Readicide

               Gallagher’s Readicide brings up a subject that I have struggled with concerning academic reading for years. In school, it irritated me that we would focus so much on why Harper Lee said what she said, or how symbolism works in Lord of the Flies, or any number of other nitpicky little details that seemed to detract from the enjoyment of the story. Consequently, until I got out of high school and had an opportunity to read To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies on my own, I detested them. By focusing so much on trying to wrench out every little bit of critique and literary device used in the books they introduced me to, my teachers effectively slaughtered any interest I had for them. I, however, am a lover of books and actually have a fondness for discussing them, imagine how those who don’t love books must have felt with this inundation of what they must have viewed as completely pointless information.

                The statistics that Gallagher presents in his book are fascinating to me. Seeing that allowing students to read simply for the fun of it does not negatively affect their ability to read and write well, and may, in fact, help nurture such ability more effectively than trying to cram literary device and critique down their throats is remarkable. Furthermore, his support for the practice of silent sustained reading seems to fly in the face of pedagogical practice that existed during my time in high school (nearly twenty years ago). At that time, SSR was just considered a practice of lazy teachers and was viewed as simply a chance for teachers to catch up on grading assignments and checking email that they couldn’t get to during their prep period. Gallagher helped me to understand that such a practice can help offset some of the damage that might be done by our efforts as teachers to help our students grasp the concepts that our curriculums and standards require us to teach.