High school students aren't getting an opportunity to dig deep

I was on the phone the other day with one of our nation's leading education professors. I muttered something about the fact that elementary school teachers have very little training in teaching history—in fact, in teaching any nonfiction content. He told me that he has been offering seminars all across the country, and he's seen, firsthand, how that lack of specialized training extends well into the middle school grades. Then we got around to talking about the real problem—one that involves you, librarians. He told me that Will Fitzhugh, who runs the Concord Review, a history magazine whose content is created by teenagers, had surveyed high school kids to find out how many nonfiction books they had read start to finish. The titles could be about any subject—from math to molecules to the state of Mississippi. The books could be ones that kids had read on their own or titles that had been assigned in class. The only stipulation was that students had to have read the entire book. Can you guess the average number of nonfiction titles most teens had read? Zero. The majority of high school students across this great land of ours haven't made it through a single nonfiction title. Just to be clear, we're not including textbooks or freestanding chapters, introductions, and excerpts. And historical fiction doesn't count. So, once again, how many nonfiction books do we require our future college students, voters, and elected officials to read in their entirety? None. That means we're failing to give our young people any exposure to how a book makes an argument from its first page to its last. We're not encouraging them to slow down and take time to enter an author's carefully constructed narrative. We're not giving kids an opportunity to be carried along by a writer's flow of ideas and carefully selected events. Why is that? And why do so many teachers require their classes to read an entire novel, and then gloss over the period in which the story takes place by simply summarizing a few textbook pages or by passing out handouts or a list of recommended Web sites? Many teachers say they don't have time to linger over a particular historical period—and some claim that fiction offers a lot more opportunities for language arts instruction than nonfiction does. But I believe that nonfiction itself is a language art. And it's one that can only be truly appreciated when you read an entire book. I suspect that teachers who don't read nonfiction often select books that reflect their own reading preferences—their love of strong fictional stories and characters. That's fine. But why not also give students a chance to read nonfiction books that emphasize logic, insightful observations, well-crafted arguments, and a steady flow of provocative ideas? This is where you come in, dear librarians. You're the ones who read and review books; you're the advance guard; you are, or can be, the eyes and ears of your schools. You're the ones who can explain to teachers why it's important for their students to read nonfiction books from beginning to end. Hint: it's not because nonfiction titles are action-packed (though they may be). It's not because they tell a great story (though they often do). It's not simply because they're true (though they must be). It's because nonfiction provides young people with a golden opportunity to develop the kinds of reading and critical-thinking skills that are essential. If we deny students the depth of understanding and analysis that nonfiction books provide, we leave them adrift on pop culture's superficial surface. And that means we've failed in our duty to offer kids the depth of thought and feeling they won't discover on their own. So I now propose a new campaign: "One Book, One Teenager." Let's make it our mission that every teenager in America will read a nonfiction book, start to finish, during this school year. Who knows? Maybe next year, we can up the ante to two.

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Marc Aronson writes and edits nonfiction titles for young people. For more information visit www.marcaronson.com.