The first time I ever cracked open a work of William Shakespeare was during my freshman year of high school, when my English teacher assigned “Julius Caesar.” It was awful.
The vocabulary was archaic, the syntax confusing. I couldn’t make sense of Shakespeare’s literary devices, and the relentless political maneuvering was nearly impossible for my 14-year-old mind to track.
But, with the teacher’s help, I fought my way through, page by page, scene by scene, until I not only finished the tragedy, but appreciated it—the powerful rhetoric, the interplay of poetry and prose, the ominous imagery and macabre foreshadowing.
When I was done, I felt as if I’d just scaled Mount Everest, and a lifelong love of literature and learning was born.
Had my teacher assigned only an excerpt from “Julius Caesar”—or a shorter work, such as a sonnet—I wouldn’t have experienced that sense of accomplishment or intellectual growth. I would have suffered the same, initial frustration without attaining that ultimate joy.
Unfortunately, frustration without joy is the norm at most high schools these days, where dispirited teachers coddle students rather than educate them.
A New York Times survey of 2,000 educators, students, and parents finds that most high schoolers read very few, if any, full-length books anymore. Citing a lack of time, short attention spans, and a compulsion to teach to standardized tests, respondents reported that most students were lucky to read one or two books, per year, from beginning to end.
The result is a debased and diminished education.
When it comes to learning, there’s no substitute for reading a difficult book. It’s an unparalleled exercise in what the business world likes to call “deep thinking”—a sustained grappling with complex ideas or problems.
Research shows that long-form reading develops brain connectivity, intellectual stamina, critical thinking, and cognition.
Long books, especially the great ones, are the antidote to the micro-attention spans wrought by social media. For a generation that’s been reared on 30-second videos and 140-character messages, they are more needed than ever.
Generous excerpts, of course, have their place. I teach at a college that studies the Great Books, nearly all in their entirety, yet even we sometimes assign shorter texts and select passages from longer ones. Still, no one would ever claim that the short story, which is necessarily limited in its depth and themes, is literature’s finest form, and excerpts can never take the place of full works.
Pluck a canto from “The Divine Comedy” and you lose the scope of Dante’s epic journey, his character’s development and the recurring themes that shape his masterpiece.
Great poets and novelists present their readers with a complete story—one with a beginning, middle, and end, punctuated by surprises and plot twists. When teachers isolate key portions, they push their own interpretation at the expense of the author’s intended meaning.
At best, excerpting the great works showcases excellent writing, but it nonetheless strips these books of their magnitude and greatness, highlighting style while foregoing substance. Studying just a few pages of “Anna Karenina” or “The Brothers Karamazov” is the literary equivalent of looking at the “Mona Lisa” through a microscope.
We do our high schoolers a disservice by assuming they can no longer handle the quantity or quality of literature routinely read in past generations. When held to high standards, today’s students can—and do—flourish.
My college offers a summer program where, in just two weeks with two hours of class a day, high schoolers read Boethius’ “Consolation of Philosophy,” Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex” and “Antigone,” and Plato’s “Euthyphro” (plus a number of shorter items). That’s more than most high schools cover in a year.
Our students’ experience is hardly unique: As parents tire of schools that ask too little from their student bodies, classical schools—which largely devote themselves to longer-form reading—are exploding in popularity across the country.
Contrast the experience of their students to one cited in the New York Times survey, whose class studied “Romeo and Juliet” by watching the balcony scene. (Reading the play, apparently, would have been too difficult or time-consuming.) By taking the easy way out, that student’s teacher neglected to show his class how to engage with unfamiliar language, culture and sensibilities, to discern the transcendent truths and the timeless qualities of vice and virtue that permeate Shakespeare’s plays.
That high school English teacher missed an opportunity to fortify his students’ minds—to teach. I’m grateful that my own English teacher did not.
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