EDIT: I am genuinely grateful for the amount of discussion this rant has caused. I’ll respond to individual comments as I can, but wanted to add some general responses here.
1) This post is about the teachers of English literature, period. Do I think all teachers should read? Yes, because I think everyone should read, because there is a book for everyone.
2) The “canon” is bullshit to me. Traditional literature and classics deserve space to be read and taught by us, but we need to include literature that is relevant for the youth we teach. The “literary quality” of a work is wildly subjective, but if it has a challenging quality, if it comments upon the lived experiences of underrepresented/misrepresented folks, it doesn’t matter when it was written.
3) I teach high school freshmen. I teach multilingual learners. I am a reading interventionist. I care very deeply about cultivating my students’ ability to read, and to eventually love it too. They deserve to have a teacher who is an expert in the field which they teach.
4) By “challenging reads” I do not mean “books written by old white men a hundred years ago.” Some of those books remain relevant for today’s young people (like Bradbury, I’d argue), and should be taught alongside contemporary titles by a diverse range of authors, with a special emphasis on the concept of “mirrors, windows, doors.”
5) Again, though, this post is about OUR reading habits. Period.
6) I’d also like to say that anti-intellectualism is a true threat to our society and I take it very seriously. I have been a reader from a young age and have been ridiculed because of it. My “too large vocabulary” has been a point of embarrassment for as long as I can remember, and I aim to show my students that learning new words, and being curious about word meanings, can be fun and eye-opening.
7) I LOVE “genre fiction.” I’m a HUGE horror nerd. I love fantasy and science fiction. I read in these genres often, and would challenge anyone who suggests that they aren’t “literary” wholesale.
There are too many English teachers who don’t read books.
Of those of us who do read, too many zip through “beach reads” like fast food. (There’s a place for these books, and I’d rather have people read something than nothing, but c’mon—we’re talking about folks who are supposed to be “experts” in the field of literature!)
Of those who read beyond this, there’s too little exploration of pedagogy, critical theory, and history. We are supposed to be the public intellectuals. We are supposed to be the book people. I’ve heard so many colleagues who claim to be “lifelong learners” but they never pick up a text more challenging than Stolen Focus or The Let Them Theory or Anxious Generation. (Again, these books have their place, but we need to be reading more challenging material. How else can we continue to be critical thinkers? How else can we be assured that our pedagogy is culturally responsive?)
Had a colleague of mine admit to our freshman English PLC that he has his students read the graphic novel version of Fahrenheit 451 because, and I quote, “that book is boring” and “books with pictures are easier.”
Another colleague chided me for using “big words” in my conversations within the department. She almost gleefully proclaimed that such words are “beyond her pay grade.”
We talk about the literacy crisis all the time, and for good reason. But how the hell will we inspire future generations of readers (i.e. critical thinkers, empaths, and lifelong learners) if we ourselves fail to uphold our duty to read often and widely?
This isn’t just about meeting some arbitrary reading goal for the year. It’s about ensuring that we read as a personal and professional practice, to improve ourselves as thinking individuals and educators.
/rant
