(ESP-ENG) What a bummer to read out of obligation

Welcome back, in this post I'll tell you a little bit about my experience reading for obligation and reading for pleasure. We have all gone through the first one, and that is why we often stay away from books. We find it so hard to read for pleasure, because we associate it with a task, a job, an exhibition, whatever, but we are not taught to do it for fun, it is not a fun sharing of reading, which you can then capture.

Several years ago I made a post about tips to encourage reading, and I mentioned some of the things I share here. But I wanted to reflect a little more, because I remembered my experience, when I went to the West Caracas Book Fair at UCAB, where I met a friend from high school, and we were talking about reading. That's why today I wanted to share a little bit of my experience with this topic through the years, what I have learned and experienced.

I remember in elementary school we were sent to buy books for school, and in the end we almost never read them in class. Sometimes, we were not even sent to read them at home, but they were not lost, because in my case, I was curious. Very seldom there was homework related to reading, but when there was, it was shared.

When I got to high school, it was a different story, more complex books, longer and more tedious to read by obligation. The worst were the homework assignments, because they forced you to read the whole book, not to mention the written tests. I remember watching The Three Musketeers, the movie with Chris O'Donnell, and I liked it, but reading the 800 pages written by Alexandre Dumas was a torture.

Likewise, it happened to me with Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, lots of great references that I liked, but reading the book, well, I couldn't even finish it. I felt harassed, frustrated and annoyed with myself, how was it possible that I couldn't finish that book, when I finished a Narnia book in 1 day, or read so many fanfics in one night?

In college, I read with intrigue and interest the texts that were sent, the good thing is that they were shorter, although they were very theoretical. They were texts or books that gave me a clearer idea of the development of children's thinking, or the processes of writing and reading, and the discussion in class was the most interesting thing, sharing the different opinions and ideas that one could have. This motivated me to test with my homework or catechetical students the reality of these theories.

The reality is that reading by compulsion sucks, it doesn't work, and when you force yourself to read something you might enjoy, it's much, much more frustrating. The reason it doesn't work is lack of motivation, lack of discussion, lack of something more than just proof. One of the things I decided to do when I started giving directed assignments, and that was trial and error, is to not force the reading. To choose stories that are straightforward for the student, that they are motivated by the topic, and if I decide on the book, to make it interesting so that they are engaged and enjoy reading.

"But, Izzie, that doesn't help, because they can change the story in the middle" Yes, that happens, and a lot, but the important thing is not that they finish the story, the important thing is that they enjoy reading, if that doesn't happen, don't expect that when they grow up they will prefer being readers to spending all day in a videogame, or in front of the TV.

J.K. Rowling once said that if you don't love reading, it's because you haven't found the right book. How do you expect a child or teenager to become an adult reader if you don't give them the opportunity to change the story if they don't like it? If you force him to read, we have already lost a reader, and who knows if beyond that, we lost a writer. My Reading and Writing teacher used to tell us that there is no writer who doesn't like to read, so if we don't have readers, much less will we have writers.

How many stories are lost because of that, how many dreams are frustrated by reading, how much time is wasted forcing people to read, when in the end they don't get anywhere, because they don't even remember what they read the following year, or maybe a few days later. Have you ever thought about that? And the worst thing is that, if you are a teacher, you are worse off.

When you are a teacher, in addition to planning, organizing and giving the test, you have to motivate, and the problem will not be the student who reads at home, it will be precisely the one who has a bad experience with reading. Then you will have 40 students, 3 or 4 of which you will not have to motivate so much, but you will have to give them more than just the test, but you will also have the other 37 or 36 students, who have such a bad experience with reading, that if they stick it (they win it by luck, as we say in Venezuela) they will get 10, but they will hate reading all their lives.

Now the opposite case, reading for pleasure, is to remove the chip of the test, but to really motivate to investigate, to converse, to share, not textually, freely, even if we can be wrong. That is the most fun part of reading, especially when you have someone who understands how you feel, with whom to share your experience and above all who gives you a second opinion about a character.

We should motivate people to read for pleasure, to enjoy reading, to create different stories, to write and to share how they feel or enjoy what they read. What do you think? Does reading for obligation serve any purpose in the long run? I'll be waiting for your comment and we'll read each other in my next post.