Making Excerptions in Reading Education

Remember back in your school days when you were assigned to read a whole book and you put it off, so eventually you only had time to read a small part of the book hoping it would be enough that you could pass the reading quiz the teacher would give you the next day?

Then remember how you still didn’t pass the reading quiz even though the kid next to you told you about the part in Moby-Dick where Ahab and the white whale forgive each other by hugging and giving hand-to-fin high fives all the way into the sunset? No? You don’t remember that? Yes, of course not. Me either. That sounds highly implausible. We definitely don’t need to get into your decision, in spite of those things, to go on and become an English teacher.

Even if that were not your exact experience, you may be interested to hear that the average modern day English classroom curriculum has finally caught up with the lazy student from yesteryear. Recent looks at English curricula all over the United States have shown a sharp decline in reading full novels in classes. Now, all students have to do is what I did—er, I mean, you did. That is, read excerpts.

While this has caused some hand-wringing from “purists,” who somehow think there is merit in reading everything the author intended us to read, the rest of us know that excerpts are clearly the ideal reading situation for the lazy—er, I mean, efficient—student.

What purists are missing is the fact that not only does the excerpt method pave the way for more of the much needed scrolling in class, but it also offers the hope that students are picking up valuable skills that will serve them and society well in future careers. Can you imagine the “efficiency” that cutting corners—er, I mean, excerpting—could bring to jobs like architects, sewage line installers, and skydiving safety checking personnel?

The practice of excerpting could also be the means for creating loopholes out of future undesirable situations. If the IRS complains about “not receiving your full income tax,” you can tell them you just gave them an excerpt. If your boss gets upset because you “left a couple of hours early” on “every single day” for “several months,” then you need only signal that it’s okay because you were providing an excerpt of your work ethic. When you leave the old lady you were helping in the middle of the intersection and she cries out pathetically for help, you can explain that you already offered your excerpt of service for the day.

Clearly, excerpts are the literacy and life habits of the future. In fact, I see no reason that we should stop there. Even titles are getting too long, why not excerpt them as well? Musical theater had the right idea when they changed that insufferably long title of Les Miserables into a much more manageable Les Mis. Jane Austen insists on both Pride and Prejudice? Calm down, Jane. You can choose “Pride” or “Prejudice,” but you don’t get them both. The same could apply toWar and Peace (whichever one you choose could make for a vastly different reading experience!) or Crime and Punishment. Side note: if Dostoevsky even thinks about protesting the abridgment of his title, he’d better watch himself—a long last name like that is just asking to be excerpted!

Besides just reading excerpts and shortening titles, I think we could help the lazy student by adjusting the “extra” content of stories as well, in the name of efficiency. For instance, A Tale of Two Cities could easily be cut in half—why not just have the Tale of One of the Cities. The Brothers Karamazov? Multiple brothers seems excessive. One brother is more than enough, in my opinion. Around the World in 80 Days? Maybe that made sense back then, but nowadays we could go around the world in a fraction of the time—maybe 8 days instead?

While I have been putting up a robust defense of excerpts, some of you might be thinking, “I can think of at least one written piece I’m reading that I’d rather read an excerpt of!” Let me assure you that this is an excerpt—the novel version of this article consumes reams of papers that you’ve been rescued from having to read. Though, I must say, if you ever choose to blaspheme the excerpt movement and read this in its entirety, you will probably enjoy the scene where Ahab and Moby-Dick buy a country cottage together and everything is hunky dory until a mysterious package arrives and they open it up to see a brand-new harpoon.

Marty Reeder is a young adult author and high school English teacher. All questions will be excerpted into oblivion and it will be as though you never wrote it at all, but go ahead and send it anyway to writingreeder@gmail.com.