Megan Schmidt wrote in Discover magazine about the value of reading fiction. Although written a year ago, this article is timely because it decisively refutes one of the central tenets of the Common Core, which encourages teachers to spend increasing amounts of time on “informational text” while decreasing time for literature.
She began:
Would the world be a better place if people read more books?
Of course, asserting that reading can fix the world’s problems would be naive at best. But it could help make it a more empathetic place. And a growing body of research has found that people who read fiction tend to better understand and share in the feelings of others — even those who are different from themselves.
That’s because literary fiction is essentially an exploration of the human experience, says Keith Oatley, a novelist and professor emeritus of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto.
“Reading novels enables us to become better at actually understanding other people and what they’re up to,” says Oatley. “[With] someone who you’re married to … or a close friend, you can actually get to know them. Reading fiction enables you to sample across a much wider range of possible people and come to understand something about the differences among them.”
Perspectives on Empathy
Psychologists have found that empathy is innate, as even babies show it. And while some people are naturally more empathetic than others, most people become more-so with age. Beyond that, some research indicates that if you’re motivated to become more empathetic, you probably can. Although there are many ways to cultivate empathy, they largely involve practicing positive social behaviors, like getting to know others, putting yourself in their shoes and challenging one’s own biases. And stories — fictional ones in particular — offer another way to step outside of oneself.
Fiction has the capacity to transport you into another character’s mind, allowing you to see and feel what they do. This can expose us to life circumstances that are very different from our own. Through fiction, we can experience the world as another gender, ethnicity, culture, sexuality, profession or age. Words on a page can introduce us to what it’s like to lose a child, be swept up in a war, be born into poverty, or leave home and immigrate to a new country. And taken together, this can influence how we relate to others in the real world…
Sometimes, empathy is described as the glue that holds society together. Without it, humankind probably wouldn’t have gotten very far. Our ancestors depended on acts of caring for survival — such as sharing resources, help with healing the sick, and protection from predators. And we’ll probably continue needing empathy to move forward. Yet, at this particular moment in history,it can feel like empathy is on shaky ground.
From this perspective, it seems that our current test-driven regime and neglect of literature are promoting the wrong values. Selfishness, competitiveness, hyper-individualism, lack of empathy.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The testing regime reflects the values of its architects, David Coleman, Bill Gates, et al. When Coleman said “Nobody gives a sh— what you think or what you feel,” he elucidated the hateful greed and selfishness that is the fabric of testing and privatization.
Nailed it. He certainly revealed a lot there, didn’t he?
Coleman was simply expressing his feelings toward his parents.
Who obviously did not give a shit what he thought or felt.
Probably for good reason.
For very good reason. 🙂
I’m a retired Alternative Education teacher. In practice, that often placed me with students who had difficulty “getting along” with their regular education peers. Often, those students didn’t know how to negotiate their feelings about race, ethnicity, class, politics, and/or religious attitudes of their parents. Acting out on their anger would get them into trouble in many ways. I always tried to integrate the teaching of social studies, (history and civics) required courses with congruent, (English literature), all required curriculum. Some in today’s context might accuse me of teaching CRT from time to time (sad). I agree with the theme and tenets of this article. Thank you.
I taught at an alternative school in 1979-1983. Our curriculum was integrated and took a humanities approach to the related subjects. The idea was that the approach would motivate children who were especially empathetic might have been put off by the traditional approach of most schools of the time.
Reading fiction introduces people to those that are different from themselves, and it develops empathy. If empathy is the glue of a society, we as a society are coming unglued. Unfortunately, our struggle is not just about collectivism versus individualism. A significant part of our society is embracing nativism, xenophobia and toxic populism. The whole anti-CRT hysteria exemplifies the problem. Some school boards are banning any multicultural fiction from the school libraries. These are books that try to help young people cope with being “different,” and they help young people develop tolerance and understanding of those that are different. In Central York Pennsylvania the school board has banned a number of harmless multicultural books from the school library. These are the very books that develop empathy and promote mutual understanding.https://www.ydr.com/story/news/2021/09/14/books-and-other-resources-banned-central-york-school-board/8333108002/
I taught poor ELLs for many years. I noticed that many of the students that came from political upheaval and extreme poverty had developed a highly developed sense of empathy for others. Perhaps their experiences helped them achieve emotional maturity sooner.
