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Stephen King ~et. al.~ is valid reading for high school. Better that students read and enjoy King than pretend to read Dickens and hate ~fear?~ it.
Those who read King, Rowling, Koontz, Sparks, Grishom, Zane, and whatever else they damn well feel like reading will cultivate a love for reading and may someday decide to read Dickens.
Those who have developed the habit of running in horror from libraries and bookstores never will.
Oh, and when those King readers do decide to read Dickens, they’ll still know how.
14 responses so far ↓
1 diane // May 7, 2008 at 7:02 pm
My brother was a “not working up to his full potential” student all through school.
At some time in his adult life, the lightbulb went on. He got his Master’s degree, and is now a bank VP.
I can’t remember what he read as a child & teen, but I’m sure it was nothing too “deep”. Last summer, he re-read Great Expectations. For fun.
Who could have ever predicted that!
diane’s last blog post..Happy Birthday to Me!
2 Linda // May 7, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Hey, you can’t beat a King book for a good story.
I devoured his books beginning with Salem’s Lot which I read in 7th grade (and made me RUN home from my friend’s house after dark.) I am sure if I were to read it again-it would freak me out now. My best friend(who is highly well-read)
just read The Stand. I have read that one twice-not something I usually ever do especially at 1141 pages. The Shining is the quintessential haunted house book. I still love a good scare… and the cool way he works in pop music as a way to set the tone. Can I come to your class?
3 sadcox // May 7, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Couldn’t agree more…and if they don’t like reading the fun stuff, they definitely aren’t going to like reading the more difficult stuff, so what have you lost?
Whatever gets them in the door. You can up sell them once they’ve committed to making a purchase.
sadcox’s last blog post..Part of the Solution
4 Taylor // May 8, 2008 at 3:24 pm
@diane I think that’s more common that we realize. I’ve known lots of people that started learning after they left school, and I myself was like that with math.
@linda Let’s read ~re-read~ The Shining this summer!
@sadcox Good point. Although Dickens is definitely an “upsell” from King ~from anyone~ I don’t think The Shining, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon ~& others~ are as lowbrow as people think.
5 ken // May 8, 2008 at 10:08 pm
great to see educators all agreeing that the literature they had to read killed enthusiasm for reading.
great to see those same people all work for schools that (presumably) provide the same books they read as students.
what a wonderful, cyclical (or is that sicklical) world we live in!
Let’s get ‘em reading American Psycho - goes well with the 11th grade unit on the American Dream
Let’s get ‘em reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace - a nice pre-college tune-up for our college-bound seniors.
Let’s get ‘em reading Geek Love by Katerine Dunn - a solid depiction of modern family life.
How’s about The Road by Cormac McCarthy - a nice piece of dystopian fiction instead of that stupid POS about a horse and a pig. Animals are all equal…what moron thought of that?
Wait…
I think I really would like to see 8th graders reading The Road instead of Animal Farm.
Feelin a bit negative tonight. I’ll be better tomorrow.
Burn, Shakespeare, burn! (but in a loving, flame-retardant sort of way)
ken’s last blog post..don’t grade notebooks
6 Kate Olson // May 9, 2008 at 10:52 am
I’m always late to the parties here, sorry bout that
I’m a self-professed reading addict (and got in trouble in school for always having a book hidden under my desk and reading during class, at home for reading at the dinner table, and lately for ignoring housework so I can finish my latest book), but since I learned to read I’ve seriously resisted and resented being told what to read. Maybe just my authority issues, but I have such a deep passion for the written word that I hated what the forced, lack-of-choice reading did to me. It sucked the fun and exploration out of it, it took that feeling of a great find and squashed it. I also claim no great/deep literary knowledge and I detest the labeling of ANY book as lesser than another. To me, reading is reading and if there’s a way to get a child to enjoy it, embrace it. I do enjoy discussing books, but also don’t like when people try to force an interpretation on others - that also sucks the passion out. What kid likes being told he’s wrong about what a story means? What better way to make kids hate reading and discussing?
