The article "What Should Students Read?" by Steven Wolk in the April 2010 issue of Kappan should be required reading for ALL educators, especially English/Language Arts teachers.

I have had the "classics" vs. "young adult literature" debate more times than I care to recall. But unfortunately, I haven't had it nearly as many times as I WILL have it before some educators finally admit: Our insistence on teaching the classics is far less about pushing kids out of their comfort zone and more about staying in ours.

You can and should read the article here: "What Should Students Read?"

Here are some of my favorite quotes ... but these quotes don't do justice to the entire article. The reading recommendations alone make it worth the time it will take to read the whole piece.

"When looking at what students are required to read in school in 2010, it might as well be 1960."

"If we want to nurture lifelong readers and thinkers, to cultivate social responsibility, to make reading relevant to the 21st century, and to bring joy to reading, then the status quo will not suffice. The status quo will only continue to teach kids to hate reading and to see education as irrelevant. When seen cumulatively, the reading students do in school appears to be designed to make reading painful, tedious, and irrelevant."

"Saying we want to nurture children to be lifelong readers has become a cliché. While most educators do want their students to fall in love with reading,and especially with reading books, it would be naive to believe that we’re practicing what we preach. If anything, school is turning kids off to the wonders of books. Walk into a 1st-grade classroom, and you’re surrounded by voracious readers. Walk into a 6th-grade classroom, and you’re surrounded by children who desperately avoid books, especially the boys. What do schools do — and not do — to turn reading and books into such drudgery?"

"In one study, researchers surveyed and interviewed 151 6th and 9th graders and determined that only 12 were actual readers outside of school (Strommen and Mates 2004). A National Endowment for the Arts (2007) study reported that nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds never read a single book for pleasure and that just 30% of 13-year-olds read “almost every day for fun.” Newspaper readership is in freefall, and our country faces the prospect of having major cities without a local newspaper (Pérez-Peña 2009). If we want an engaged citizenry, then we need engaged readers."

And the point of it all?

"Schools should challenge students to read outside their comfort zones and more complex texts, but we can teach literacy skills from books and other texts that students are interested in reading."

Cynthia Moore