Who Needs Books?

When I first started teaching ten years ago, I remember getting into numerous discussions with my English teacher comrades about reading. The year was 2000 -- before IPads and Kindles, when a "Nook" was a part of an English muffin or an old house, and "Androids" only dreamed of electric sheep. The first part of our conversations was always the cliched "which works should students be expected to know" banter. We would fight about which parts of "the canon" were too crucial to the lives, minds, and souls of our students to give up --

"But how can a student go to college without having read Huck Finn -- it would be a travesity!"

"Gatsby, no one can survive without Gatsby!"

"Oh come on, we can't leave out the Romantics!"

"Shouldn't we be reading at least two Shakespeare plays a year?"

As new state and federal guidelines mounted, we were asked to do more and more in less and less time -- leaving us to start to make the difficult decision about which works would be deleted from our curriculum. We would then belittle each others' ideas of which books should remain, leaving our own gems unscathed.

Our conversations would then inevitably move to how our students "just don't read anymore." All of us would talk about what a wonderful thing it was to love Hemingway and Steinbeck, but our students would rather play Everquest or surf the net than read The Grapes of Wrath. We nodded in agreement as someone brought up the dumbing down of American youth -- and then went to Google our way through the next day's lesson plans.

During one such conversation, I remember a thought hitting me like it never had before. A mentor of mine asked me what I thought about the future of books, and I realized -- in the future, all reading will be digital. When I said such, I was hit with a barrage of vehement denials.

"It's not that I don't love books. I LOVE books." I stated in my defense, "I love the smell of the paper as I turn the page. I love to feel the weight of the cover, and slide my fingers over the words -- I love books. I just think that is where we are headed. People are going to read more and more online."

Now, ten years later, not much has changed -- in our conversations anyway. We still talk about what books the kids should know, and now with the Common Core Standards we are looking back to more "traditional" American texts. What is changing, however, is how students are accessing and reading those texts. They now can order books online that can be delivered to e-readers instantly. Project Gutenberg has digitized the classics, and I have to admit, the bibliophile that I am, while I love books, I have an adulterous attraction to my Kindle.

So now as educators we have to wonder -- where do we go from here? How do we help our students navigate this information rich minefield that is the internet? How do we help them to see the importance of reading in any format? Finally, how do we help them to take part as writers themselves?

The goal of this blog, is to try to answer some of those questions, as well as the new ones that will appear along the way.

One final ray of hope for those who are losing faith in our society's reading habits -- check out a recent NY Times piece titled "Publishing Gives Hint of Revival, Data Show" -- I think you will be pleasantly surprised. I know I was.