Review: Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It

Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It by Kelly Gallagher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It had be only a couple of years, since I'd reconnected with the pursuit of recreational reading, as well as reading as a means of self improvement. But recently there was a disturbing realization. While my Goodreads reading challenge showed that I had finished a few hundred books, the amount that I was able to retain and remember was very less. It was almost as if, despite all the time and effort I put into it, the stuff just didn't stuck.

So I began searching means of better reading and retention, and quite serendipitously came across Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It by Kelly Gallagher

As esoteric as it may sound, reading a book about reading, I was up for new horizons. I was mostly not disappointed. For the most part the book focuses on reading, in context of the US educational system. One which has been providing emphasis for reading as a means to do well in tests, gaining marks, and not as a recreational, creative and character building activity. About how, in a relatively new generation, who are, for the first time growing up in the age of high speed internet, social media and all the bad habits it cultivates.

Children, and people in general, have been trained and conditioned by their devices and what is in them, to be shallow readers who jump from new content to newer content in a never ending gruesome cycle of instant gratification posts. The habit of picking a book, and delving into it uninterrupted and to ponder over its content over some hot tea/ coffee is fast becoming an vintage art. It is not helped by schools, who, in a drive to focus more on academics and tests, have turned the act of reading into something macabre; undercutting the very activity by chopping up reading and assigning mountains of worksheets and over teaching.

Which led me to some contemplation. For I was reminded of my own school days, and we had a very passionate English teacher, who went in depth and into the abyss when it came to teaching us fictions and poetry. I remember him taking a lesson on 'The Cherry tree' R.K. Narayan, and sometimes he would spent the entire class focused on a single paragraph. He taught it in a way that made your taste buds tingle in memory of the succulent sweetness of the cherry fruit.

Gallagher, towards the middle of the book, makes an argument that, students and youngsters are not allowed to completely immerse in reading. To have their minds drawn and hypnotized to the point that everything else becomes a blur, and they enter a flow state of reading rhythm. A state of deep reading where, after a while, they have to come up to 'breathe'.

At that point, it clicked, what was missing in my reading. Over the years, I had become too focused on reading n number of pages per day, and books per week; taking notes, recording important lines, writing reviews (sic) and consuming all the metadata that came with. In doing so, I have traded quantity for quality, or shallow reading for deep experience.

When was the last time, I reckoned, that I had lost myself completely in a narrative of the book, rather than taking notes about it? (Likely it was the last Gaiman novel that I read, I mean, that guy can write).

The solution, from what I've gleamed is to indulge in reading, in a more organic way, with minimum interruptions, thus allowing me to get into the zone, and thus make the necessary synaptic connections. After all, there is no use reading a Tolstoy novel, and coming out of it with 'There were characters, stuff happened to them'.

So, even though it was not exactly intended for an adult reader like me, I nevertheless thank Mr. Gallagher for pointing me in the right direction and getting more out of what I read.

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