WHY JOHNNY WON’T READ

by
Stephanie Hopkins Hughes
artist, noted researcher of Shakespeare Authorship and blogger on education and other topics
Years ago those of us who were concerned about the state of public education all read Jonathon Kozol’s book “Why Johnny Can’t Read.” I think the question of why he won't read is more to the point. Some can't, but far more simply won't. Oh sure, they can pick their way through a text when absolutely required to do so, but they resist reading, get nothing from it, and are certainly not about to do any reading on their own.

When Kozol wrote we did not have so much television, we didn't have video games or ipods, that have largely taken the place of reading. Unfortunately, most of what humans need to know to maintain a good and just society is not available in these formats. For our way of life to improve, for it to continue, Johnny has simply got to read. Then why won't he? He won't because he's been forced to at school, and he hates school.

The diversity that is America and that we all do our best to embrace has its greatest test in our public schools. Although we may present a particular common profile to foreigners, we are, in fact, a nation of differences, some great, some small, but even the smallest of differences can cause neighborhoods to break into warring camps, and no differences cause such passions as what and how our children should be taught. Perhaps as a result our public schools now serve no one––least of all, our children. It’s plenty significant that the first of the terrible series of mass killings in America by isolated loners, plus many that have followed since, were caused by teenagers in a public high school setting.

No one but those who work closely with teenagers (which sadly does not necessarily include their teachers) have any idea how hard life is for so many kids. Those at the upper end are bored to death by subjects they’ll never need taught by rote in a dull and meaningless way by teachers stressed by mountains of paperwork and overwhelmed by ever increasing and pointless demands by administrators, school boards, and legislators. Meanwhile those at the lower end live in constant terror of the humiliation that occurs when their inability to understand or follow an argument gets unmasked before their peers. Only a small segment in the middle gets anything at all good or useful from school.

In what may be the most important decade of their lives, during which they are forming habits that must last a lifetime and should be forming the goals that will take them to a useful and rewarding adult life, they are treated like inmates of an institution, which is, of course, what they are. For the better part of five days out of seven, fed the worst kind of food, forced to study things that are of no interest to them and will never be of use to them while given no instruction in the things that they will need, such as an understanding of how their government works, how to budget or balance a checkbook, how to maintain a car.

Chained in lock step to others with whom all they have in common is their age, they are trained to passively accept the opinions of others, to accept the curriculum without being given any real choice of subject or teacher, to read with the eyes of others, to respond to questions with answers memorized from a book, a book often written by second rate thinkers paid by organizations whose sole purpose is not to educate, but to capture the market in school book sales. And God help any who are born to play sports, to act, to paint, to create music or genuine literature, to think for themselves. God help those of both genius level and those with genuine learning disabilities. In today’s world of public school education, one size fits all, and that size is very narrow in scope.

It’s time to embrace the diversity that we all claim to want and in reality do everything we can to eliminate. We are a nation of many communities: let’s work to allow that reality to change our public schools into something that works for everyone, not just that narrow segment lodged between the bright and inner directed and the great majority who are simply meant to do something with their lives unrelated to what public education has to offer. We need a public system that allows communities to create and maintain their own schools, that supports them in this, and that rewards them for creating such schools. This does not mean that federally mandated programs have no place in educating children. It does means that that place needs to be reevaluated and modified.