In the linked list I could find only two that were literature (they were poetry). The rest are all non-fiction treatises and discussion-starters exploring what is racism, what is anti-racism etc. Absolutely zero reason to ban them from the school library—reprehensible!! But building empathy in the classroom may spring easier from discussions of the feelings evoked by literary fiction whose protagonists come from various cultures. Let’s hope York hasn’t stamped them out, too.
How about it makes students better readers, better writers, more knowledgeable, and generally smarter? I don’t need teachers to teach empathy or tolerance or virtue to my children. I need them to teach literature.
The literature being taught often shows/demonstrates examples of empathy, tolerance or virtue. Teachers can walk and chew gum simultaneously.
If it happens, it happens. Don’t “teach empathy.”
In reading good literature, one often feels a connection to a main character, sees his or her dilemma, and empathizes with their struggle. The teacher doesn’t”teach empathy,” but usually the fiction does.
Empathy can’t be taught. You cannot teach someone HOW to feel or make them feel a certain way. A teacher can talk at kids all day about empathy(or any SEL du jour), but that doesn’t mean any of the kids will get it. The SEL (empathy training, growth mindset for math) was the final straw for us and #2 went to private HS. Lots of reading and comparing texts, lots of discussion and debating about the texts, lots of feelings being discussed about the texts but never explicitly “taught”.
Lisa M
join a book club and see what they discuss. It sounds like the teachers were really delving into numerous aspects of the book.
What did they leave out that you wanted your son to know?
What makes students “better readers, better writers, more knowledgeable, and generally smarter…”? If the reading is treated as an SEL exercise, I understand your irritation, but character analysis, plot and theme examination, etc. are a major part of teaching literature. If all I got from reading was a larger vocabulary and an appreciation for word-smithing, I would be missing the meat of the exercise. I am obviously whittling down the comparison here, but I am trying to make the point that learning about the human condition through different genres and connecting with other people’s stories is critical to reading. I am not going to become a “better reader” if I don’t enjoy it, and reading fiction is a good way to spark that enthusiasm.
I don’t disagree with any of that. And yes, it’s the echo of SEL that annoys me.
I had a feeling that you were reacting to heavy handed SEL programming.
I do not think it possible to understand literature or history: the point of view of a character, the context of the character’s experience, or the series of events that culminate in the narrative…without the understanding individual developing the ability to practice what we call empathy. Since that word connotes the ability to step inside a character besides yourself, is it not unavoidable?
That’s a little too post-modern for my taste, but I think I get the thrust of your point.
Flerp: I have been accused of being medieval, but never post-modern.
First time for everything
Amen to that Roy. You are exactly right.
Yes, Roy. We teach using fictional literature because the reading of and thinking, discussing, and writing about fictional literature involves learning everything from language mechanics to the understanding of how the entire world of humans works. The empathy teaching is not the focus, but is embedded in the study of great works.
Reading aloud to children also helps them develop their own reading talents, whether they are reading to themselves or reading out loud. I often read aloud to my grandson via alternating pages and he emulates the inflections I use to make the story come alive.
That was my best talent as a librarian. I would enthrall the children with my selections and my reading skills. The teachers/aides/parents who were in attendance with the children all looked forward to library story time.
Now I’m retired I don’t get to interact very often, but I did go to my grandson’s first grade class, pre- Covid, and the teacher was amazed that the children were so absorbed in my mini lesson. I had the chance to sit in the lunchroom with them and it was nice to be so popular with the little ones. First graders haven’t learned to be jaded yet.
I went home that afternoon and thought, “I’ve still got it!”
(If you’ve read my other comments you know I readily admit to my numerous faults, but reading isn’t one of them).
Your post suggests that the reason for having young people read literature/stories is to cultivate skills which might be seen as “academic.” So, you are attributing utilitarian value to literature, just as the empathy researchers are doing. My question is, why is becoming “better readers, better writers, more knowledgeable” more important or more acceptable than becoming more “empathetic?”
Great point—plus, why do we assume it’s more important that schools foster literacy than foster empathy? I mean, who’s to say!
I don’t think the original article proposed “teaching empathy.”
Learning empathy is different from teaching empathy
Teaching empathy is unavoidable. If a child is bullying another child, you have a discussion about how it feels to be bullied, how the bullied person feels. In effect, it’s a lesson on empathy. Discussing how a character in a book or story feels and why he feels that way is teaching empathy amongst other things.
oh you are right, JJ– even as I was writing ‘leave it to your pastor,’ I started thinking about those conversations with little tykes, encouraging them to imagine how the other person feels. What you’re doing in the moment is instilling rules of classroom behavior, but you’re also teaching the golden rule.
