Still Hitting the Books

Do high school kids still read? And if so, what? Are Boo Radley, Yossarian, Holden Caulfield and the Joad family still part of the literary landscape? Or have the collective brains of today’s youth been zapped, fried and drained by all the usual suspects? We hear a lot these days about the struggle to overhaul our schools--often from politicians, pencil-pushers and those who haven’t seen the inside of a classroom in years. What we often don’t hear is what kids are learning--and how they’re learning it. And what teachers see when they open their doors in the morning and grade papers at night. Do kids still revel in the anti-establishment humor of “Catch-22”? Does “The Odyssey” still shut eyelids quickly? Times Staff Writer STEVE HYMON asked four local literature teachers to throw in their two cents--and then some.

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SHEILA ROTH, San Fernando High School English Department chair and 10th- and 11th-grade teacher.

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We teach a lot of the classics. For example, all of the students read “The Good Earth,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Grapes of Wrath.” Many of our students are Mexican, and they often see the connection between the Okies and themselves. But we also read things like “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” by Alex Haley. And we try to read a lot of contemporary Mexican American writers and short-story collections, as well as books by Amy Tan and Gary Soto.

Why do we read these books? Because they’re real and kids like them. We make sure they are well-written, but we also want the books to hit home with the kids and make them feel connected to the stories. Not just from a cultural point of view, but in terms of being human. I am a feminist and I push some books because the kids don’t get this anywhere else.

Kids today are bombarded with so many negatives, and that’s why I don’t want to make reading a negative and difficult experience. Most kids are afraid of reading--some are even ashamed of it. It’s frightening how few really like it. . . . English is a second language for many of the kids. And many kids literally don’t have the time--they’re struggling to put food on the table.

One positive thing we’ve been able to do in [Los Angeles Unified School] District is set up classroom libraries, where students can read a whole range of books. When the books are there, kids start getting curious. There have even been studies [showing] that if there are books in the home, young people are more likely to read.

DORRIS LANG, Burbank High School, a 32-year education veteran and ninth- and 12th-grade English teacher.

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In the ninth grade, everyone reads “Romeo and Juliet” and “Animal Farm.” All the seniors read “Lord of the Flies” and “Pygmalion.”

One of the new things we’ve done is add a multicultural or ethnic book at each grade level except for ninth grade. So, the 11th-graders read “The Joy Luck Club” and the seniors read “Beloved.” We joke about how literature in schools used to consist of teaching the dead white men, but “Joy Luck Club” is about women and Asians. Toni Morrison is black.

Our population in Burbank has really changed. We’re hoping through those books to give some kind of identity through literature that maybe they haven’t seen before.

Kids are very visually oriented now. One of the things I have them do now is to critically analyze a movie after reading the book. The kids look at the movie and say there must be something to it if they made a movie--the movie gives credence or value to the book for them.

The ninth-graders really seem to respond to “The Outsiders,” “Animal Farm” and “Romeo and Juliet.” They also like “To Kill a Mockingbird,” but they hate “The Old Man and the Sea.” It’s not an adventure--it’s an inner monologue. It’s boring to them. Kids are so action-oriented.

I try to talk to the kids a lot and loan them books. What I’ve seen happen is that someone finds a book and they adore it. Then they come to me and say, “Do you have another like it?”

Another book the kids really respond to is Toni Morrison’s “Beloved.” It really hits home with all these little sheltered kids who don’t always know a lot about history. Morrison pieced together some episodes from slavery, and the kids are just horrified. They just haven’t been exposed to things like this.

We try asking, what does a book have to do with today’s life? There is a theme in ninth-grade lit called “bad boys versus bad men.” When we read “Shane” we ask, what is the difference between them? And why do girls date bad boys? That gets their attention.

TERRY GILBERT, Birmingham High School, Van Nuys, 11th- and 12th-grade English teacher.

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Let me tell a story. In my third year, I had a job teaching stage crew. I was pounding nails with a couple of the local Van Nuys kids--seniors with 2.5 [grade-point] averages, reasonably intelligent. I asked them what they were reading in English class, and it turns out that neither of these guys had ever read a book cover to cover. That was an epiphany. I started talking to the kids and learned there were a lot of advanced-placement kids who didn’t actually read the books either.

One of the problems is kids’ ability to read. An 11th-grade class might be really reading at sixth- or seventh-grade level. One of the other problems is motivation and overcoming kids’ fears. In most cases, they are both bored and humiliated by books. So, we try to find books with a little more congenial subject matter without dumbing things down. The kids might have a low reading level, but their worldview is usually sophisticated.

What still works? “Catcher in the Rye.” It still talks to kids. They like the cuss words; it’s easy to read. [J.D.] Salinger did a good job of portraying a teenage narrator. Gary Soto’s poetry also works. The kids are more poetry-conscious than kids were 10 years ago. Maybe it’s rap, or the residue of the punk poetry movement. Maybe it’s the Hispanic influence, where poetry is a more valued.

“Like Water for Chocolate” works. We can’t keep that on the shelf for long. Same with “A Yellow Raft in Blue Water.” They are modern, tough and uncompromising. They’re relatively sexy, too.

Most kids don’t read at all. But neither do American adults--we’re a nonreading culture. Why? That’s a whole other story. Is it the electronic media? Is it traditional American resistance? Or is it a cultural process? My pet theory is that maybe people never read that much in the first place.

Or, maybe we’re moving toward a kind of electronic media, aural consciousness. My hunch is that in the future the hard-copy book and the magazine will be an antique. In the immortal words of Bruce Willis, the printed word is a dinosaur.

ARTHUR BERCHIN, Taft High School, Woodland Hills, ninth-, 11th- and 12th-grade English teacher.

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In my 12th-grade advanced-placement class, we start with Bernard Malamud’s “The Assistant” and [with] “The Grapes of Wrath.” Simultaneously, we also read a beautiful anthology of short stories, which includes American and British authors of all different periods.

I also try to cover the full gamut of poets from all the major literary periods. Later, we might also do “Great Expectations,” which is Dickens’ greatest novel, and it will probably be studied by them again at the university. Or E.M. Forster’s “A Room With a View,” because he gives us a good indication of the class system in England in the first half of the 20th century. I might do “Portrait of a Lady.” If there are a lot of girls in the class we might do one novel by Jane Austen. Young men have a hard time picking up the nuances of an Austen novel, but young women love Austen because they are often experiencing many of the same feelings as her characters.

When I came here 13 years ago, I had my 11th-grade class buy the first Norton Anthology, which was then 1,500 pages; now it’s almost 2,500 pages. This year’s class will go all the way from the Puritans to the late 1980s and John Updike. We’ll also cover Joyce Carol Oates, Bobbie Ann Mason, Maxine Kingston, Alice Walker, Louise Erdrich and Philip Roth.

Kids love “The Grapes of Wrath.” It is a novel that is timeless. The Californians take advantage of the Okies and are the villains of the novel. Those divisions are still with us--we’re still not willing to accept Okies into the richest state in the Union. The irony is that the Okies did make it. Some even became wealthy. And now some of them won’t accept immigrants to California today.

I get the firm impression that students are not asked to read extensively until they walk into the 11th-grade class. Second, students don’t know how to read closely. If you are simply reading something you like, your reading level doesn’t go up. It will only improve when you look at the text closely and study it--the same way you would study a math problem.