Reading in Public No. 63: It's not an English teacher's job to make you love reading

A long overdue rant on my most contrary opinion

Every English teacher worth their salt wants their students to love reading. While we know that some of what we teach will be lost to the deepest recesses of our students’ brains as they continue through their lives both in and out of the educational world, a love of reading is a lifelong gift. When I taught high school English, I thought about learning objectives for my students in increments of time: what they needed to learn each lesson, each unit, each semester, and each year. But I also thought about what I wanted them to remember in 5 years. In five years’ time, I wanted them to understand their taste in books, be able to choose and read books they enjoyed, write clearly and effectively within their chosen field, and apply the critical and analytical thinking we did in my classroom to whatever art and entertainment interested them.

But here’s the thing. While I didn’t care if my students were able to define prosody or chiasmus in five years’ time, they needed to be able to do that at the end of the year. While I knew they wouldn’t all be writing analysis essays or rhetorical arguments in the future, they needed those building blocks in my class to go onto whatever type of writing they were going to do in the future. Teaching those skills was part of my job. Getting students to love books was not. So I’m writing today knowing both of these things to be true: the best English teachers care deeply about helping their students love reading, but it’s not their job to make that happen.

I’ve wanted to write about this topic for a long time, and I’ve touched on it before because it seems that the field of English is constantly under attack—often by people who have never taught at all. I freely admit that this makes me irate. Irrationally so. After I read some of these essays, I go to bed at night composing responses because I cannot stand the hubris of telling professionals how to do a job you’ve not attempted yourself. I’m trying to approach my own essay in good faith, but I feel it’s important I lay my cards on the table. I’m protective of this field and these people, and the number of thinkpieces criticizing their efforts is exhausting to me. I don’t pretend to believe that everyone teaching English is a passionate and effective educator. But you know what? Teaching is really freaking hard. And unless you’ve done it, I don’t really care to hear how you would fix it.

Whenever I have this conversation in the real world, I remind people that there is no other academic field in which we label teachers failures if their students don’t continue to love or even perform their subject past graduation date. We are so sold on the idea that English teachers ought to foster a love of reading, that we don’t even take a step back to notice how out of sync that is with the rest of education. There aren’t Atlantic essays lamenting the fact that so few Americans speak a second language and blaming that failure on foreign language teachers¹. No history teacher is made to feel like they haven’t done their job because their students don’t pick up history books as adults. Certainly no one expects math teachers to make their students into lifelong mathematicians. Even in other fields that are thought of in terms of student passion like art or theater, teachers aren’t considered failures if their students don’t become artists or actors—or even avid museum or theater goers. The expectation on English teachers is unique and, in my mind, unfair.

Of course I understand why English is treated differently. First of all, we have all generally accepted that being a lifelong reader is valuable. Reading is an accessible hobby; it’s hard to describe other scholarly fields in the same way. And certainly there is the issue that students come into high school loving to read and lose their love of reading in English class. I’m sympathetic to this, of course. I would hate to hear from students that my class actually made them detest the very thing I love. But I think blaming the decline of reading in high school on English class is over simplifying and scapegoating. A lot of kids stop reading in high school because they are so busy! Between homework and sports and socializing and college prep, it’s hard to fit it in. Phones also play a huge role in the lack of true leisure time for teens². It’s easy to say that if kids weren’t assigned Jane Eyre, they’d pick up something they actually wanted to read in that time, but I’m not convinced that’s true for most. And once we’re out of the habit of reading, it’s difficult to come back. So it’s no surprise to me that many Americans stop reading in high school—I’m just not certain English class is the direct cause.

But for the sake of argument, let’s say it is English class that’s ruining reading for so many people. Here is the thing that most of these essays are missing: there is not one right way to enjoy reading, therefore there is not one right way to teach in order to ensure kids love it. Noneducators tend to misunderstand a vital truth about teaching. Whether they’re asking for more classics, more contemporary literature, more Shakespeare (or less), more books, less close reading, less literary theory—there is a vital truth that noneducators don’t seem to understand. When you are teaching, you are not teaching a classroom full of younger you’s.

This truth is one of the first things you learn on the job as a teacher. People will tell you this in some form or another when you’re training for the job and you will understand—on an intellectual level—that students process information differently, that every kid has a different personality, and that differentiation is essential. But for the most part you will still imagine yourself reaching out to and connecting with a room full of younger you’s. You will be the teacher little you always wanted and needed because you spent 17+ years as a student and, so far, you can only understand classroom dynamics from that vantage point. And then, rather early on in your days of actual teaching, it will hit you in earnest. They really aren’t younger you’s. What ignites your interest, what works for you, what helped you learn, isn’t going to work for everyone. Out of 100 kids, you might get 1-2 younger you’s per year. And you need to figure out a way to reach them all.

This piece of insight is sorely lacking from all of the articles, essays, newsletters, and Tweet-length hot takes from non-educators. Often these essays either stem from a personal bad experience in the English classroom or the writer’s own passionate conviction about how they came to fall in love with books. They hated tracking motifs in Paradise Lost, so tracking motifs (or Paradise Lost) must be what’s killing students’ joy in books. Or, conversely, they find reading and analyzing Milton line-by-line so soul enriching and formative, they cannot imagine going on to be a good and avid reader without it. Whatever it is, someone loathes it and someone else lives for it. Classic literature, contemporary books, poetry, nonfiction, literary theory, close reading, seminars, annotations, written reflections, group discussions, projects, silent reading time—whatever you can imagine doing in the classroom, some kids will hate it and some kids will eat it up.