That was the message of the linked article. That reading literary fiction imparts empathy. “Teaching empathy” is a different subject. I’d leave that to your local pastor…
If we’re lucky, the significant others of our students have been modeling empathy from the day they were born. I suspect Trump was not raised with such a model.
Yes yes yes. Especially those early years, read because it’s fun! All the later good stuff can follow from that.
It’s fun! I like your comment.
Reading because it’s fun is almost a different subject. For me (and perhaps you as well), reading fiction has always been THE fun. So much so that I was ready to prescribe above (responding to retired teacher’s link about books banned in York PA) solely works of literary fiction/ poetry for the devpt of empathy. But now I’m remembering the vast differences in kids. One of our sons’ friends imbibed historical non-fiction, favoring it as early as at 6yo. All 3 of my sons were highly empathetic from the get-go; just one drawn into literary fiction/ poetry. My dg: he had sufficient emotional boundaries to avoid being overwhelmed by adventures under others’ skins. The eldest took refuge in non-fiction & satire, the youngest in sci-fi.
One of the many sins of the “Standards Movement” has been the insistence on having students analyze blind passages as a way to demonstrate literacy. This expanded the chasm between privilege and the under privileged due to the subject matter covered in these text. Many of the urban students I worked with struggled because the prior knowledge acknowledged as critical through contemporary brain research was not there. I would just roll my eyes whenever I heard educators advocate for non-fiction text and put time limits on fiction. It was so small minded. What does work is finding books that are interesting to the child whether they are fiction or non-fiction. We have made reading such a chore. So many of the students I have encountered can read, but don’t care to read the drivel that is often put before them.
And not just a problem for the underprivileged/ urban. I was tutoring a [highly-educated, suburban, middle-class] Indian immigrant couple’s sons [in Spanish] when this plague hit our local NJ public schools [roughly 2011]. The youngest was assigned an essay on MLK’s Letter from Birmingham right out of the gate in 4th grade ELA. His mother, no slouch in education, asked for my input. Her observations were: (a)the level of the language was a stretch for 9-yo’s, (b)there had been no discussion or background provided on the historical context, (c)the political issues implied were over the heads of 4th-graders, (d)the prompts for the essay were about stylistic language nuances which seemed to her irrelevant, age-inappropriate, and lacking linguistic preparation, (e)kids were organized into small teams left to work this out on their own, and (f)there was apparently some kind of hell to pay if all didn’t “score” well.
I told her she was right on.
I was appalled when I saw the list of suggested reading for Common Core. Inappropriate topics for a particular age level which weren’t reading level appropriate. Many titles were out of print and included articles from old hard to locate magazines.
Over the years I’ve been involved in creating reading lists. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent narrowing choices, making sure titles were available, and checking the lexiles, to create the “perfect” list of books. Yet no good deed goes unpunished and those in power would often add books, change the recommended age level, and toss out my carefully screened choices. The only time my lists remained intact was when they were recommended summer reading for my own students.
Sigh!
grr, powers that be }:-(
When I taught special ed. kids at Deary HS, I had a reading group that read high quality short stories. We had wonderful discussions and often missed the passing bell due to our deep involvement in the work at hand! Now, you get kids that interested in reading and discussing the content and deep learning occurs.
My daughter, now 15, has benefited greatly from new literature that is now written for children and young adults. Historical fiction by such writers as Ruta Sepetyes (Salt of theSea, The Fountains of Silence, Between Shades of Gray) have fired her understanding of history even as she just gets to the place where the serious evaluation of historical issues can begin. Novels treating the subject of individuals pushed outside of the accepted norms, heirs to the tradition of the Outsiders, have created in her an underdog attitude that informs a growing political attitude.
A great many of her reading habits are of her (and her friend’s) reading habits outside of school. Whatever the curriculum, her little circle of self-proclaimed nerds will find the literature that feeds their interest in the personal drama of human existence.
David Coleman does not have a prayer. These kids go to the library. He may try to call back the tide, but he will never have the wisdom of Canute, who showed his subject that he had not the power to hold back the surging sea.
Beautifully observed, Roy!
And how lucky your daughter is to have you as her father!
Seconded.
I am the lucky one. I was granted the best in girls.
