filling the educational holes: book lists, summer reading, and Shakespeare

A few years ago I had coffee with a wonderful colleague, a theater professor, who graciously agreed to chat with me.  My younger son was about to start high school, and I had been wondering — what would constitute basic theater literacy?  What would a professor want incoming students, non-majors, to be familiar with when they walked into a class?  As a home educator, I am familiar with All The Lists, but book lists are just titles, and I needed a little context, and was curious about what would be actually useful, relevant.

While we were talking, he whipped out a scrap of paper and started jotting down ideas.  I came across that list the other day while I was looking for something else, and our whole conversation came back to me.  Although he did not think Shakespeare was the alpha and the omega, there are several Shakespeare plays on the list.  And he was very enthusiastic about the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, recommended that we go at least a few times.  

But in the years since we had that conversation, have we read or seen even one Shakespeare play?

No.  No, we haven't.  Why?  Because of the starlings.

When my son was very small, he spent hours every morning gazing out the front window at the birds.  He slapped a sticky note on each page in the Peterson Field Guide that showed a bird he knew or wanted to find, and that field guide went everywhere with us.  He became so familiar with the flocks that passed through our garden that he could recognize individual birds, and gave them endearing little names like Water Love and Big Eater and Bravery.  (Bravery was a junco that had lost his or her tail, and was obviously very brave, having survived what we imagined must have been an encounter with a predator.)

One day while chatting with a retired biology professor friend, also a bird lover, we learned that the reason we have starlings in North America is that back in the late 1800s, a Society, American Acclimatization, I think, had decided that Americans should be able to see every single bird mentioned in Shakespeare's works.  So these nutters released into Central Park hundreds of starlings imported from England — and they quickly became a menace.  For my son, that was it.  Every time we'd see a murmuration, he would lower his chin and narrow his eyes and growl, I hate those stupid Shakespeare people.  Or when he'd hear the name Shakespeare, he would let out an exasperated "...starlings!"

At one point we did read a few selections from Shakespeare Stories, but we never really were able to fully engage, never read a full play.  So.  Okay.  It wasn't entirely about the starlings, but it started there.  The starlings were a barrier.  And it wasn't as if I were acquiescing to small child's unreasonable temper tantrum, letting him decide what we would read or not.  I just could not get into it, either.  And, ultimately, reading, engaging with the ostensibly "great works" should not be like eating your vegetables, because they are good for you.  I feel very strongly that we all need a way in, a moment of delight or curiosity that opens the door.  The time just was not ever right.  Timing is important.

I've been thinking about Shakespeare lately, partially because Much Ado is in the theaters now, but also because there has been a bit of a kerfuffle among my people since the piece aired on NPR last week about how our poor dear children are reading dumb-dumb books.  And with school out now, there has been plenty of chit-chat about summer reading.  We have been wondering together, that same old question, what are the must-reads before the end of high school?  

It is all confusing to me.

On the one hand, the fact that on the whole, our children's reading is less sophisticated — that can't be good.  But I'm not about to start evaluating every summer read based on reading level.  Some adults seem to look at summer reading as an opportunity for children and teens to fill all the educational holes, to check those classics off on the list.  Isn't summer reading, casual reading, supposed to be relaxing and a little bit mindless?  And when I think about the summer lists of hard books I was required to read in high school, I feel angry.  I dutifully slogged through Faulkner and Hemingway and several books about war and hated every single minute.  Hated.  Who wrote those lists?  Misogynist jerks!  I was well into college before I realized there were women writers who weren't reclusive, insane, or suicidal.  Perhaps that challenging reading helped expand my vocabulary, but it sure didn't produce delight or a love of literature.

On the other hand, "great" works, the so-called classics, can be positively delightful.  One summer we listened to Alan Rickman read Return of the Native.  That is not an easy book.  My younger son was only about eleven at the time, not even appearing to be listening, but evidently getting it.  One day we were out running errands, and he said, "Are we done now?  Because I want to go home and listen!  I want to hear Eusatcia DIE!  DIE!  DIE!" 

We all did!  But is Thomas Hardy on the list of must-reads?  Probably not.  Or maybe Tess is on the list, but, shoot! I despised that book, too.  

So I definitely have a love-hate relationship to reading lists.  I'm curious about which works folks love, which are culturally meaningful.  But then I feel guilty about all the books I haven't read or have zero interest in ever reading or would never ask a child to read. Sometimes I feel just plain overwhelmed.  

I find the most reasonable approach is to try to strike a balance.  I still look at the lists.  I continue to require my younger son to read challenging literature.  I am beginning to learn how to pave a way toward those works that are not initially interesting to me, or which I think would not interest my son.  I am learning to sleuth out the side door, any way to access those books.  But I don't mind if he reads the dystopian-fifth-grade-reading-level stories.  (And I re-read Arthur Ransome every summer, myself.)  Mostly, I plan to continue to follow all the rabbit trails.  Because those accidental finds, like Mr. Rickman's reading of Native, have been most wonderful. Maybe Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing will be our entry point, finally, into Shakespeare's world.

As our home education years come to a close, I have realized that it doesn't matter if there are holes in the boys' education.  Or mine.  Everyone has holes.  Filling the holes, finding wonder, creating our own stories — Water Love and Bravery; “I want to hear Eustacia DIE!”— we have the rest of our lives for that.