Blog Post 9~ Kelly Gallagher’s “Readicide”

Blog Post 9~ Kelly Gallagher’s book Readicide

“Readicide” is an educator’s call to action in the war to engage students in active reading. To preface my words I’ll share Kelly Gallagher’s definition of Readicide with you as found in his text. According to Gallagher, “Read-i-cide: noun, the systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools” (Kindle Location p. 125).

Gallagher laments the roles schools and educators have been forced to take over the years since 2001 when more and more testing became forced onto our children/youths. This testing forces educators to place their teaching focus on teaching students curriculum that enables them to pass tests, instead of teaching students curriculum with regular content. This drives teaching and learning to be shallow, instead of deep. Teachers spend time inside classrooms breaking their lessons into small mini-lessons, examining stories to bits in some cases or in others leaving their students floundering with little to no instruction what-so-ever. Overmanaged students become bored because they weren’t allowed to think and delve into texts for themselves. Students weren’t led into discussions, in the beginning, then allowed to find their feet and grow into free thinkers. These students will ultimately perform poorly on standardized tests, as they were not developing critical thinking from classroom modeling. The same is true of those students being assigned large or difficult literary works with little-to-no instruction at all, Undermanagement! These students flounder for the same reasons~ no classroom modeling and a lack of critical thinking. Most of these students leave school thinking reading is boring, never reading for fun, or never developing a love for any type of reading at all. SAD, but true!

What students need is to be given time in the classroom to read for fun. According to Gallagher if you give students ten minutes to read they may waste it. However, if you increase that ten-minute time gradually they cannot stay idle for a twenty-minute block; forced with inactivity, they will start reading. Students, then, who are given twenty minutes to read for enjoyment, regularly, will develop a love for reading over time. Their scores will also increase as a side effect, as will their vocabulary. Reading for fun actually spills over into several areas, having unexpected benefits. It is important to not offer rewards to students for FUN reading. They need to learn that reading is intrinsically its own reward.

Gallager provides educators practical, proven solutions to Readicide’s problems, which it’s impossible and impractical to try and communicate within the limited scope of a blog post. I can only reiterate that the message is important, and it is one every adolescent teacher should hear and share until it rings out across the nation and the world. Educators need to make changes in our teaching so our students can learn once again.

Work Cited: Gallagher, Kelly. Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It (Kindle Location 125). Stenhouse Publishers - A. Kindle Edition.