“the subject of individuals pushed outside of the accepted norms”– well said.
The Outsiders pulled my youngest into reading independently despite obstacles. He didn’t speak until he was 4, and tho repeated K, reading came late & never easily. But his taste in stories developed early. He loved Bridge to Terabithia even tho we had to read it to each other alternately, a few pp at a time. We still were doing some of that by the time he was reading Hinton, but his increasing fascination with the tales meant that more & more, he was relating to me what he’d already read. He eventually found ‘outsider’-type series on his own [I remember The Shadow Children, Everworld, & others]. He is a performing/ teaching musician; that is his ‘real’ language. As an adult no question he is more of a screen-series-watcher than a reader– but if you find him a non-fiction on the background/ devpt of a fave series [“Fringe” in his 20’s], he will gobble it up.
I must admit to never reading Outsiders. But I know a lot about it from hearing about it. Fascinating how certain fiction becomes a part of culture.
My son has dyslexia, but just because he couldn’t read didn’t mean I couldn’t find ways for him to engage with books. I did read to him, but we also listened to books (The Harry Potter series were expertly done). I bought some tapes, but the public library has a fantastic collection (I still regularly borrow titles on my to read list – sometimes I use both print and audio formats simultaneously). The books he was assigned at his reading level were not literature and tended to be boring, but luckily I had the knowledge to make better choices (and I had access to titles from the school library where I worked and ordered books suitable for him and other children in his situation.) His issues made me a better, more empathetic librarian. It’s not that children don’t like books, it’s that they haven’t been introduced to the right genre.
He especially liked the poems of Shel Silverstein. They appealed to his sense of humor.
Hi Flo! You do good work. The middle 2 siblings in my family [of origin] inherited our Dad’s profound dyslexia. The younger benefited tremendously from ‘70’s IDEA/ SpEd– ended up a longtime SpEd teacher, now a hisch asst princ, & the most degree’d by far in the family. She tells me the only thing she can’t do is proofread 😉. 7 yrs older, bro had no such help at school, but he was dogged. He eschewed TV’s for books after hisch, & became a constant reader. He tells me it’s absolutely like muscles: if he stops for a month or two, the letters start swimming on the page again.
There is hope for those kids. I’ve been trained in the Orton Gillingham technique (which my son refused to let me use with him – one of the reasons I didn’t home school), he had Irwin glasses (tinted to help him focus in the print) and did an experimental Fast Forward program for two years over the summers he was 5 and 6. Ultimately, he had a fantastic resource teacher in middle school as well as a great speech therapist who used the earobics program. The teachers on his team bent over backwards to either assist him or modify his work. They had the small resource group work with handicapped students and took him on a team building retreat (the one with the trees). He can read on a sixth grade level which is enough to function. However, high school was a disaster and he ended up with a GED. There’s a reason his school district is rated number one in the area – they really pull out all the stops.
Ironically, it was texting which improved his spelling, although he still calls me on occasion to spell a certain word.
Just as a hammer sees every problem as a nail,
Keith Oatley, a novelist and professor emeritus
of cognitive psychology, opines
“Reading novels enables us to become better
at actually understanding…”
If the faculties of discernment, to judge and think,
(understanding) is the product of stuffing our heads
full of the ready-made thoughts of other people,
where is the evidence?
Is the behavior of our society, an exhibit of
faculties of discernment?
Many place faith in the statements of professional
liars, cramming their heads full of the ready-made
thoughts of other people.
So an so wrote an article, a book, a novel, an
opinion, as if to remake the broken window of
understanding.
Go figure, same pudding, same recipe…
I do not understand your casting the reading of fiction as “stuffing our heads full of the ready-made thoughts of other people ”: this does not sound like literary fiction. Its primary feature is character development — watching protagonists’ thoughts, concepts, behavior evolve as they stumble through events that change their outlook. Such fantasies spun out of authors’ heads will inevitably reflect whatever wisdom they have gathered in living their own lives, which could augment whatever wisdom you have gained in living yours. You could use the same general broad-brush to scoff at reading anything of any nature written by anyone other than yourself. Does one develop “the faculties of discernment, to judge and think, (understanding)” by insulating oneself against input from the thoughts of other people?
Is it possible that the fact that Traitor Trump doesn’t like to read might explain his narcissism and total lack of empathy?
I also wonder how many of the traitor’s MAGA minions also do not like to read.
Good points, Lloyd. .
