Why should students read literature in the 21st century
Reading is one of the most important
intellectual activities we as humans can ever engage in. It’s more than simply decoding a string of symbols on a page or a wall or a message board. Reading is a process of comprehension and understanding and it applies to every aspect of life where we must decode something in order to lead our individual existence. Nevertheless, things have changed since the turn of the century, so as educators we must ask: Why should students read literature in the 21st century?
four main reasons:
Reading is one of the most important intellectual activities we as humans can ever engage in. It’s more than simply decoding a string of symbols on a page or a wall or a message board. Reading is a process of comprehension and understanding and it applies to every aspect of life where we must decode something in order to lead our individual existence. Nevertheless, things have changed since the turn of the century, so as educators we must ask: Why should students read literature in the 21st century?
four main reasons:- Stories are about communication.
- Reading is always an act of empathy, always an imagining of what it’s like to be somebody else.
- Reading critically and thoughtfully gives us better tools to explain corporate profits and broken hearts and helps us to connect to each other.
- By knowing what it’s like to be the people we read about, we learn more about those around us, those who came before us, and we learn more about ourselves.
What qualifies as a text in the 21st century?
What can be considered a text anymore? Previously it’s been just that: text. It was words on a physical page that people read, but with the ever-growing prominence of technology in life and in classrooms, the word text is much like the word film. We still use it to refer to movies, but we don’t use “film” anymore, do we?
Text should include much more than just words on a page. What about words on a computer screen? Spoken word poetry—which is becoming extremely popular now—screen plays, movies, audio books, text messages, blogs, podcasts, instant messaging, YouTube videos, pictures, and scripts should all be included in this definition of text. As long as a person is able to re-read, analyze, visualize, ask questions, relate it to real life, talk about it, and think about it, why are we devaluing these things as non-textual items? The internet has made it possible for students to take these non-traditional texts as revisit them so that they may analyze them. We are transcending the limitations of print-based texts into this incredible realm of possibility through advancing technology.
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