“You don’t have to burn books to destroy culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
Ray Bradbury
As an ardent reader, I find it difficult to imagine a life in which books are regulated to school and work only—where reading for pleasure is unfathomable. However, it’s a hard truth in our schools and outside with adults as well. In his book, Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It, Kelly Gallagher speaks to this truth as he paints a bleak but accurate portrait of the decline of reading within schools and the destructive results our nation is seeing as an outcome. With tongue in cheek, Gallagher even coined a term for the detrimental position many educators, administrators and politicians have taken toward reading: Read-i-cide n.: The systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools (2).
Even if you aren’t an educator, this is a book well worth your time. Set against a rising tide of standardized testing and canned curriculum, Gallagher presents a compelling and concise argument that, rather than teaching to pass a test, educators should be concerned with encouraging reading habits that make life-long readers—an essential component in forming successful and active participants within society. In addition, Gallagher presents proof after proof that reading is the door to success in all other subjects.
Gallagher outlines the ways that standardized testing has led to a nation that does not read. In preparation for high stakes testing, many schools have abandoned deep learning for broad and shallow teaching in order to cover state standards. In the same spirit, many schools have abandoned choice reading—or even reading whole novels—in an attempt to cover more material. But this is a story most of us have heard before. Gallagher also looks at the ways reading and novels are currently taught that does no service to reading:
Over-teaching. For example, chopping up a good book with so many breaks that a student can’t even get into the “reading flow” (60) that readers aspire to—where an afternoon will disappear into the pages of a good book, or cramming so much extra teaching into one novel that the impact of the story itself is lost.
Under-teaching, on the other hand, usually involves throwing students into a complex text with little or no guidance from the teacher.
But what I love about this book is that Gallagher doesn’t just leave it at that—he provides a simple but challenging solution: let students read more. He suggests that educators create a “book flood” (32) for their students—bringing good books into the classroom and lots of good books. Also, he asserts that it is imperative to give students time for reading—that the best readers read a lot. Students should be presented with material that is interesting and relevant to them—that the reading done in class should connect back to the lives of the students in the classroom. To end readicide, Gallagher states that the focus of teachers should be on making students lifelong readers—informed and active members of society—rather than temporary test-takers.