Yes, it actually does.
There seems to be anecdotal info that suggests the DT was/is dyslexic, but I rather think that his upbringing played a huge role in his sociopathy. His lack of interest in the ideas and thoughts of others certainly would not support a solid reading habit either.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Trump were dyslexic along with all the other issues he has. He probably also has a processing disorder.
Yet he’s smart enough to fool a lot of people.
Great article! Indeed.
True!
just a sidenote: good nonfiction can do the same. Studies show that some kids, most often boys, do better with nonfiction.
I was one of those boys. Still am.
My son got into trouble with “Reading Renaissance” because he was reading too much non-fiction. Go figure.
I am assuming that it does matter what fiction people read so that they become more empathetic. How about movies? Don’t they have the same effect as books? Wouldn’t watching movies have the same advantages as reading books?
I love that fact that so many books have been adapted for television miniseries or onscreen movies.
perhaps. but movies tend to be more superficial than novels are. A typical screenplay is no longer than a long short story. A gross generalization, but generally, I think, true.
Bob, sometimes movies can provide the visualization you cont necessarily get from the book (plus the correct pronunciations and accents). Last night I watched The Dressmaker on Netflix which was adapted from the novel. Talk about tearing at ones heartstrings.
The goal is to see the movie and then read the book, or vice verse.
The Dig is another good one to watch.
Thanks for the recommendations! The last I saw that I really enjoyed: The Two Popes.
I read The Hate U Give and cried. I watched the film The Hate U Give and cried. They are both powerful YA pieces, and both important works that are useful and helpful learning experiences. The difference is that when I read the book, I better imagined myself in the shoes of the characters. Movies are good. Books are better.
That’s a good synopsis of the difference. Growing up, I remember exactly two movies that I thought did justice to the novels they were based on: “The Miracle Worker” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.” As an adult, I would add “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” Yet I wonder what I would have thought of any one of those movies, had I not read the novel/ play first. You put your finger on it here: “when I read the book, I better imagined myself in the shoes of the characters.” Verbal depiction engages the full panoply of one’s emotional and visual imagination. Film is a visual realization by someone(s) else’ emotional experience and visual imagination, which, if it engages you to the same degree, is because they’ve gleaned what was universally human in the novel, and found a way to express it that is equally universal. That’s rare.
Read your comment to the daughter. Hate u give is “best ever.”
Yes. Best ever ever.
To Kill a Mockingbird is the exception to the rule. The film rivals the novel.
Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch does it.
There are so many reasons to encourage kids to pick up a book. Whether it’s Julie B Jones or The Lightning Thief or Joey Pigza Swallows the Key or Frindle or How to Eat Fried Worms or Stone Fox – these books and so many more feature children who face adversity and are empowered to solve problems, often without adult help. Books also allow kids to see themselves and give them alternatives on how situations can be handled. Books can help them realize they are not alone and can boost their confidence. If it stokes empathy – fantastic. Another bonus.
Adults should read too. I just finished The Kitchen Front by Jennifer Ryan and am about to finish The Water Dancer by Coates. While not all books touch my soul, these two will linger for quite a while. We all could use a touch of empathy as various refugees are desperate to enter the US and not everyone is receiving them with open arms.
Visit your local library ASAP and if you don’t have one, sign up for a library card. Of all the perks in this country, the access to a large collection books (for free) is one of the best gifts available to everyone.
“children who face adversity and are empowered to solve problems, often without adult help” – yes! For me as a little kid in the ‘50’s, that was “The Boxcar Children.” Also, later, “Toby Tyler” (?!) We should give credit to Grimm and Perrault; this was always the essential fairy tale theme, which spawns children’s lit to this day, as evidenced by your post.
I don’t have time today to make a comment worthy of this blog, but suggest that Maryanne
Wolf’s “Reader Come Home” is a must read for anyone hoping to contribute to any conversation about the importance of reading fiction in this era of prolific, to some, obsessive, screen reading.
She is in my research of brain development, and how early fiction reading–from books–deposits valuable internal models into the cerebellum, not only for the further development of empathy, but for analogy and inference.
Without the accumulation of data in childhood, for example, how would a young adolescent make analogies and inferences from what Ernest Hemingway considered to be the best short story he ever wrote: For sale, baby shoes, never worn.
OK. While we’re doing extremely short stories:
No meds, thanks. –Joan of Arc
My shortest. LOL.
