We had an easier time in art history. They never made us look at a third of a painting.

is a writer’s interest; the how of the book.

>rather than meaning.

is a reader’s interest; the what of the book.

You cannot actually separate them, when teaching reading, both are of importance as well as interest.

I’d actually argue that you HAVE to separate them when teaching reading. Meaning is highly subjective, especially in more ambiguous, modern works.

Personally, I never read for meaning. I read for story and emotional content. An English professor at Columbia published a book to just this point last year:

THE THINGS THAT MATTER
What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say About the Stages of Life
By Edward Mendelson.

I never read it, though, mostly because I’d already read and not enjoyed his seven classics.

is a writer’s interest; the how of the book.

>rather than meaning.

is a reader’s interest; the what of the book.

You cannot actually separate them, when teaching reading, both are of importance as well as interest.

I’d actually argue that you HAVE to separate them when teaching reading. Meaning is highly subjective, especially in more ambiguous, modern works.

Personally, I never read for meaning. I read for story and emotional content. An English professor at Columbia published a book to just this point last year:

THE THINGS THAT MATTER
What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say About the Stages of Life
By Edward Mendelson.

I never read it, though, mostly because I’d already read and not enjoyed his seven classics.

Think about it this way: I have heard tons of arts student types say they hate maths for example. Being forced to do it is no fun for them and really boring, exactly the same thing applies. If those that like the aforementioned turned up to Literature class and the next book they had to read was Feller’s Probability Theory, they wouldn’t be too thrilled.

Similarly for kids that get made to play, say, football, when they don’t like getting dirty, are scared of being hurt, or don’t like being hit or hitting people, etc.

As far as David’s football goes - if you have to analyse sport for a living, you get jaded and sick of that too, you watch it differently without the same enjoyment as previously.

The being made to read something in particular is like going into a bookshop to buy something and being told, sure, you can buy a book, as long as it one of these two.

Yeah, lots of readers do not learn how to refine their tastes, but to be honest, my tastes and the tastes of most people I know *anecdotally* evolved from reading a great deal and *NOT* anything we’re taught. None of my reading strategies come from schooling, either low or high, they come from my excessive reading.

You’re talking NFL, so let’s run with that:

I don’t think you should be forced to apply a coach’s perspective to the game at first. Learning the nuances of football is something that grows if you like the game and repeatedly watch it.

It may have been wise for King to have tried to do an in-depth anaylysis and dissection of the stuff that happens offscreen, and not only concentrate on the produced item itself.

this happens every day on writer blogs.

Analysis and dissection of the works I did not mind when taking English in varsity (your college, I think), it was a lot of the works themselves I didn’t like. Also, we were expected to have read the book before the lecture on it started; in high school, this wasn’t true, but nobody actually prohibited you from reading it straight through when the lectures began. And then, stopping at intervals to take a look at what happened, why it happened, and what is coming and being done, makes a lot more sense (prior knowledge of the book, as opposed to experiencing book while being taught book).

> My favorite courses were the ones that concentrated on technique and thematic similarity

is a writer’s interest; the how of the book.

>rather than meaning.

is a reader’s interest; the what of the book.

You cannot actually separate them, when teaching reading, both are of importance as well as interest.

Kids who want to read are going to read anyways, no matter what or how precisely they are taught. As long as they are taught the basics of ABC, and given access to books or comics, they will read.

Insofar as teaching reading -in my experience, it comes down a lot to the teacher. A teacher with the rare ability to fuse her/his enthusiasm for reading, and why s/he likes to read, will draw interest even from many non-readers.
But, the reason such teachers are rare is simply because so many kids have either little interest in reading, or they do, but at that precise moment in their lives, it is not as important as sports, boys/girls, parties, etc. Kind of hard to muster enthusiasm for a subject you must teach if the odds of being awarded is small.
And, teachers teach what they themselves have been taught; it is possible that they simply accept at face value the rigthness of what they have been taught and do not in fact understand the why of it. Therefore they cannot teach it.

To be blunt, IMO a large number of adult readers - including writers - don’t know how to read properly either. Don’t get me wrong - they can read, but are themselves very limited in their ability to do so. They have a very narrow definition of what constitutes “a good book”, or “pleasurable/ provocative/ enjoyable reading, or whatever”.
It goes something like this - this book does not comply with the X,Y,Z components in the ABC manner in which I understand writing, therefore it is automatically shite.
There is, therefore, not an attempt by the reader to engage a work on its own merit and try to understand it within its own unique framework; it is forced to comply to a mode of reading expectation that it might never have been designed for.

>There is no value almost in just letting the work either stand for itself or fall on its own merits to the modern reader.

how must the reader do this, if they have not been taught the how and why of what constitutes skilled writing? how will they measure it if they have not been taught to consider and recognize the virtues and flaws of a written work? remember, there is a vast difference between personal likes of a work (taste), and the skill of a work (execution).

Rough example: the NFL = books overall.
My personal taste runs to offense; however, the defense (completely different manner of approach to the game than offense, and possible almost a direct contradiction to the offense, in the sense that an offense seeks to gain yards whereas a defense seeks to restrict yards), cannot be measured with the same yardstick for success and skilful execution as the offense.
In order for me to evaluate the skill of a defense, I need to learn to understand and judge the defense on its own terms, not based upon my value judgements of taste as dictated by my preference for the offense.

(like I said, a very rough example).

Point is - people very often confuse personal taste in concept&approach to skill in execution of writing.

I have to be honest though, in that I don’t fully understand what point you’re driving at? far as I can gather:

1) teaching reading to kids is important;
2) reading is not being properly taught;
3) writing should not be analysed and kids should not be taught to do in-depth examinations of text (??)

I’m sorry, while I don’t entirely agree with some of the particulars you mentioned, I don’t understand the overall point either?

I was a Lit Major in college too. As Toby says, the emphasis on analysis and interpretation made the reading experience there even worse. Perhaps this is because the only way literature professors can have an impact on what they teach is by dissecting it. Or maybe they just prefer to teach books (Finnegan’s Wake immediately comes to mind) that require extensive decoding. My favorite courses were the ones that concentrated on technique and thematic similarity rather than meaning.

Sorry. Rant over.