In elementary school we would have assigned reading periods, during which we were supposed to read one chapter of the book we were on. Turns out that if you read five chapters instead you just fail all the quizzes because you don't have a fucking clue what happened in chapter 12, given you read that weeks ago and can't really tie chapters to events anyway.

They tend to try to make reading excruciating, particularly before high schools. I don't know if they still do this, but for some reason it was a big trend when I was in grade school to break up into "reading groups", and you'd go around in a circle reading a paragraph at a time out loud. I still despise reading aloud for that reason; I always got a rash of shit for being a few chapters ahead when my turn came up again and having to page back to find the right spot.

Reading aloud is something I've returned to in later years as speaking practice, vocal warmup, and testing my own writing. It was, of course, a chore in school.

That's true. I was reading a lot as a kid but I barely read anything we had to read for school. Reading assignments took the fun out of reading because now you had the pressure to be able to report on the reading.

To be fair, interpretation and writing are just as important as reading.

I strongly disagree. I think enjoyment of reading is vastly more important that interpretation and writing. What is the point of these kinds of assignments if it causes the kids to have negative associations with reading?

Even beyond school though, I find the idea that good novels require careful analysis antithetical to the concept of a good book. Good writing should be excellent at every level. It is wonderful if new narratives and ideas can be discovered upon careful analysis, but if that analysis is necessary for comprehension it ruins it for me. I believe that reading a story should be something natural and seamless.

Yeah, I strongly believe that all books carry significant value. You don’t need high level concepts to gain value. We sometimes over focus on the best case scenrerio ignoring what we can get kids interested in.

What I really hated in primary school was that when you finished your homework, you were allowed to read a book. However, all the books were pretty dated and not all that interesting. Furthermore, when you'd finished it, you'd have to write a report on it. One year, I got sick of this system, so I found one book I enjoyed and basically read that one a couple dozen times over the rest of the year.

School assignments should always be voluntary.

In a sense, they are. You'll just lose points for not doing the work. Clearly not what you were suggesting of course, but it's true.

Can you clarify how you think this would work?