Evaluating the Leisure Reading of High-School Pupils

Abstract

DO HIGH-SCHOOL pupils like to read books in their leisure time? Is their reading of fiction largely confined to lurid tales of the type featured in drugstore circulating libraries, or does it frequently include books comparable in quality to those found in highschool literature courses? Is there any genuine interest in poetry, biography, the essay, science, and other types of nonfiction? Has frequent attendance at motion pictures made the reading of published plays an uninviting occupation? Is there any evidence of an increasing appreciation of more mature types of reading materials as the pupils advance from grade to grade? As a means of securing reliable answers to questions of this kind, the Bronxville (New York) High School has, for a number of years, employed the plan of having pupils keep a continuous record of all books which they read, apart from those specifically required for class work. Throughout the school, but especially in the English classes, pupils are encouiraged to spend part of their leisure time in extending their acquaintance with worth-while books. The literature program consists of a common core of experience as represented by the reading and discussion of such books as David Copperfield, Giants in the Earth, Hamlet, and various anthologies of literature, supplemented by additional reading which the pupil selects for himself from a wide range of suggested books. There are no rigid requirements in regard to the amount or the character of the supplementary reading. To a large degree the pupil is free to read much or little; he is urged only to be quite frank with himself and his teachers in the statements which he makes concerning his reading. The record sheet on which the pupil records his leisure-reading experi-