Technolandy

Day 21 (of 2024/25) Comic book corner thanks @rosehorowitch via @theatlantic

Why comic books? A curious thread I’ll be chasing in no small part thanks to this article from The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=true-anthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter or https://apple.news/AVNDbZdXnSLKRA0DRN8qkKQ

Horowitch raises a few ponders about the evolution(?) of reading and readers  – sharing how students shared that at their public high school they were never required to read an entire book… excerpts, essays, poetry, news articles, but not a single book cover to cover. 

Now… as I have ranted a couple of times… where to our students get a chance to see reading role models? Where are we showing, not just saying, that reading is a valuable, valid, and verbose source of entertainment… even distractions (before people were focused on removing screens, there have been decades and generations of removing paper tablets from under desks and in laps and under blankets). But even when I challenge staff to take some time to do some reading (and as some of my students chided me – entertainment books, not stupid education books – even though I do read those for fun…) because it is not an easy measurement to test “can you sit down and read Tolstoy”. 

Because many books age worse than you may remember. I love the story Lord of the Flies, but when I brought it out for an English class, I surprised myself by how the mid-century British slang did NOT translate to the new millennium. If bringing out ‘classics’ we have to be mindful that the times have changed and we likely need to teach some history and context of when the book was written and the politics/religious/etc status that was influencing those old writers… or skipping every second chapter in Moby Dick because while the whaling adventure is still pretty good… the analysis of the whaling industry just doesn’t hold up as well… 

And we can’t disparage the engaging writers of current times… I still remember my high school English teacher laughing at me when I posed “might we not look at Stephen King as the Dickens of the 80s/90s/etc” but why not take a look at how each “best selling pulp fiction author” reflected the era in which they wrote? 

So… the article looks at a wonder about ‘lowering expectations’ – notably in the amount of reading… canceling plans to read The Iliad over three weeks (as an example). And there is the debate about how to foster a love of reading – do we thin out the syllabus and narrow the focus? Do we throw more books at students and hope that it doesn’t drown everyone? 

Sigh…

Again, a comment stuck a nerve: ‘whether through atrophy or apathy, a generation of students is reading fewer books. They might read more as they age – older adults are the most voracious readers – but the data are not encouraging” —> a reminder that this generation of older readers is not indicative that disengaged readers are suddenly going to find a love of reading… as Maryanne Wolf beautifully calls it: deep reading (sustained immersion in a text) aka ‘finding a state of flow when absorbed in a book’. 

Is it the screens? Are they to blame for a decreasing readership that stretches before the first smart phone; much as the blame for anxiety and depression (again… not a new phenomena except for the fact that we identify it better). Is it that we rely on books that students don’t connect with? Hatchet was great when it first came out… but a lot of new novels that are as good/better have come out since, but some novels get read over and over and over… I noted that the Outsiders was dated when I read it as an 8th grader… and it was – it was 20 years old when I read it (and didn’t connect with it) and is still used as a ‘going of age” novel 57 years after first publication… I appreciated it as a book, but it didn’t connect with me – nor my children who were also not inspired by it to read more. 

Maybe we need to find more books that students will connect with – a lot of supposed non readers suddenly find the time and patience to devour Alice Oseman’s writings… and my recent curiosity is wondering if maybe we have pushed too fast to get younger readers out of some books and into text-heavy books – especially methodical black lined masters like Fontass & Pinnell rather than more more Robert Munsch and into more graphic-inclusive books as a guide and pathway into deep reading of bigger tombs… I mean, it worked for me – I devoured comics in serial and newspaper formats…

Donald Duck

Uncle Scrooge

Mickey Mouse

Calvin and Hobbes

Far Side

Garfield

Avengers

Batman

Superman

Groo the Wanderer (amazing even in re-read)

Even Archies (they were my sisters…)

And this led me to understand reading – the foreshadowing… what is said and unsaid within dialogue… how to picture setting and characters and actions. How to synthesize what I am reading -how to infer  – how to make connections – how to ponder questions – how to get mad at decisions… of characters and authors… and definitely launched me into more reading at all reading levels – including most of the books on ‘great books’ lists. 

Mind you some people who root for the sentinels against the x-men also think that comics and graphic novels are the reason ‘massive numbers of our young people are effectively illiterate, unable to keep their attention long enough to read a single real book’ <— yep, that was in a tweet in my direction! Despite comics having more ‘rare words’ per thousand than children’s books or adult books…

In the meantime, I’m gonna try out a comic book library in my school – even got some research at the UofT faculty of information… get ready for some comic related shares as we take a look to see if reading enthusiasm ticks upward…