Gay Ivey, University of North Carolina-Greensboro – Teens and Disturbing Books
Should we restrict what books children can read?
Gay Ivey, William E. Moran distinguished professor in literacy at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, tells us why not.
Gay Ivey is the William E. Moran Distinguished Professor in Literacy at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. She studies reading engagement among children and young adults and the consequences of meaningful literacy experiences on their academic lives and wellbeing. She is a recipient of the P. David Pearson Scholarly Influence Award, a past president of the Literacy Research Association, and an elected member of the Reading Hall of Fame.
Teens and Disturbing Books
Recent reports raise alarming concerns about the state of adolescents’ mental health and wellbeing, including rates of depression, loneliness, suicide, bullying, and chronic school absenteeism. School reading engagement may hold unique potential to reduce these problems.
My colleague, Peter Johnston, and I studied the experiences of 8th grade students whose English teachers prioritized engaged reading. Instead of holding students accountable for assigned books, teachers invited them to choose from a range of young adult books, gave them time to read, and encouraged them to talk about their books. Students reported improvements in peer and family relationships, self-regulation, empathy, self-narratives, moral development, reading ability, and happiness, which they attributed to the books they read.
Engaged readers experience characters’ thoughts and feelings, expanding their ability and propensity to imagine others’ thoughts and feelings, the source of many social and emotional benefits including reduced anxiety and depression, increased optimism, resilience, and wellbeing. Student’s preferred books offered moral and relational dilemmas around race, drugs, relationships, sexuality, abuse, and societal inequities. Unsettled by these narratives, they needed to talk with each other, with parents – whoever would listen. The conversations led to new friendships, a more robust support network, even improved family life. Some found the books helped them cope with personal trauma like the death of friends or family.
Our research suggests that teens need not read “the classics” to reap the benefits associated with them. Their preferred books, though disturbing, resonate with a broader spectrum of readers. Efforts to ban such books should give us pause.
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[Teachers College Press] – Teens Choosing to Read
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YA books are attractive to young readers because they are written at a lower level than classics. This is intentional and means these readers are not introduced to complex ideas or difficult vocabulary. They also stimulate prurient interest – also intentional.
Nonsense. You overgeneralize what “YA books” are. You are wrong about “the classics”: classic works of literature have been written across a wide range of reading levels, some accessible to young readers and some only appropriate for readers who are mature enough to have mastered reflective thinking. Many classics also stimulate prurient interests. Young readers should be pushed to read books that are challenging, but expecting a child to be able to penetrate War and Peace is ludicrous. Give them some challenging Judy Blume and let them explore complex ideas in prose appropriate to their level of development. Pretty much every point in your post is wrong. Actually, strike “pretty much” from the previous sentence. Dr. Ivey and her colleagues have done excellent research. I’ll learn from them, Lhfry.
Am I reading this Student Reading in 8th grade correctly? Disturb the students so much that they have to talk about it, to “anyone”???
This was not my experience …. it did not work out for me this way.
When raw accounts of necrophilia fell into my youthful hands, there was no one to talk to. No one. Same for “The Story of O” and “Justine”.
It is delusional to think that schools have a monopoly on reading material, and even more so to think that teachers can manage that interaction.