Considerations for Reading Recommendations

When I was at school, I asked for some ideas of what extra books I should read. My (excellent) Economics teacher suggested The Wealth of Nations, which I diligently checked out of the school library. I'm not sure whether she overestimated my reading stamina or underestimated the amount of grain-related chat in that book, but either way, I didn't get very far. Her next recommendation was Galbraith's Innocent Frauds, which was much more accessible. 

Recommending books is a tricky business and our first recommendation in particular needs to be a success if we want this book to be be the first of many. It should feel interesting and relevant but also manageable; if it’s too dense or inaccessible, it risks closing the door to wider engagement rather than opening it. There are therefore a few factors to consider.

The first few are obvious. One consideration is language. Complex words and long sentences can easily become barriers for students new to academic reading. Dense syntax or unfamiliar phrasing make texts harder to follow and often put readers off. Frustratingly, Economics books, even those written for a general audience, do tend towards more complicated language.

Technicality is another one we likely already consider. If students don’t yet have an entry-level understanding of the topic, it’s much harder for them to engage meaningfully with the text or grasp the arguments being made. This is a bit annoying because at the start of the course, when students have more time to be reading around, they often don't have the foundational knowledge to support it.

The third is another obvious one: subject matter. If it's something students are already interested in they will be more motivated to overcome some of the other barriers. This might be a personal interest or aspiration or how it fits with their other subjects.

A less obvious consideration is the strength of narrative. Many 16 or 17 year old students don’t have much experience reading non-narrative non-fiction. Most of what they’ve read outside of school, if it’s non-fiction at all, tends to be narrative non-fiction: stories that follow a clear sequence of events, guiding the reader through a beginning, middle and end. For example, a history book might tell the story of how the First World War began, or a newspaper article might tell the story of a breaking event. Likewise, a biography might trace a person’s life from childhood to career success. There’s a built-in sense of progression and resolution that keeps the reader engaged. Non-narrative non-fiction, on the other hand, is structured around ideas rather than plot. It’s written to explain, argue or expcanon, and the thread that connects it is conceptual rather than chronological. That can make it a more demanding read at first, because the reader has to hold abstract arguments in their head rather than following a storyline. There are a few economics books with a stonger narrative, which make it a little easier for students to be 'swept along' with the text.

Also easy to overlook are the familiarity of the references the book the uses. Lots of the pop-economics titles use these to great success; they use pop culture analogies to explain economic concepts by using what the reader is already familiar with to introduce the unfamiliar. However, many of our staple pop-economics titles are getting quite old. You may want to brace yourself for this, but Freakonomics and the Undercover Economist are both now 20 years old, even their sequels were published over 10 years ago. Even more modern titles like Can't We Just Print More Money? rely on references to shops which closed before they started school and tv shoes which went off air while they were in nappies. I'm not saying that older books are bad, nor do I thin the canon of Only Fools and Horses is anything other than essential to a cultured upbringing. It's just if we are recommending them because they are relatable, we need to make sure our students can actually relate to them. At best, these references aren't actually helping the students to understand. At worst, they can add an extra barrier to student understanding. (I will say that I have set CWJPMM as a class text, but to do so I also do the vital and noble work of ensuring students know that Woolworths was the best place to get pick-n-mix and that they have seen that Simpsons episode where Homer and his colleagues get replaced by robots.)The final one quite isn't a necessary as the others but it's aways a nice bonus when student reading supports their A-level. The primary aim is for students to learn and develop a love of reading and economics, but if it helps their Econ A-Level a) I'm not complaining and b) it's more motivating.

I want to be clear: we should absolutely be challenging our students. I'm not saying don't recommend books because they have tricky language or technical content. However, students only benefit from challenge when it sits within their Zone of Proximal Development: the goldilocks spot where the task is just beyond what they can do alone but achievable with support. If the challenge is too great, it becomes demotivating rather than developmental. This means it's important to consider the challenge across all of these categories; students can manage greater challenge in one area if the others are more accessible.