for you’ reading may be, in the end if reading isn’t about the excitement of ideas and how to deal with those ideas, then the ‘value’ of reading is hugely diluted.

This raises a secondary question about which I’m genuinely conflicted – is it true that reading anything is better than reading nothing? I’m not the only one who finds that they are in more than two minds on this point. On the one hand my instinctive, reflex reaction is to say that any reading is better than no reading but when I’m given space to really think about it, do I really mean that? There is, I am forced to admit, some part of me that says I don’t entirely subscribe to that view. Surely, I find myself thinking, some reading must be better than other reading – some books must provoke and enhance Rosen’s interpretive faculty more than others?

Should we be content that some people might get hooked on reading comics, for example, but never move on from that to widen their reading?

Letting readers find whatever reading matter they are comfortable with or excited by seems to me fine – as a starting point. But almost everyone I’ve known who has become an avid reader has done so because someone has guided them onto new things, introduced books that are outside their comfort zone or just tempted them onto authors or subjects they wouldn’t naturally have come across.

Ultimately, I think it’s a mistake to believe that good quality writing has to be hard to get to grips with. The real trick is to find stuff that’s substantial and well written that is also accessible – and to do that you do sometimes need someone to point the way forward and to lift you to another level.

For me, the ‘reading something is better than reading nothing’ mantra might be a good first foothold on the lower slopes of a reading life but the task is to try and convince reluctant readers that there are treasures out there to move on to without having to abandon the kind of reading that gives them comfort and security. Widening reading horizons isn't about forcing people to do something they don't want to do - it's about opening doors and showing just what lies behind them.

This is a task I think teachers and reading advocates really have to take on rather than simply falling back on the anything-is-better-than-nothing quick fix. But to do that the teachers themselves have to have a rich knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the wealth of books that are out there to explore. And that’s a whole other challenge.

 

Terry Potter

October 2018

(image : http://www.homeschoolantics.com/reading-anything-better-nothing/)