Sorry, just a little passionate about this, I’ll stop now………oh, and way to go on The Shining, I read and loved Stephen King in middle school…….
Kate Olson’s last blog post..An Offering (while I dig out)
7 Kaelie Curbxstomp // May 9, 2008 at 12:15 pm
I am doubled over throwing up right now. Never read The Shining, but I strongly dislike Stephen King. Based on about three books. I might try The Shining, but as much as people talk about him, I wonder if he’s a little bit overrated. You can teach The Shining? Oh wait, never mind. Ugh. Just like they can’t teach The Bell Jar in high school which pisses me off to no end because that book means more to me than any book I’ve ever read in school. I have to wait till college to learn about Plath because of her maturity level. Which leads me to say immature people ruin it for us all.
Oh, and I now think you are verifiably insane. And never having seen a sane person myself, does that mean anything?
Kaelie Curbxstomp’s last blog post..Happiness Is A Warm Gun
8 Taylor // May 12, 2008 at 3:07 pm
@ken I know! Don’t get me started. I taught Clockwork Orange & Slaughterhouse Five and I was pushing it.
@kate I know exactly what you mean. It’s hard for me sometimes, though, to know when it’s appropriate to re-direct interpretation. Sometimes, it’s just not sound with the story. It’s a reading & comprehension problem, not a different interpretation, and it NEEDS correcting.
@Kaelie You never have to read King. Ever. Ever. But since you brought it up, I will say that with King, it matters which three books. There are a lot of ‘em & they’re not all winners ~he said so too, in his book “on writing” which i forgot i was going to tell you that you would like. but you don’t have to read that either~
I think The Shining, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and Misery are among the best. Couldn’t get into those Gunslinger ones. Carrie, Cujo, and Pet Semetary are fun. I like his short stories, too. I like short stories in general, and I wish more people would write them ~i think i read king say that in the intro to everything’s eventual~
But of all those, On Writing is the one I keep going back to.
9 Kaelie // May 12, 2008 at 7:51 pm
I might look at those–the only one I’ve ever finished is Pet Semetary. I didn’t really like it, because I don’t get into horror books. Like, I don’t know if you’ve ever read Douglas Clegg, but he completely turned me off from any scary books. *shudders* That just doesn’t appeal to me. My friend said Cujo was depressing, but I might read the Shining, because I keep hearing that one. He’s just…long winded.
Kaelie’s last blog post..Happiness Is A Warm Gun
10 Taylor // May 12, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Then I think you should choose The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. I hesitated earlier to say that I think it’s really his very best one. ~which i was specifically told not to teach~
It’s also a lot shorter than many of the others, and not as “horror-ish.”
11 Graham Wegner // May 13, 2008 at 8:02 am
I always liked the way Stephen King distorted the rules of what made good writing - deliberate disregard for punctuation, invented words, chapters from different character’s first persons - kind of makes those rules that people proclaim to be “the correct way” to write kind of pointless and annoying. I really liked “It” and “Salem’s Lot” as my personal favourites - I would never have bothered with the whole horror genre if not for King and it also taught me a lot about American culture along the way.
Kids in my Year Six class still love the Asterix series which some teachers still ridicule as “not real reading” - but they are reading and making sense of the written word. And the whole comic genre is another story of under-appreciated skill and storytelling…
Graham Wegner’s last blog post..Old Skool del.icio.us
12 Taylor // May 13, 2008 at 3:32 pm
I completely agree about comics. My neighbor made me sit down & read one of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, and it was just excellent.
13 Kaelie // May 13, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Specifically told not to teach it? Hm. People can be so dumb about things–and that’s putting it nicely.
Kaelie’s last blog post..Happiness Is A Warm Gun
14 Taylor // May 13, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Yes, told not to teach it by a specific department head who is no longer there. But I taught The Shining at a different school. Plus it was in summer school.
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