Why Read Whole Books?
It’s a popular question that I receive on tours, at information sessions, and - one time - at the grocery store. Now, if you grew up like I did in more traditional classrooms you might be wondering “why not whole books?” Or you might be curious about the alternative. It’s becoming more and more common for schools to assign short stories or excerpts from textbooks. Or, if students do read an entire book, they do so individually rather than journeying through a novel altogether as a class.
And so we arrive again at the central question: why read whole books? Why have everyone in the class read the same thing? What makes this distinctly classical?
I sat down with Mr. Aaron Schepps, the Upper School Principal at Atlanta Classical Academy to discuss.
What is a classical school’s goal for students once they have read a whole book?
I think the important core intention that leads classical educators to insist on reading whole books connects to the idea that we are preparing students to enter into conversations about the greatest ideas and questions of humanity through little iterations in the classroom every day. What that means is that we need to foster a conversation with the people who came before us who have asked great questions, who have had the great ideas, and who have put those down in books. We read the whole book because the entire book is what that great genius of our tradition thought was necessary for us to have in order to engage with this question or idea. I often refer to Heidegger’s formulation of this idea which he puts forward in the essay “The Origin of a Work of Art.” He talks about paring away hindrances, so that you can have an electric experience of what you’re reading. There are so many kinds of hindrances that are inextricable. Namely, all of our own experiences, our personalities, and the individuality that we as teachers and students bring into the room. So what we need to do is pare away what is possible - that is, all of what we would bring in terms of dicing up these books and subjecting them to our plans and projects. The end is always the direct, full, and electric experience of a conversation with a great mind. To have that electric experience, you have to enter the world of that work of art on its own terms.
If our goals are entering the great conversation, having an electric experience with a work of art, and of acquiring the mind of an author then it is absolutely necessary to read the entire work of what they have put together.
“Literature can be a shared experience that shines through each individual background, economic status, all Lexile levels - all of it.
To know that every 9th grader in the school has read the Illiad and knows the first nine opening lines gives us a foundation for broader conversations as humans.”
When a student encounters a great mind, then, what is the hope for the student? What are they walking away with that they wouldn’t get from another model?
The author’s questions about humanity and existence would, ideally, become the student’s own questions through the process of reading, discussing, and writing about that work. At ACA, we talk about teaching through three layers of questions that are integral to planning and daily discussion especially in literature classes. The three categories are plot level, character level, and author level questions.
Plot level questions have to do with what’s happening. They are an important foundation, but they are almost always just a means to an end.
Character level questions examine the dynamic between the characters and the story. It’s not just what’s happening but what’s behind what’s happening. What are the motivations? What are the ideas? What are the insights about human actions, thoughts, speech, and relationships that we can get into through studying what has happened and treating characters as if they are people having thoughts and taking action?
These two first layers build toward what we call author level questions. Those are the ideas and questions that drew a genius to write this work of literature in the first place. Normally it’s not that big of a set of questions. What is the role of children in the life and imagination of adults? Why is it that we lose a sense of meaning as we get older? Ought everything be permitted or should we live according to moral boundaries? These are questions that I’ve discussed over the last few weeks with my seniors.
The process of reading an entire work is to ease into a tense and disturbing and important encounter with these questions that bothered these geniuses enough to write these novels that we have now inherited as the great texts of our civilizations.
I hope that these essential questions have become the questions that my students ask beyond the walls of Atlanta Classical. It is not a process that can be simulated or made more expeditious or outsourced to ChatGPT. It takes a long time. And it takes engagement with authors on their own terms through their entire works.
Couldn’t a student read a great book on their own, though? Why should the whole class read the same thing together?
There is an element of cultural literacy that is important. We are, through these works, giving students things that are traditionally and culturally important parts of how to understand the world. That’s what we’re trying to do. We don’t say, “Alright everyone, here’s a list of great texts. Now everyone go ahead and pick two on your own.”
Everyone is going to do the thing together because we think that an educated person has read Hamlet or Huckleberry Finn or Moby Dick. Now, I think of cultural literacy in two parts - the first is the culture of an entire society, but the other is the culture of your school. Literature can be a shared experience that shines through each individual background, economic status, all Lexile levels - all of it. To know that every 9th grader in the school has read the Illiad and knows the first nine opening lines gives us a foundation for broader conversations as humans. These are shared experiences that we have with people hundreds or sometimes thousands of years ago.
“When people ask me what classical education is, one my favorite one-off answers is ‘we read whole books’ because I think it is a microcosm of the entire approach…Most educational institutions view students as eventual job-havers
rather than life-livers, wives, husbands, parents, and friends. And when you start from that end you come up with much more diminished means.”
A lot of classrooms are abandoning that approach. I find more and more parents who are surprised by the classical approach. Do you experience this as well and why do you think it’s happening?
When people ask me what classical education is, one my favorite one-off answers is “we read whole books” because I think it is a microcosm of the entire approach.
I think there is a departure because of a flawed mission of education. Most educational institutions view students as eventual job-havers rather than life-livers, wives, husbands, parents, and friends. And when you start from that end you come up with much more diminished means.
When you observe how hard it is to help students pay attention, most teachers react to that by giving them things they can already or almost already do rather than things that seem so far beyond the structures of their attention. It turns out to be accomplishable and very measurable to read snippets and passages and to answer plot-level questions about those things in the name of reading comprehension.
But it is so much more ambitious and so much harder to read whole books. I think there has been a race to the bottom of students’ attention and moving away from the important and valuable task (though arduous) of helping students to read whole books.
