COLUMN: A lack of passion for required reading

From Amanda Bergson-Shilcock's, "A Few Good Words," Fall '99 From Amanda Bergson-Shilcock's, "A Few Good Words," Fall '99Required reading is: a) an ordinary part of school, b) ubiquitous and c) unquestioned. It can also be terribly damaging. Of course, I had heard of the concept. My friends who went to school groaned about books they had to read and reports they had to do. There was even a short-lived educational fad called SSR when I was about nine. Silent Sustained Reading seemed about as bizarre to me as having to get permission to go to the bathroom. Being required to pick up a book of your own choosing and read for 15 minutes? That was all? It was a devastating blow to my tenuous faith in educational concepts. And then I got to college. In a class of my own choosing, in a subject I was supposedly good at (English), the syllabus was handed out. Three pages long, single-spaced. A latecomer asked me if it looked like this class would have a heavy workload. I shrugged. What did I know? I learned. First I learned that it wasn't about deadlines. I didn't have trouble reading a certain number of pages by a certain time. Nor was it about subject matter: We were reading early American literature, something that has always interested me. It wasn't even about being required to analyze texts rather than read. It was about passion. The very best that required reading can be is someone else's passion. Even if you care about the topic, even if you choose to take the course, ultimately the map is drawn by someone else. That doesn't eliminate the possibility of enjoyment, learning or even inspiration. Required reading has introduced me to authors I might otherwise never have found and raised issues I had never considered. But often it robs books of their intrinsic interest. In Sociology we were assigned four essays a week from an anthology. Dutifully, I would sit down to read the assignment, only to sidetrack myself on one of the other pieces. I did this repeatedly, sometimes reading the same piece first on my own (as I was avoiding my other homework) and then as dictated by the syllabus. The same essay would take on different qualities. When I was reading it by my own choosing, my notes were half-formed thoughts, reactions, ideas, arguments -- dialogue with the author and my future self. Sometimes I got caught up and didn't even make notes. When I was reading for class, on the other hand, I underlined and starred and bracketed, slicing the text into analytical chunks. I looked for key points and juicy quotations. Most importantly, the spontaneity was gone. There was no personal, immediate reaction. It was about getting ready to have reactions in class. I wasn't as inspired or energized when I read for assignments. At first I blamed it on environmental factors: I was just more tired the second time I read it or I was in a bad mood. As it happened repeatedly these explanations became less plausible. How could the same words -- arranged in the same order on the very same physical pages -- affect me in such different ways? I've decided it comes down to passion. If we're lucky, we study with some people who feel passion for their subjects, and sometimes that can translate to our own experience. Often we're not that lucky, and even when we are, the results are ambiguous, to say the least. Two summers ago I was overwhelmed by my Physical Anthropology textbook but was loving the class, especially the verve and ardor of the instructor. Off the cuff one day she recommended Stephen Jay Gould's Mismeasure of Man and I jotted down the title. I spent hours reading it, even plowing through the chapter on factor analysis. Only the most vivid elements of the class have stayed with me but the Gould book lurks near the forefront of my mind, ready to be raised in conversation, cited in papers or simply remembered. I own that book. Choosing to read it made it mine. What it gave me can't be measured on an exam or even judged by anyone else. More than anything, this is what college has taught me: A guide, even one with gusto, is only part of it. The rest of it is you. So choose your courses and guides wisely, and when you can't, make space in your life for a newspaper, a magazine, the new bestseller or an unknown first novel. Because it's what you choose that will stick with you.