[PYTASH] Chapter 3

The amount of books a student should read. Oh, my. Reading this chapter as a student in high school, I would have wanted to hunt the author down and disfigure her. As a pre-service teacher, though? No. In fact, I agree. While students do have extra curricular activities and other classes, I remember in my regular high school English classes it would take almost an entire month, if not longer, to read a single book. We continue to bring standards down and coddle the readers by having them only read one or two chapters per night, when we need to get them to be able to consume a larger amount of literature in one dose to even bother getting to real critical thought and intellectual growth. While Jago may have it a bit extreme at 20 books for her sophomore class, at least she is pushing against the norm of maybe 3-5 in a semester like it was in my school, which simply isn't enough.

There definitely needs to be some balance, and students need to be given the opportunity for critical thought, too. By reading 20 books, students may be flying through the books so fast, they don't have the time to actual stop and smell the literature for its beauty and take their thinking to deeper levels. There are more factors than just English class needs, but I definitely have to take Jago's side on the matter.