The Comfortable Reader

Let me lay it out, and you see if I got it.  

Your reading experiences in school focused on plot, and teacher generated questions.  Your classroom was a quiz show, a gauntlet that only the smart, brave, or eager students dared. You sat quietly working on your powers of invisibility.  There were right and wrong answers, and the guessing game began.  

“What does the teacher want me to say?”

“She’s asking questions about things I didn’t even know existed”  

Clearly, you were expected to read and know how to make meaning, to get the author’s point.  

“What is the theme of this poem?”

 What symbols did the writer use to create it?”, the teacher asks.  

You sat still, didn’t make eye contact, and secretly chose the Jeopardy category “Why do I Care for $1000, Alex”.  

Here’s the truth.  You were not the problem.  You were set up to fail.  The class was designed as a performance arena for those that could find meaning independently, and the Thunderdome for those who could not. The person who intuitively understood the processes and decoding systems of the realm of words had the experience of talking with their tribe.

And if you did not have these skills? Well, you were left out.

Alienation complete. You were presented with daily reminders that reading was not your thing.  

So you went to CliffNotes, or your own favorite brand of crib sheet to survive.  The details the teacher seemed to focus on for the quizzes were right there in front of you, in abridged form even. The stuff the others seemed to be able to figure out — symbols, themes, motifs, were right there, too. Again spelled out in neatly labeled paragraphs. This was the survival guide, the map to navigate English class. 

And so you collected them, and traded them like baseball cards. 

Why wouldn’t you? The course was designed to leave you out; you needed to pass. 

So that is exactly what you did.  

You passed as a reader, faked your way through to survive.

How do I know?  I was there for over 30 years as a High School English teacher.  I look back and I am stunned.  What I was doing as an instructor, quite frankly what the instruction in many High School English classrooms is still doing, completely skips the part that needs to be taught. I was running a private club: the proof of membership – that my students had already obtained the knowledge needed.  Class was a place students came to discuss the meaning they made.  The tough stuff – the possession of the actual skill of understanding the message of the poem or the novel – was assumed.  

Until I stopped treating Reading Comprehension as a What, and began treating it as a How. 

“I am going to write this novel to express my truth about people and life, and then hide it from my readers”, said no writer – EVER.  It does not stand up to reason, or logic, that one would do the work to crystalize the essence of their truth, create a world in which that truth lives, write it down for others to experience, and NOT want their voice, their message to be heard.  If so, that would put a fine point on the phrase “suffering artist”. 

No.  Writers actually want you to hear them, to “get” them.  Writers use devices, and strategies to create, and communicate to readers their meaning.  I know it is possible, even predictable, that you will grasp these tools, and no longer distrust or feel an interloper in the realm of words.  You will find comfort in your engagement with words because the path through the text that seemed mystifying before will soon be well lit.  You will see that the writer has been guiding your way all along.

Follow me.  I will be your companion in becoming a Comfortable Reader.