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Why are you making a moral argument instead of addressing my mechanical one? I'm not saying that reading old books is bad or worthless, I'm saying it's going to be much harder to get kids and men to read good books without first instilling a love of reading, which is very likely to take bad-but-entertaining books. I absolutely loved Eragon as a kindergartener. Was it the absolute peak of literary achievement? Absolutely not. But it hadn't been for books like Eragon, I never would have been interested in reading books like the Dragonriders of Pern, or from there Foundation and I, Robot, or from there Anathem and Void*Star.
I am wondering if we are even having the same conversation. Are my messages getting through? Is there some corruption in the database?
You enjoyed Eragon not because you were a kindergarten-level reader but because you were a child. If you are already not a child, or not a kindergartner, there is no point in starting with children's literature to cultivate an enjoyment of reading: you should just read actually good books.
There's definitely some sort of miscommunication going on because you remain convinced that I'm trying to prove that reading the classics is totally ineffective at getting people to read, when in point of fact I'm merely saying that while that may work for some people, the fact that it hasn't worked for everyone suggests that we should try and adapt a different tactic.
I literally never suggested that? I suggested people read slop. Meaning-- I suggested that people prioritize finding books that are enjoyable to read even though they lack serious literary quality. That doesn't mean specifically children's literature. There's slop for all ages of people.
It's not really this that I'm convinced of. It's more like, I don't really think that reading is valuable in itself unless you are reading something worth reading. I also don't think that reading the classics has been tried and found wanting; mostly I think it hasn't been tried at all by "nonreaders". I also don't think that the tactic of reading garbage is likely to lead to appreciation of actually good literature - I expect it will merely increase appreciation of garbage.
Sure. I'm responding to the Eragon example you brought up. My argument works against reading slop just as well.
While this is tautologically true and I'm not trying to deny that, my argument is that even if you have a definition of "slop" that makes it instrumentally incapable of holding intrinsic value, many people will still find it instrumentally worth reading because any sort of reading is going to practice the reading comprehension skills that not only directly lead to more educational/professional attainment but also make reading genuinely good books more accessible and therefore more likely to influence them. There's a reason kids start with Dick and Jane before Pride and Prejudice, and in that same vein I think trying to fling The Brothers Karamazov directly at avowed nonreaders is going to work less well than easing them through Big Titty Slave Elf World War.
Virtually every american schoolchild gets dragged through a school curriculum that involves exposing them to at least some of the classics. Far fewer get put through a curriculum that deliberately tries to pair them with non-edifying but highly entertaining nonsense. I think we should at least try things my way before declaring it impossible.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Yes, because they are children. I was hoping that I already addressed this line of reasoning in the previous comment.
Okay, so this is the crux of your disagreement? If I convince you that making a habit of reading anything, including slop, increases a person's ability to read generally-- you'll cede the argument?
I will admit up front that if you are genuinely illiterate, or close to it, you can probably get mileage out of reading any text at all. Beyond that, yes, that is the crux and I will concede if it turns out that people with normal reading abilities benefit in a measurable way from reading slop.
My model of learning is that most skills look kind of like pokemon exp curves-- logistic based on quantity of prior experience, but with difficult tasks paying out more exp. I'll concede that you can come up with definitions of "normal reading abilities" and "slop" such that the addional exp gained by reading slow is effectively negligible, but would argue that in practice...
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