Schools kill a love of reading

If you’ve studied a certain book in GCSE or A-Level English lessons, chances are just thinking about it makes you grimace as you remember the hours upon hours spent trying to analyse the simplest of sentences. For many, this makes them not even want to look at a book for some time after their exams, which can lead to people forgetting about how reading isn’t always an arduous task. It can actually be pretty fun, and interesting. Here, the argument comes in of how schools can kill the love of reading amongst young people. 

An analysis called ‘the curtains are blue’ refers to when teachers and schools make us find meanings in the smallest of things in a book which the author didn’t necessarily intend. The colour of curtains in a book is described as blue, yet in an English class, they might give you a deeper meaning for this, such as ‘the blue of the curtains represents sadness’. Maybe the author just wanted to tell the reader the colour of the curtains. Is this so implausible?

All this overthinking and rereading of the same chapter of one book over and over again, whatever the book is, gets tedious for most

Reading so much into a book may be useful for passing your GCSE or A-Level exams. However, in reality this could be ruining a hobby for teenagers who end up just wanting to put the book out of their sight completely as they’re driven mad by trying to discover a deeper meaning in everything.

One particular example of this I remember is when reading John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men at GCSE (and I’m sure I’m not the only one). The teacher told us with complete conviction that Curley’s wife standing in a doorway whilst talking to Lennie and George – blocking out some sunlight in the process – foreshadowed how she would later block them from obtaining the American Dream. Whilst, yes, this might have been great for the exam and to get the students plenty of marks, it does make you wonder why she can’t merely be standing in the doorway?

All this overthinking and rereading of the same chapter of one book over and over again, whatever the book is, gets tedious for most, and can hugely ruin reading as a hobby for children. It surely can’t be a coincidence that children in England enjoy reading less than those in many other countries? In England, just 26% of 10 year olds enjoy reading, this is compared to a huge 46% in Portugal for example, or 42% in Georgia.

The way literature is taught puts a lot of people off, and this needs to change

Sure, it can be argued that making children read in lessons can spark an interest in reading as it actually makes them read books. But when children and teens are spending hours reading a particular book for school that they might not actually enjoy as well as doing work for other subjects on top of that, there isn’t much time left to just read for their own enjoyment. Plus, after having had to do their set reading, they’d probably prefer to relax doing a completely unrelated activity. Slowly, this will lead to them getting out of the habit of reading for fun and soon enough they might not even stop to think about picking up a book for entertainment. This is highlighted by the fact that according to a YouGov survey, 43% of 18-24 are reading less than they used to – could this be linked to the in depth reading they had to do in school?

So, whilst school doesn’t completely kill the love of reading for everyone – some people, like me, just can’t stay away from books – the way literature is taught puts a lot of people off, and this needs to change. The rates of people reading regularly in England are dropping, and change needs to happen, which can begin in school. Reading is fun, and everyone should be able to enjoy it.