Kelly Gallagher's "Readicide"

I do not feel that the "systematic killing of the love of reading" is at all intentional, but I think it is rather an exacerbation of an existing problem. That problem is the staleness of material and the lack of integration of different texts and unit ideas, and as Gallagher put it, teachers have already discussed a text to exhaustion by the time a class encounters it. If the instructor isn't excited about reading, why should the students be? We interrupt students during reading sessions to point out what are important details pertaining to the overall picture of the novel, but in doing so we take away the enjoyment that students would find in the 'reading zone'. I loved reading when I was younger due to how I could submerse myself in a different world on my own time, but it is ridiculous to assume students will foster the same love of reading if not given the chance to do the same either. The To Kill a Mockinbird unit plan was, in a word, exhaustive. If you're not a student who enjoys the book, you were stuck on that novel over-analyzing it for the next twenty lessons. We should let students find their own way into the reading in a way they personally enjoy if we want them to enjoy reading in general. I think a better approach than this would be to have a main idea of what you want to cover over the course of a text, but allow student interest to be the spark and catalyst for developing lessons within that unit. What do students care about? How can I give them time to read? How can I make reading enjoyable for them? These are all questions we need to ask ourselves as instructors if we want to avoid committing readicide.