Middle School Muddle: Do summer study habits foreshadow what’s to come?
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The last day of summer should be a day for sleeping in, shopping for supplies, or perhaps seeing friends who have been away. If the households I know (including my own) are any indication, thousands of students are instead scrambling to finish long-ago assigned book lists and assignments. Some of those assignments were given out with report cards in June. And this year, with a late Labor Day and contractual issues, the start of school has come later than ever.
So what gives? I brought the subject up for discussion among friends and families and got a variety of reactions. One came from a parent whose friend handled the last minute mania this way: She offered to pay her children $100 to get the summer assignments done the first week, so she would not have to nag or argue with them. With the homework underway early (the incentive worked perfectly) the entire family relaxed and enjoyed summer.
This same sort of incentive or bribe (because that’s what it is, isn’t it?) could be extended throughout the year, if parents in the midst of this recession really want to be in the business of paying for performance. That brings up other issues entirely.
What I’m wondering is, should students be assigned homework at all during the summer? My children would vehemently argue against it, yet I must say I welcome summer reading lists and suggestions. (Insideschools’ readers were somewhat divided on this issue in our July 31 poll.) Summers can be so packed with camps and physical activity and family events that having an actual book assignment can be a great way of reminding your child to get back in the habit. My mother, raised in the Bronx, and a graduate of New York City public schools, reminds me often of how she spent her own middle school summers: reading “Gone With the Wind,” and anything else she could get her hands on while sitting on her apartment’s fire escape.
Looking ahead, the real question is how to help our children develop discipline and study habits in the year to come, and to find a way for it not to happen at the last possible minute. Suggestions, anyone?
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Ideally, reading becomes a passion for a child or adolescent at some point. Then there’s no need to nag. So one job of educators is to help students find this passion. Reluctant readers are often reluctant only because they have a very limited notion of what “counts” when it comes to reading. Everything counts, really. I am a firm believer that reading almost *anything* is beneficial to students, even if it isn’t of particularly high quality from a stylistic/literary perspective.
I distinctly remember when I fell in love with books: the summer after 9th grade, when I stumbled upon and then couldn’t put down Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Turgenev. My parents had to beg me *not* to read at the dinner table.
I’ve been a compulsive reader ever since, and I almost never go anywhere without reading material in hand. When I taught middle and high school, I’d require all of my students to have reading material (book, magazine, newspaper) on them at all times, both within and beyond the school grounds. The punishment for being “caught” without reading material was to buy me a book, although I didn’t usually enforce this.
The real question is, how can we help people become lovers of the written word? Naturally, I don’t know the answer. But I do know one key, which is to help students discover the kinds of materials they like to read, and then lead them to new writers and outlets about which they wouldn’t otherwise know. For sports junkies, I often recommend *Sports Illustrated*, many of whose columnists are first-rate writers. For fans of traveling writing, I usually suggest Bill Bryson.
There are good books out there for everyone; would-be addicts just need to be introduced to the right writers and works. Not everyone will come to love Tolstoy, or Thoreau, or Nabokov, or Joyce, but everyone can come to love something. Look at how supposedly reluctant readers in schools the world over fell in love with reading about a wizard named Harry!
Comment by Justin Snider — September 8, 2009 @ 5:10 pm
As the mother of a new 8th grader who reads a lot, but mostly vampire and other fantasy fiction, I think our kids are a lot less likely to read now than when I was a kid. There are just so many other distractions between TV, computer, other electronics, etc. Sure, they are more likely to read if we limit screen/electronic time, but that’s not the same as catching the reading bug by themselves.
That said, my daughter did her summer homework (6 tricky math problems and write reports on 2 books she read) without complaint.
Comment by Roberta — September 8, 2009 @ 7:56 pm
The only complaints I got from my son were the two books on his summer reading list that were honestly very boring. He completed the five books and their reports halfway through the summer, with some nagging on my part. I disagree with paying the student to get their school work done. I feel that that is their responsility not an option. I agree with a reasonable summer reading list such as 5 books with 5 corresponding reports like my son had, but maybe requiring 5 books in certain genres instead of particular books. If my son could choose the books he wouldn’t have a problem with reading five at all. After he was done with his summer reading list, he has read seven more books on his own before the first day of school, for his own pleasure.
Comment by 5th grade mom — September 10, 2009 @ 9:02 am