For many years, there has been a debate about whether annotating books in schools should be continued or not. Teachers have discussed how they should make sure students read the material without taking away from the experience of reading in the process.
When philosophy and English teacher Martin Stegemoeller initially discussed this matter with his department, he thought copious marginalia would die as a whole.
“I had thought it was going in that direction, and then the department doubled down,” Stegemoeller said. “Instead, they tried to make it impossible for students to just fill in annotations to meet the assignment requirements.”
However, the department didn’t take this as a sign that there was a huge problem with the amount of annotations assigned. Instead, they tried to fix it. Classes in the English department sometimes focus on preparing its students to become English teachers, which may cause reading to be a bit less enjoyable in the process.
“Our department is hamstrung between two goals,” Stegemoeller said. “One is preparing you to be an English teacher and the other is to get you to read carefully and enjoy reading.”
While Stegemoeller may not think annotations are the best tool for all students, he believes they have some merit and can help one analyze the text more effectively. But on the other hand, he doesn’t annotate books he reads for fun.
“Learning close reading helps you read better. That’s my pro side,” Stegemoeller said. “My con side is that I don’t know of a single human being who annotates this way when they generally read a novel.”
While there is a disagreement on annotations in general, Stegemoeller believes that the problem isn’t with the overarching task of annotating, but with how it is done. Instead of assigning an excessive amount of annotations to students, it could be better to underline important sentences, star new words or highlight for tone.
“A lot of people, in academics, have their own annotating methods,” Stegemoeller said. “ ‘What was that great line from earlier — ‘Oh there it is because I marked it.’ ‘Ooh interesting word, I’m going to star that so I can remember it.’ It makes total sense.”
This debate has gone on for ages, and probably will for longer. Annotations may feel like a waste of time or just a way to check a box for a homework assignment, but it is one of the only ways teachers can make sure a student at least read the book in the first place.
“If you teach somebody a skill and they stop doing it as soon as they’re not graded on that very skill, that’s a sign that the skill is misguided.” Stegemoeller concluded.