How about: Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer?
I just want to add a little something. Reading poetry can be just as meaningful as reading fiction. Maybe more.
One of the greatest of literary critics, the polyglot George Steiner, comments in an essay in Language and Silence (which contains a number of essays about the Holocaust) that people used to believe, naively, that a literary education would be humanizing but that we are forced to consider that Joseph Goebbels, Propaganda Minister of the Third Reich, had a PhD in Philology with a specialization in Romantic Literature from the University of Heidelberg. And he was one of the most evil people who ever lived. A psychopath. Genocidal. A monster.
But here’s the thing: Reading novels isn’t going to make you, automatically, into a warm, generous, compassionate person. Bill Gates reads a lot, but he seems to have a very low EQ. Lord knows he has been entirely deaf to the extreme damage he has done to so many via his education “reforms.”
People read for many different reasons and get different stuff out of it. There are lots of ways in and out of books generally and novels and poems and plays in particular. So, one simply can’t generalize about ALL reading of fiction.
Reading fiction won’t automatically make you a better person, but it CAN do so, if you have a competent teacher and the right books. Novels and poems can be excellent training in theory of mind–in getting into the heads of other people. This is key to what the great moral philosopher Thomas Nagel calls the View from Nowhere–seeing from NO PARTICULAR POINT OF VIEW (well, what’s in this for me?) but from lots of different points of view simultaneously, which is essential to moral action. One wants a judge to be disinterested, not uninterested. LOL. Same idea. Reading novels can help one to learn how to see from other points of view. Extremely valuable, that.
Same is true of acting. Some approach acting as an ego trip. It’s all about parading on stage or on a screen in exchange for affirmation. Here’s how such actors warm up: they sit in the Green Room and sing Me, Me, Me, Me, Me. But then there are those who work very, very hard at inhabiting a character, getting inside that other mind, BEING the character. And those people learn. They learn a lot.
And in response to FLERP, above, let me just say that teaching literature and most arts has to have a moral dimension. It just does because of what a lot of art is about. One cannot deal with it well without addressing that.
You can’t read Grapes of Wrath well without recognizing that Steinbeck is trying to show us who/what we might be. He wants to CHANGE PEOPLE.
To paraphrase Tom Joad:
A person ain’t got a soul of his or her own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, and then . . . then it don’t matter. Whatever happens, I’ll be all around in the dark – I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look – wherever there’s a migrant family walking a thousand miles to apply for amnesty so that the children can eat and live safely, I’ll be there. Wherever people are shouting down some white woman who called the cops on folks for barbecuing while black, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way people stood up to the thugs with badges who came to arrest them at Stonewall. I’ll be in every Pride parade. I’ll be in the way trans kids laugh when they’re accepted for who they are, and in the way women walk out on the company that wants to arbitrate away their right not to be pawed at. I’ll be in the crowd taking pictures when the cops are beating up some black kid. I’ll be standing between the woman on the subway wearing a hajab and the young men taunting her. I’ll be in the cell with the guy talking to the law school students who’ll find the DNA evidence to exonerate him. I’ll be at the factory gates with the poor people sick of being sick, of being poisoned. I’ll be with the pigs in the transport truck heading to the slaughterhouse, with the chickens in the battery cages. I’ll be in the next desk over cheering on the kid who writes, “My mind is not standardized enough to formulate the required responses” and nothing else on the standardized test. When the old people march on the capitol to protect their healthcare and Social Security and extend Medicare to all because it’s cheaper and more decent and every other country has done it, I’ll be there. And when the young people working at McDonald’s or Walmart fight not just for a living wage but for a union as well, I’ll be there, too.
There’s a reason why we CARE about novels and poems and plays.
Does Bill Gates read a lot, or does Bill Gates claim to read a lot? When Anand Giridharadas wrote Winners Take Alll, Gates endorsed the book, even though the book directly and repeatedly criticized Gates. I think Gates is full of it. He didn’t read that book. It’s not just his low EQ, it’s his lack of knowledge in general of all subjects other than greed that I find so disturbing.
You’re right, not everyone takes the same thing from reading literature. It’s possible to read Fyodor Dostoyevsky and come away with nothing, but it’s likely to learn a great deal — if one actually puts oneself into the reading. Greed doesn’t really read. If Gates were my student, he would learn something about the world, or he would earn a fail. He would probably earn a fail.
