To band on the wagon named 'the Intellectual Age', or to feel their children is smart, or for whatever other reasons they may have had, people started enforcing their sons and daughters to read literatures even though they don't themselves or they cannot explain why it is so necessary. The problem is, however, that reading novels or poems does not guarantee to make their life as great as the impression they are under is. Nor would it let them be social and healthy. It is certainly possible to give them the knowledge regarding eminent pieces but this does not automatically mean that they can totally get the true value those pieces include. While reading a literature can offer indirect lessons for life in a glib way, those are nevertheless useless, barring actual experience.
Basically, reading a plenty of informative books can possibly give full-blown knowlege in order to be professional in his or her own field in future. Rather we are suppose to read a substantial amount of books in university as most intensive courses require. In this regards, we advertently need to accumulate informations through reading books to be able to use them in future.
When it comes to literature, however, it is very different. We do not necessarily need to know how Huckleberry could meet his friend or how Robinson successfully survived in a island without any help from others. What we need is the value and virtue the novels persue such as the spirit toward equal treatment for blacks and the rational powers letting a person to survive alone.
With the name of 'the Intelectual Age', as mentioned earlier, people are under the pressure to follow and chase everythings other people do. I suppose that what they must should find is not the activities as such, but why it is so valuable and what we can find through the activities. Without that, it is highly doubtful to read as many books as they require to their children.