LIT UP: ONE REPORTER THREE SCHOOLS

Nonfiction

To challenge but not bewilder

LIT UP: ONE REPORTER THREE SCHOOLS.
TWENTY-FOUR BOOKS THAT CAN CHANGE LIVES.
By David Denby
257 pp. Henry Holt & Company

Reviewed by David Daniel

Journalist David Denby (Great Books; Do the Movies Have a Future?) approaches this  project by posing the question: Can hormone-driven, Facebook and Instagram-addicted teens, perched between childhood and adulthood—which is to say, the mass of American high school students!—get excited about reading serious literature? Embedding himself in the classrooms of several public schools, much the way a war correspondent might dig in with combat troops, he sets out on a year-long mission to find out. 

It’s not a new inquiry. This and ancillary questions about what books “reach” students, how best to teach them, how to measure outcomes, etc., are examined daily in classrooms and staff rooms, in faculty lounges and in after school pubs. These discussions—like discussions about many vital issues—rarely climax with a fully satisfactory resolve. What they do accomplish, however, is to generate and sustain creative energy. In Lit Up, Denby brings the matter into the public square, making everyone, not just English teachers, a stakeholder in the conversation.

Using a fly-on-the-wall approach, where he simply records what he observes, Denby presents an up-close experience with students and teachers. The accumulating substance of these observations, along with his running editorial commentary and analysis, is an absorbing examination of the challenges and successes that good teaching brings. 

As the subtitle suggests, there are books tend to “work” with high school students. Some of these include The Great Gatsby, Invisible Man, The Catcher in the Rye, 1984, Night, Brave New World, Slaughterhouse-Five, Beloved, The Joy Luck Club, and a score more. Most are novels, with some non-fiction, and tend to be standard fare; but there are outliers (A Thousand Splendid Suns, Middlesex, Man’s Search for Meaning) as well as plays, numerous short stories, and poems. Moreover, many teachers, even those bound by rigid curriculum demands, tend to have particular works that they have had success with. And in schools where students are given added time to make book choices of their own, for personal reading, the list expands dramatically.    

Of course, having good books alone is no guarantor of students’ engaged response, and Lit Up isn’t blind to factors that work against such engagement. The suspects are the usual ones: TV, video games, social media, overscheduled lives—no surprises; nor does anyone imagine that these are going away. But Denby is a hopeful realist and Lit Up is ultimately a hopeful book, rooted in a belief that if students discover the joys of reading—often by being led there by inspired teaching—then some of them (certainly not all, but maybe enough) will come away from the experience open to reading, and, prospectively, become lifelong readers.

Lit Up is dedicated to the five teachers Denby observed, especially tenth-grade teacher Sean Leon, in whose Manhattan public school classroom he spent the most time and who emerges as a complex, challenging, and supremely devoted instructor. The book makes clear that good teachers (good administrators, school systems, and parents help, too) follow their passions, and with hard work, careful planning, and a liberal dose of inspiration, can infuse interest and even excitement into students. Key is finding a balance point, where the work challenges but doesn’t so totally bewilder student readers that they shut down. 

Denby is a keen observer, and part of the pleasure in Lit Up comes when, beyond his reporting, he takes some space to blow solo about how he feels about what he sees and hears. In the end, his book is a testament to the power, joy, and value of the reading experience. There is nothing brand new here, no reams of pedagogical evidence that present a fresh window into teaching and learning. There is no ideal bibliography or syllabus or classroom configuration, or anything else, for while it’s true that some books work better than others in school, success arises from a three-way dynamic between book, student, and teacher. 

As the author writes: “Education is laborious and intermittent. Strength may come in sleep, in dreams, in fantasy. But after children leave their parents’ arms, school is still the necessary place for knowledge and soul to spring into life, and good teachers are still the loving instigators of that miracle.”   

Mark Twain, the most quotable of American authors, noted that the person who chooses not to read great books has no advantage over the person who can’t. Now more than ever, reading needs to be encouraged. The nation has a sitting president who, arguably, has never read a serious book in his life, and a Secretary of Education who has never taught in hers.  But the good news is that like charlatans who’ve come before them, and will come after, these are passing figures. Effective teachers, on the other hand—the passionate, caring, and devoted ones that Denby profiles—are forever. They are a renewable resource, and the best ones leave some of their instructional DNA in the students whose lives they impact.

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David Daniel has taught English for many years at an inner city charter high school for at-risk students. His newest book, a collection of short fiction, Inflections & Innuendos will be published by Storyside Press this summer. He occasionally reviews for the Internet Review of Books.