I was  the sort of kid who loved to read.  I would take armfuls of books out of the library every week and would begin reading them in the car ride on the way home, despite the fact that I would get carsick.  Sometimes I would read through the books so quickly that I would reread them before the next weekend came.  I read through all of the Judy Blume books and the like, but I also remember reading Diary of Anne Frank for the first time.  I was in fourth grade.  I read the entire book not knowing it was a real diary and when I got to the end of the book I was devastated.  I had never heard of the Holocaust, or concentration camps, or even Hitler.  It was a watershed moment in my life.

I was just reading an article  in the NY Timesabout a new trend happening in schools where children are allowed to pick their own reading assignments.  Imagine it… no more being assigned Moby Dick, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies.  Children chose to read the books that they want to read.  Hmmmm.

I am not sure how I feel about it.  On the one hand I remember suffering through books I thought were so incredibly boring that I wanted to cry.  On the other hand shouldn’t there be some sort of agreed upon core of literary knowledge that we share?  And isn’t there a value in doing something that is difficult?  Reading books that stretch your mind, make you think new things, push you out of your comfort zone?

I suppose the only way to answer the questions is to determine what the ultimate goal of teaching literature is.  Is it to instill a life long love of reading, like some assert.  Or is it to teach specific works of literature, which has been the long held goal.

Perhaps the most fascinating thing about the article is the comments that people left, for both sides of the argument. 

I can see all sides and think that perhaps the answer to the question lies somewhere in the middle.  I was never assigned the book Diary of Anne Frank ever in all my many, many years of schooling.  It was a book that I read by pure happenstance, when I was quite young, one I discovered because I had a voracious reading appetite.  So I do understand why educators feel it is important to instill a love of the written word into kids.  And let’s  not forget that those  who love  to read, often love to write. 

How  would you feel about your child being in a class where they were allowed to pick any books they wanted to read?  And what if your child picked comic stylebooks or Captain Underpants, would you intervene?