During the week of Thanksgiving, I overheard one of the
clerks at Barnes & Noble say that he had read fifty-seven books so far
during the year. That number is an
impressive one. If that person had not
read another book during the remaining weeks of the year, he would have read
more than one book per week.
I have had students who enroll in my writing classes who
dislike reading and who claim not to have read a book since high school. Some students complain about the amount of
reading required in my online classes. Another
student even said that my written lectures contain too many words that he/she
is forced to look up. What I need to do
is start keeping a record of those students who claim not to like reading so as
to determine whether the students finish the course.
My students would benefit more if it were required that the
students read a scholarly book during the semester, that is, a work of
nonfiction containing notes and a bibliography.
Learning to introduce their sources and to evaluate them would not be
such an alien concept if they had seen how other writers use sources. It would help, too, if students could see how
writers use quotes and, in most cases, avoid dropping them into paragraphs without
an explanation. Usually, the students
entering my classes have only read fiction if they read at all. Their experience with nonfiction has probably
been limited to their textbooks.
At two of the institutions where I taught, the students
enrolled in English 102, the equivalent of a second-semester writing course,
were required to read a work of fiction.
One institution emphasized literature and had the students writing about
each genre—fiction (novel and short fiction), poetry, and drama. Another institution used this required novel as the foundation
for the essays written during the semester.
One essay emphasized the social elements found in the novel, for example;
another essay emphasized the author’s biography and those biographical elements
found in the novel. At both of these institutions,
I chose the work of Willa Cather, My Antonia at one institution and O Pioneers!
at the other one. It was during a time
when I was very much concerned with place, having adopted the Great Plains as
my home after having known a peripatetic existence as a Navy brat. My Antonia, of course, is so much more than a
novel about place because of its emphasis on marriage and male-female
relations.
If I had the opportunity to choose a book for my classes
now, I would probably choose Capt. Charles Moore’s Plastic Ocean: How a Sea
Captain's Chance Discovery Launched a Determined Quest to Save the Oceans. On the surface, the book emphasizes Capt.
Moore’s discovery of the gyre of plastic waste found in the Pacific Ocean. It is also a book that emphasizes Capt. Moore’s
growth as a writer. Not having finished
college and not having a science background, he set about learning to write for
a peer-edited journal with the help of associates. After conducting a survey of scholarship and
after polishing his writing, he eventually had the first article he wrote accepted
for publication. These are the kinds of
things that my students need to know about writing for an educated audience,
that is, learning how to write takes time and that any one work cannot be
completed quickly but requires draft after draft.
Capt. Moore’s concluding chapter of the book is particularly
enlightening because he describes how we humans are exposed to the chemicals found
in plastic—e.g., phthalates and bisphenol-A—and how these plastics may affect
our health. This book, and the last
chapter in particular, fits with the thematic nature of my current classes because some
of my students are writing about plastic, using articles found in library
databases.
