What can they read?

A bookseller recently suggested that I read Incorrigible Optimists Club by Jean-Michel Guenassia (translated by Euan Cameron). It is a book about coming of age of a young boy in Paris in the late 1950s. This is an extraordinary time in the country. There is terrible violence in Algeria and conflicting opinions and strong emotions in France about the unfolding tragedy there - the post-war France is unsettled by the memories of the Nazi occupation; there are deep divisions among the youth and their parents about political order and global alliances; notions of liberty and freedom are being debated fiercely; and new ideas through extraordinary writings on existentialism from people like Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Camus are reaching a wide audience. The nearly 700-page book beautifully captures these threads from the perspective of a young boy, who is dealing with love, loss and family disputes - while playing foosball at a local bistro, reading compulsively and being in the presence of exiles from Soviet states and giants of modern French literature like Sartre and Kessel.

I have enjoyed the book immensely. But there was something else about the book that got me thinking. The book was widely praised by critics, but it also won a particular award, the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens. This particular literary award is voted for by French high school students. Each year, members of the Academie Goncourt (that dates back to 1882 and awards the Prix Gocourt, one of the most prestigious literary prize of French literature) choose 12 literary works, which are then discussed, debated, analysed and voted on by nearly two thousand high school students. The books that are chosen by the members of the academy are not necessarily targeted for young adults, but cover a range of genres in literature. The award is organised by the French Ministry of National Education in partnership with Fnac (a French media company that distributes the works of fiction). The French Ministry of National Education, describing the prize, says that "the high school students have approximately two months to read the novels with the help of their teachers. During this intense reading period, regional meetings are organized between authors and high school students. The Prix Goncourt des Lycéens is awarded by high school students themselves."

I wondered what it would take for something like this to take off in Pakistan. For the sake of argument, if we were to choose two thousand students from within the country, and similar to the rules set by the French ministry, so no school could participate for two years in a row, and somehow found a benefactor to buy two thousand copies of serious books of literature written by contemporary authors, would we still be able to do it? I was less convinced by the typical argument given that 'our kids are too busy on Instagram or TikTok' and hence do not read anymore. I think our youth are just as busy as high school students in France or Colombia or Kenya are. My conclusion was that the reason something like this is unlikely to take off not because of the youth, but because of the adults. The problem is that many of us (teachers included) are uncomfortable with literature and unsettled by the difficult, provocative and complex questions that literature asks us to confront. We are more interested in universal conformity than questions. If we pick up a textbook of English or Urdu literature, what kind of literature do we see there? Is it one that asks us deep questions about our past or present, our preconceived notions or worldview? Does it allow us to challenge the status quo? Or is it predictable and increasingly narrow in its intellectual and literary scope? What books (if any) do we ask our students in high school to read? Looking in the mirror, we may find that we are actually afraid of them having questions for us, and for the society at large.

It is easy to think about the 'great days' of the past and talk about how the kids these days are less 'cultured', but maybe the problem is somewhere else.