Points out the importance of good teachers.
cx: hajib
Bob: Recently an old friend passed. He was a mentor to meat the university, my advisor on a paper I wrote on Medieval Agriculture, and a friend. One of his teaching innovations was to have each student research and portray an historical figure. Somehow he realized intuitively what you said about inhabiting a character.
All these years later, a few of his students were recalling his class, and those of us who took that class recalled their figure.
I think there is a reason we see polarized attitudes in Hollywood. Many of those who portrayed someone remarkably different from themselves seem most sympathetic to real people on the fringes of society. Others tend to portray one kind of character, and are often found in their real world to avoid noticing the margins of our real world.
Exactly, Bob. Books alone won’t make you acquire high EQ. It seems what Gates reads is nonfiction.
http://favobooks.com/enterpreneurs/46-billgates.html
Whatever else occurs when we read good, well selected, well taught fiction, we are a different person than we were when we began to read it.
Yes moral evaluation must be made. We see cases of insane behavior after the person has read nothing but what the general will considers to be immoral to the community’s goals.
This post resonated with me, having just finished the old [2003] bestseller “The Emperor of Ocean Park” by Stephen L Carter.
Now, I am always reading ‘multicultural’ novels, i.e., novels written by foreigners on their own piece of soil, or foreigners who came to US & their immigrant experience: for 26 yrs I’ve been a member of a local book club that was originally a group of expats living in my NJ town. When I joined, we had maybe 3 ‘regular Americans’ & 7 expats. These days the proportion has reversed, but we continue to choose such novels. This has always, also, led us to choose books written from POV of US natives who feel like foreigners, i.e., native Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans.
I came across this author not because of book club; it was due to my voracious appetite for mysteries [mostly Scan Noir these days] & a budding interest in legal thrillers. What I got was more than I bargained for. “Best seller,” “legal thriller” and “mystery” were side dishes. This was a long meandering treatise on life as lived in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s among the African American elite: upper-mid & upper-class “Gold Coast” denizens of the mid-Atlantic strip whose center is DC, with all their folks who ascended from genteel activism into public service (especially the courts) and well beyond, as well as their outposts in New England, in Ivy League law schools and summer homes. Absolutely my first venture/ ‘experience’ in that territory– & just another testament to how fiction broadens one’s horizons. This country is a vast crazy-quilt, and reading novels may be the only way to get a half-grasp on it, short of spending decades in an RV touring it & interviewing the natives.
By the end of the book I could barely keep straight who was black and who was white.
What a timely and excellent post.
I believe I first felt the sting of human suffering, not through my own family but by reading The Diary of Anne Frank. The tears I shed on her behalf and the deep fellowship I felt for another young diarist set my life in a different direction. Fiction allows us to imagine ourselves in the story. It’s better than movies because we don’t have to see the visual images; we can create our own and they live in the brain.
Kristin, you are so right. In reading a book, you can imagine yourself in the character’s time and place, feeling fear, love, sadness, joy. The character in the movie is not the same. You may be moved, but not in the same way.
It’s much more intense and intimate, isn’t it? Feels like inhabiting the character rather than like watching the character.
Those are the words I was looking for: in reading, you see through the characters’ eyes. In seeing a movie, you watch the character.
This could explain why novels stay in our memory longer than films, except for striking visual images, such as when Defoe’s character runs in the Vietnamese jungle and ultimately gets shot in Platoon.
I’d like add here (not the first time) that empathy doesn’t exist because of reading. It may develop further when reading and with experience but it’s innate. As Darwin writes (sympathy = empathy here)
With mankind, selfishness, experience, and imitation, probably add, as Mr. Bain has shewn, to the power of sympathy; for we are led by the hope of receiving good in return to perform acts of sympathetic kindness to others; and sympathy is much strengthened by habit. In however complex a manner this feeling may have originated, as it is one of high importance to all those animals which aid and defend one another, it will have been increased through natural selection; for those communities, which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.
Perhaps we just need opportunities to develop our innate empathy. Doing so vicariously through film or literature is safer than putting oneself on the line in real life situations (especially if previous attempts have backfired).
In today’s society, I don’t think empathy is valued as a good thing.
set my life in a different direction
What great art is supposed to do. It’s supposed to change people.
I was recently talking to a friend and she was telling me about reading Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha when she was 12 and how it–her words–
“made me who I am. I was never the same after that.”
I felt the same way about that book, though I read it somewhat later. I was, perhaps, 14.