It's a question that stirs the blood of many educators: should our reading and language arts classrooms focus on teaching classic novels like To Kill A Mockingbird, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Scarlet Letter, or should students be allowed to read novels of their choosing since doing so may help students develop a greater interest in reading?

Despite a growing focus on standardized test scores in classrooms throughout the nation, a recent New York Times article describes an emerging movement within reading instruction that answers the question in favor of student choice, even if it means our kids will never know that Moby Dick is a whale.

The new form of reading instruction, known as "reading workshop," is raising some eyebrows among more conservative, traditional educators. Chief among the opponents of reading workshop, which the opponents themselves would derive as "dumbed down," is the Core Knowledge Foundation, which published this witty parody to respond to the New York Times story (it's worth a quick skim if you have a moment).

The argument between the two camps basically boils down to a simple lesser-of-two-evils. In the modern day where youth have so many dynamic forms of media that command their attention, the thrill of digging into the next chapter of Huck Finn just might not be, well, quite as thrilling as it used to be. The reading work shop school of thought responds by saying, what kids read is less important than that kids read at all, and so we should let them choose books that excite them (within reasonable limits of course). In other words, it's the process of learning how to read that matters more than the actual content.

The Core Knowledge folks respond by saying the debate isn't that easy. True literacy, both in the reading and the cultural sense, demands more than the ability to recognize words on a page--it demands an ability to recognize common cultural references and social norms, many of which derive from classic novels. In this view, letting kids read Twilight and other contemporary novels is not just inadequate, it's unfair, since the approach is most commonly suggested for disadvantaged students who otherwise show less interest in reading.

Which camp is more persuasive?

It's hard to say, and I have to confess to being truly torn between the two views. On the one hand, I think reading--more so than Chemistry or US Government--is a subject in which the process of developing a skill is set is at least as important as the content itself (allowing students to read novels of their choosing is far more reasonable than letting children learn about the government of any country instead of the US, for example). Writing is the same way--we want students to get comfortable with writing, and we commonly let them decide what paper topics to write about.

On the other hand, to the extent that society is dominated by cultured references to certain books and to the extent that the classics exemplify the kinds of literary motifs we want students to learn, it does seem better for students to get familiar with John Steinbeck than John Grisham. Nothing should stop students from reading more books of their choosing in their own time, the Core Knowledge group would say, but school is for a commonly agreed upon set of important works.

I'm curious, though. What do you think? Do you see one approach that is clearly better than the other, in your view? I'd love to hear which one and why.