None of these strategies is the wrong way to teach, but none of them is the right way to make students love reading. I can assure, from having taught well over 500 students that there is no single way to teach English that is going to make every single kid become a lifelong reader. Some kids thrive when they get to read whatever they want and discuss it with peers. I had many students who came to life when they got to choose a book like The Song of Achilles to read with a small group. But I also had students who hated these units and actually came to love reading when an English teacher guided them through a complex text like Jane Eyre. I once taught a second semester student in my Women in Literature class who told me she hadn’t finished a single book in her entire four years of high school, either for class or for pleasure. But she read the entirety of The Handmaid’s Tale in a week because something about the combination of feminist theory and that book exhilarated her.

Like many readers who went on to major in and then teach English, I was lucky that the way I enjoy reading was a way that fit well in the classrooms I found myself in. I loved books before English class, but I vividly remember the ways of scholarly reading I learned in school that transformed my relationship with books. The first was during a poetry unit in Brit Lit sophomore year with my teacher Mr. Pucci (what a name, right?!). I remember being blown away at the way he helped us read through Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess,” allowing the narrative poem to tell its thriller-like story while simultaneously exploring the symbolism of the painting and the drawn curtains. I credit reading and analyzing Amy Lowell’s “Patterns” for my love of texts whose structures mirror and amplify their themes.

But my senior year when I had a teacher who organized her American Literature curriculum around literary movements, I enjoyed English class less³. For whatever reason, I was much less interested in that way of reading at the time. I did not care about the conventions of American Romanticism and I dreaded having to track the Romantic elements I found in The Scarlet Letter. I hated reading in that way, but I kept reading how I wanted to outside of class. And looking back I can understand that while this was not the best way to interest me in the field of English or American classics, it probably was the right way for other kids in my class.

The real problem I see in many of the critiques of the discipline of English is that these writers are doing the same thing they accuse English teachers of doing: suggesting there is one right way to read. There is not one right way to read any book, even books in the canon of classics. You can read them for pleasure, marvel over the language, freak out about the characters’ poor choices, discuss which actors should be cast in your imaginary future adaptation. You can consider how the ethical and moral quandaries they explore relate to the modern world. You can play literary critic, determining for yourself if these canonical texts are good and worth reading. You can pore over passages, close read the opening paragraph, track motifs throughout. You can apply a critical theory. These are all good and fine ways to read and the best English teachers try to introduce their students to as many of these as possible.

I know that the field of English is in crisis. There are fewer English majors, and reading and writing skills for young people are not where they should be. I’m not saying that the field of English doesn’t need a serious audit. But as I’ve spent a decade on the bookish internet nodding along as people told their English class horror stories, I’ve started to wonder if part of the problem is the pressure we put on English teachers to make students love books and reading. Because I can tell you first hand that trying to get through everything we’re tasked with while making sure kids fall in love with books is exhausting.

So who is responsible for getting kids to love reading?

Obviously parents are a big part of the equation. There are plenty of tips out there for fostering a love of reading in your own kids so I won’t insert myself there.

But both in and out of the home, I think we need a larger cultural shift around books and reading—and this shift needs to be multidirectional. On the one had, I do think there’s an anti-intellectual element in the way our culture talks about books. Dismissing the value of classic literature or expressing relief that we adults don’t have to read difficult books anymore is not helping young people fall in love with literature. On the other hand, being scoldy or elitist about what people read is certainly not helping build the cause that reading is fun. We should collectively be encouraging kids to seek out the books they are interested in, especially if they’re struggling with what they encounter in the classroom.

As for schools, while I don’t think all of the responsibility of creating lifelong readers should be on the shoulders of English teachers, I do think schools as a whole could be doing a lot more to get students into reading. I’ll get on my soapbox and say once again that other subjects should be assigning better reading material. It’s likely that the kids who aren’t going to fall in love with reading by talking through symbolism in The Great Gatsby, might actually love reading The Devil in the White City in history class or a Mary Roach book in science. Time is precious for every subject, I know, but if we want young people to value reading and see it as a lifelong habit, they need a variety of access points for books.

I know budgets prohibit all high schools from having great libraries, but schools that do have libraries should make use of them beyond technology and research centers. Librarians serve such an important role in school communities as adults who (often) aren’t responsible for grading and evaluating student work. This means they can have a different relationship with students—one that may be more ripe for fostering a love of books. I would love for schools that don’t have libraries to offer book clubs and silent reading time, crucially not run by the English teachers! Kids who aren’t connecting to their English classes or teachers deserve a way to get excited about reading too. And my reach ask and dream proposal, as always, is to separate literature and composition into two different classes. Both reading and writing deserve more instructional time.

I had hoped that 2025 would contain fewer diatribes on the failings of English educators from people who’ve never taught, but I’m afraid beating up on teachers is a favorite American pastime. Let’s just all try to be a little fairer and more reasonable in our asks, recognizing that not every child learns the way you did and English teachers’ have an important job outside of getting kids to love books. And, above all, let’s keep in mind there is not one right way to teach English because there is not one right way to be a reader.

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Happy reading!

Sara

1. I did find one Washington Post article about America’s relative lack of bilingualism, but it is advocating for a high school graduation credential for bilingual students and doesn’t blame teachers for students’ disinterest in languages. In fact, the word “teacher” doesn’t appear in the article once. (Wash Post, gift link)

2. Kids actually read a lot these days. It just so happens that the vast majority of it is digital. (APA)

3. For whatever reason I actually fell in love with the study of literary movements when I was teaching American literature, but I tried to keep my former distaste in mind when planning my curriculum.