I’m the parent of an Alice Deal Middle School student who loves to read. We have books scattered on every surface in the house and we regularly have to do late-night patrols to check that the reading lights stay out after bedtime.
Our child isn’t the only middle schooler in D.C. with this love of books. And DC Public Schools is making concentrated efforts to improve kids’ reading levels. That’s why many parents like myself were shocked by a recent change to the English Language Arts curriculum at Deal Middle School.
The new curriculum removes all full-length novels from the 8th grade curriculum. Previously, Deal 8th graders read challenging and thoughtful novels like To Kill a Mockingbird and A Raisin in the Sun. The rationale for this change is that the old curriculum was cobbled together through trial and error by Deal’s English teachers and the new curriculum, which focuses on short passages, will better prepare the students for high school.
That may be so, but reading full novels has real and important benefits for middle school-age children and in life. Reading longer narratives helps students track character growth, story development, and complex structures. Reading fiction can train students to inhabit characters’ perspectives, fostering empathy. And perhaps most important for children growing up right now, with so much talk of technology shortening attention spans, reading full-length books can build concentration and mental stamina.