“On average, once every three weeks I come across a newspaper item in which someone criticises literature teaching, and reading lists in particular. This is rarely based on research, and almost always on personal experience or anecdotes. But it has a harmful effect.” Dutch language and literature specialist and teaching methodologist Jeroen Dera sometimes feels frustrated at so much unfounded and negative commentary about the reading of literature in schools.
What then is the reality, based on research? About one third of Dutch teenagers are bookworms, and about one third hate reading. But no fewer than 39 percent are reading sceptics. “These are young people who don’t have a negative attitude towards reading, but who nevertheless don’t read – because they’re too busy, because of Netflix, and so on. It’s this group that represents the ‘low-hanging fruit’ for literature teachers. And for whom ideas about whether or not reading is worthwhile do matter.”
Battling the decline in reading
In early November, Dera was awarded a Dutch Research Council (NWO) Veni grant to carry out research into the justifications for literature teaching in secondary schools, in particular at HAVO and VWO level. Why is it important to read literature? What do teachers say about it? And is this consistent with students’ own ideas? “There are many arguments in literature studies that underline the importance of reading: from cultural education and the emancipating force of literature to moral education and the development of empathy.” In the light of the decline in reading among Dutch youngsters, it is important to draw attention to such arguments within education. Dera: “The PISA scores for 15-year-olds show that young Dutch people are less able to reflect on what they have read than their international peers, especially when it comes to complex texts. International research suggests that reading literary fiction in particular can help to improve these reading skills. And that’s important, because although young people are now reading more short online texts than ever before, they rarely engage in deep reading, which is the concentrated reading of a longer text over a longer period of time. And it is precisely this skill that is critical to successfully completing a programme of study or being able to function in the management positions that many young people aspire to.”
Although the main objective of Dera’s research is not to solve the problem of the reading decline, he believes that education plays a vital role in legitimising reading. “Some 90,000 HAVO and VWO students sit their final exams each year. Many of them no longer encounter novels or poetry in higher education, which makes secondary school the ideal place to highlight the relevance of reading.”
The reading list in practice
Dera has previously investigated what actually happens in practice with the HAVO and VWO reading lists for Dutch. He analysed the lists of 1616 HAVO and VWO students and found that, contrary to the popular cliché, students aren’t reading the same as they did 20 years ago. “Yes, there’s a kind of ‘school canon’, with a top 20 most-read texts in which we see little change. But alongside that, students are reading many other books. There’s a lot of variation, including in what teachers approve of. Young adult literature, for example, is increasingly finding its way on to students’ reading lists.”
Dera does acknowledge, however, that reading lists are still not culturally diverse. “Students read many more books by male authors than female authors, far more by Dutch writers than Flemish writers, and most writers are also white. If you’re talking about the value and function of literature in education, we also need to talk about this. In my new study, I want to find out to what extent teachers and students think that dealing with diversity is a task for literature teaching – or is it a blind spot?”
A key to performance
It’s hardly surprising that Dera himself believes “very strongly” that reading is important. “I think that reading literature helps you to be able to look at issues from different perspectives and to put yourself in someone else’s position. In that sense, literature is a key force in a democratic society. Literature also helps you to express yourself, because books literally give you language and they teach you to understand and use it better.”
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