Note: when I refer to reading, assume I am talking about fictional stories.
My first love was a supernatural, skinny, five-foot-ten boy, with dark hair and sea-green eyes. Some may recognize this character immediately; it was Percy Jackson. I met him in third grade when school had shut down due to COVID, and after about a week, I had read the five books capturing Percy’s adventures with his friends at camp and his growth from a scrawny twelve-year-old to a respected hero. Back then, I felt pure excitement whenever I got home and was able to continue reading about the incredible journeys Percy or characters from other books were living in.
But currently, as a freshman in high school, this excitement no longer reaches me, and many can agree that reading is not done for fun anymore. During this last term of the school year, reading has been a big part of the freshman English curriculum. I have been wondering a lot about what changed my perspective on reading, and here are my deductions.
The first change: reading became a task.
For me, it was around fifth grade that reading started feeling forced. That year at my school, which was in another district, middle school summer reading began. There were three or four books required for students to read before the next school year started in addition to reading comprehension work (proof that one read). Out of these books, The House of the Scorpion was enjoyable but the rest were not to my taste, and the comprehension work made me stop every few pages in unnatural spots to summarize the text. For the school years and summers ahead, reading continued like this and gradually became a task. It became associated with tedious work that did not fit the rhythm of how I read.
The second change: books became symbols.
When I moved to Lexington in seventh grade, we were learning about how to write analyses and themes; examining the intentions of the author with their inclusion of this character, item, place, etc. Analyzing texts was not my strong suit, but with time, it became more habitual to the point that it created another challenge for me, which was to not over analyze texts. Now when I read, awe-inducing adventure is replaced by searching for motifs and symbolism. So, in an effort to make meaning out of the text, the meaningfulness of reading shifted for me.
In school, a different type of reading is fostered, one whose sensation differs from the leisure reading of several years back. This type of academic reading is viewed as an assignment, and is making all reading feel like one. Of course, there may be many other factors that contribute to why reading became boring for so many, but I think school is one of the biggest ones.
