Is Reading Aflame in Our Society
Joe Asnault
 |
| Burning of Kopimi (Copy Me) Books in Sweden PHOTO: mikael altemark |
Originally published in the October 2012 issue of Empirical
I feel like a seasoned veteran. Eighteen years on the job as a junior high and high school English teacher. I feel like I’m finally hitting my stride, and then a colleague of mine handed me Kelly Gallagher’s Readicide. The last sentence stuck me, like Jack’s spear into the pigs in Lord of the Flies: “We need to find this courage. Today. Nothing less than a generation of readers hangs in the balance.” This final sentence can be better understood by understanding Gallagher’s main premise and the title of his book. Readicide is a new word which Gallagher feels should be in the dictionary. “Readicide: noun, the systematic killing of the love of reading often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools.” Gallagher–a high school English teacher–recognizes the problem. His book and his other writings also offer viable solutions. Yet I had to ask myself: Am I contributing to this “readicide” through my teaching practices? Am I contributing to the conscious choice of teens and future adults to not read? I felt sick to my stomach and bizarrely it was a good feeling; a harbinger of change and of awareness that in our world now, deep, intellectual reading is on the decline, and I can convert my painful realization into impetus for change.
