Student aversion to and/or disinterest in assigned literature: How can an educator create instant engagement and interaction with assigned reading?
Too often, students do not want to read. Any assigned fiction, nonfiction, article or other reading materials are greeted with groans. By introducing interdisciplinary critical thinking about the required material, students become absorbed and engaged as they seek out various topics within the text. Many students are fascinated by this type of study as they would be when engaged in a scavenger hunt. Seeing how many subjects affect the characters and plot intrigues students. Not only do students read the assigned material, they carefully examine/explore the text.
The reason that students appreciate an interdisciplinary approach is that their critical thinking skills and imaginations are immediately engrossed and employed. This method of teaching, rather than the assigned chapter + quiz, engages the students’ desires to achieve understanding literature through many lenses. The benefit of the interdisciplinary method of teaching literature provides students with the ability to express their own views through different perspectives. Students may have an opportunity to determine why and how the author of the work uses diverse factors to support their thesis/plot. For example: Most classes of 11th and 12th graders already know the main themes of a To Kill a Mockingbird:racism and exclusion; however, once they begin to understand the various other topics woven into the main themes, such as sociology-economics during the story’s era; gender roles; weather; disease; law and the natural sciences, the novel becomes even more meaningful.
A primary challenge in teaching literature is to promote the actual reading + understanding of a text. It is easy for students to access “short takes” of an assignment on various Web and printed materials. AI can provide outlines, summaries and other ways to avoid reading a book. However, if literature is presented as a multi-faceted work, students become interested in the way that topics are woven into the plot, themes and characterizations.
Strategies for encouraging students to seek the many underlying themes of an assigned book:
a. Write why and how the author uses as many different areas of study (i.e., politics, sociology, psychology, economics, science/medicine, and so on) to emphasize their thesis.
b. Create a Venn diagram of overlapping disciplines reflected in the work.
c. List specific quotations and scenes that illustrate themes in the book. For example: the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird in which Atticus kills the rabid dog clearly illustrates the “disease” of racism on the town of Maycomb; however, the specific scene also portrays the study of animal behavior; sociology; religion; law; medical condition and other topics.
When presented with viewing the novel To Kill a Mockingbird as an Interdisciplinary study to participants in writing workshops that I hosted, teenagers became intrigued with how many meaningful subjects they could find in the text. Some compared notes and others worked independently. Groups generally worked well together because almost everyone was familiar with the themes of the novel. However, most were surprised and excited to find that there were so many subordinate topics, such as weather, natural surroundings, social class, medicine, animal behavior, alcohol abuse, in addition to the primary themes of racism and exclusion. The challenges that arose in discussions involved the perspective of the author when she wrote the novel and today’s practices. For example, in today’s world, the character of Boo Radley would probably not have been shunned or shut away from mainstream society. Furthermore, today, interracial interaction is very rarely against the law; however, child abuse (Boo Radley) is punishable by law. These issues needed to be addressed in the context of the novel’s time frame. A discussion of the book’s references to societal values and conventions of the novel’s time period enlightened my workshop attendees.
Addressing literature in an interdisciplinary way is stimulating and promotes a better understanding of the work for many students. By creating an atmosphere of viewing literature through many subjects, students may gain a deeper understanding of a work and this method may promote and encourage reading.
