In my opinion, the best way to get kids into reading is to
give them stuff they're inclined to like. If that means giving a boy a comic book about space cowboys, then give him the comic. Don't saddle him with some narcissistic author's exercise in vanity or sanctimony or self-loathing (which is what an awful of lit-fic novels boil down to).
When that boy finishes his comic, he'll probably be interested in another one just like it. After he's digested a few space cowboy comics and become semi-bored with them and has
developed a fondness for the written word, he might decide to try something different, perhaps an actual cowboy novel by Louis L'Amour. After a number of those, maybe he'll try another genre like fantasy or detective stories, and so on, perhaps even eventually finding his way to Stephen King or Cormac McCarthy or some other ivory-tower-approved author. First learn stand, then learn fly. Nature's rule, Daniel-san, not mine. And maybe Daniel-san will never learn to fly, but he might become a pretty good runner, and that's a lot better than having never learned to stand at all.
This isn't rocket science, but it
does require some conscientiousness, patience, open-mindedness, and humility on the part of the adults who are trying to get the kids to read. It requires a valuation and appreciation of genre fiction that has hitherto been largely absent. Now that we live in an era of rampant social promotion where illiterate kids are taking remedial reading courses as college freshmen, it's even more important than ever to take these things into consideration.
Or we can keep doing the same old things, keep getting the same results, and continue to wring our hands about declining literacy.
Of course, teachers are human and do make mistakes. But they aren't the main source of problems in education, at least not in my experience.
It's the institution itself that is the problem. I read
Gatto's book back when it was a free read on his web site--gosh, that must have been twenty years ago by now--and I agree with his thesis. Public schools are designed to produce compliant factory workers who do as they're told. Any learning that happens is a secondary consideration, not the primary one. There are good teachers, and there are bad teachers, and there's the bulk of teachers who fall in between, but like unplugged people in The Matrix, they're still all part of
that system. My sister's a teacher, and a pretty darn good one according to her students and peers, and I fully support her in her career and wish her all the best, but none of that changes how I feel about the system itself.
Somehow, after decades of poisoning/starving my brain by reading thousands of simply written genre romances, my ability to read a complex story has matured.
In my opinion, your experience is how it's actually
supposed to work. If I was appointed Reading Czar of America's public schools, I would ditch all the lit-fic and replace it with genre stuff. My favorite books as a kid--the ones I always wanted more of--weren't the ones assigned in school. They were the ones I picked out myself. They were genre books. In middle school, it was Weis and Hickman's Darksword trilogy. I re-read those books multiple times. I think adolescent boys would be far better served by the Darksword trilogy than by
The Outsiders or
Alas, Babylon or some other socio-political sermon that was already outdated by the time the reader was born.
As for the girls, well, I don't know, because I was never a girl, but I'd be happy to defer those decisions to you as my co-Czar.
I would still have lit-fic books available to students, but on an elective basis, not as a requirement.
