Students Still Read Good Books

To be fair, the headline that caused the typical dustup on social media had a wee hint of clickbait to it.  People were despairingly/gleefully sharing across the Internet that a high school in Ontario, Canada, had removed books from its library that had been published prior to 2008.  The news originated with this piece, and as you can see from the school board's statement, it is not completely accurate to say the school had purged all books that had been published more than fifteen years ago.

"Books published prior to 2008 that are damaged, inaccurate, or do not have strong circulation data (are not being checked out by students) are removed," said the board in its statement.

If damaged books have strong circulation the board says they can be replaced regardless of publication date, and older titles can stay in the collection if they are "accurate, serve the curriculum, align with board initiatives and are responsive to student interest and engagement."

For all that, I have proof that students still read good, classic books, and do so of their own accord.

A Student Shares a Book

My Latin I students were recently discussing a bit of the life of Julius Caesar.  We had been talking about the fact that he had invaded Britain in the 50s B.C., but had not conquered it, and at the end of class, one of my freshman students brought out his backpack to show me G.A. Henty's Beric the Briton:  A Story of the Roman Invasion.

When I asked him where he had acquired it, he said he had checked it out of our school's library.  It was published in 1892.

Although not every student today reads books published in the 19th century, many do read classic books of their own accord.  Many years ago I noticed one of my students reading Tolstoy after she had turned in her quiz.  When I asked if she were reading it for class, she replied that she was reading for her own pleasure, for, in her words, she figured she would not have time as an adult.  My hunch is that any young person who developed such good reading habits at an early age would have a better than fighting chance to retain them in adulthood.  Only recently another of my students eagerly showed me a delightful edition of Bram Stoker's Dracula published by Chiltern, and this ultimately led to my own purchase of Chiltern's handsome volume of Alexander Pope's translation of Homer's Iliad.

 

Books, Time, and Space

Once upon a time I had this shirt and ultimately wore it out.  Not only is there not enough time to read all the books we want, there isn't enough space in any library to house them.  Decisions must be made, but using what criteria?  Whether I choose to feed my mind with the equivalent of junk food or a rich, steak dinner, is entirely up to me, but decisions on which books to make available in a library must address broader concerns.  One way to approach the decision is by choosing in which direction to walk.  As the old saying puts it, if you don't know where you're going, any road out of town will do.

Where do parents and teachers want young people to go?  Do we want them only to travel down the roads most familiar to them, ones that are smooth and without any bumps?  Would we like for them to take the road less traveled, as Robert Frost put it?  Do we want them to take the old road, one that has been traversed by those who came before us, those who left clues for how to follow the paths of our own lives?

Many will quickly say that they do not want young people merely to read the easy, the simple, and the unchallenging.  If that is so, then we must make sure they have access to the greatest literature that human beings have created, and they created quite a bit before 2008.