Discussing literature

Aidan Chambers talks about the importance of talking about literature in his book Tell Me: children reading and talk. It is when you discuss what you have read together with others who have read the same text that you may be able to get a deeper understanding of a text. The reason for this is that there is no absolute way of interpreting literature, it is a very individual thing depending on for instance when you read the text, which culture you are from and your previous experiences in life.
Chambers says that it is when you discuss literature with others you get their views on the subject and that may give you a deeper understanding of the text.
Reading a text together and then discuss it on a deeper level is not something I remember doing when I went to school. So even though I think that Chambers is absolutely right I don't have any experience to base my opinions on. However, I have recently asked my C-students (upper secondary school) to read three texts and then compare them and especially the women in the texts. I have not had the time to study the texts myself, I just read them through and I found one of the texts very confusing and it left me with a number of questions. When I read some of the analyses that my students had sent me, the value of reading and discussing something together really hit me. Because they had seen things I hadn't noticed or thought about. This became even more obvious when I discussed the three texts together with some of them and they told about their ideas and interpretations.
So this will most definately be a method used in my teaching from now on.