I wonder if the fact we push these amazing stories on high school kids, before they have any capacity to resonate with them, is resulting in less appreciation for the literature than would exist if we didn’t push it at all.
Like, I read The Grapes of Wrath as a teenager and quite simply didn’t feel it. I mean I felt it a little, but not the way I would now after just grinding through poverty for decades.
It does the opposite. It makes kids resent reading if all they have to read is stuff they are not interested in. My worst experience to this day is still reading Madame Bovary.
No general education system is going to be able to tailor curricula to every single child based on their individual interests. Besides that, children’s interests change constantly and they need to learn things beyond just what they’re interested in at any given moment. That includes reading things that aren’t interesting to them but might be interesting to their peers (or even to them later on).
Reading boring shit you don’t like is necessary in a lot of jobs. Training yourself to get through it is also a skill set and one you should develop early. And in some cases, it reveals a new interest.
It is possible there was a learning need that wasn’t being met for those people who swore off reading. We’re getting better at catching those but it’s difficult. Kids are people and can hide a learning disorder to seem normal. A good teacher knows how to make the student comfortable enough so the teacher can figure that out and plan an alternative learning strategy. Not all teachers are good, but most try very hard to do well in a very demanding and low-paying job that is increasingly disrespected, including by comments like yours.
The way your comments read seem like an indictment on every teacher and I frequently encounter similar attitudes online based on anecdotal evidence of a single incident. The reality is the world is hard and people are increasingly bragging online about how little work they did in school to prepare themselves for it. This is increasingly going to translate to anti-intellectualism and lower outcomes in society. We already see it.
Going back to your case, you disliked reading Madame Bovary, which I know is just one example. And maybe you had a shit experience with teachers, which I’m sorry you had to go through. But that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t read Madame Bovary in school, it just means you didn’t like it and maybe had other shit you had to deal with as well.
You must be reading something wrong here then. I never disrespected teachers in any way. I also don’t believe the people I mentioned have any learning disabilites. They just slowly got soured on reading by being forced to read uninteresting books.
I actually love reading it’s just not fun having no choice. If the obligatory reading was a list of a couple things and you could choose what seems the most interesting I think that would work better.
My opinion on madame bovary was just to show that I can see how many people can have a dislike of several books that are on the curriculum and that can then fuel their dislike of reading. There were other books I was not the biggest fan of when I had to read them but bovary was the only one I actually found dreadful.
That’s fair, sorry for misunderstanding. There’s a tradeoff between “interesting to the student” and the teacher’s time as well. My guess is most teachers would love to cater reading more towards every student’s interest along with some required reading just because there’s a canon you need to understand, even if you don’t like it. Maybe technology will make that easier, but getting it in the classroom is an uphill battle very much outside of teacher control.
Same for great literature.
I wonder if the fact we push these amazing stories on high school kids, before they have any capacity to resonate with them, is resulting in less appreciation for the literature than would exist if we didn’t push it at all.
Like, I read The Grapes of Wrath as a teenager and quite simply didn’t feel it. I mean I felt it a little, but not the way I would now after just grinding through poverty for decades.
It does the opposite. It makes kids resent reading if all they have to read is stuff they are not interested in. My worst experience to this day is still reading Madame Bovary.
No general education system is going to be able to tailor curricula to every single child based on their individual interests. Besides that, children’s interests change constantly and they need to learn things beyond just what they’re interested in at any given moment. That includes reading things that aren’t interesting to them but might be interesting to their peers (or even to them later on).
Reading boring shit you don’t like is necessary in a lot of jobs. Training yourself to get through it is also a skill set and one you should develop early. And in some cases, it reveals a new interest.
Not saying it should cater to them but I know a bunch of people who have sworn of reading because they started hating it because of school.
It is possible there was a learning need that wasn’t being met for those people who swore off reading. We’re getting better at catching those but it’s difficult. Kids are people and can hide a learning disorder to seem normal. A good teacher knows how to make the student comfortable enough so the teacher can figure that out and plan an alternative learning strategy. Not all teachers are good, but most try very hard to do well in a very demanding and low-paying job that is increasingly disrespected, including by comments like yours.
The way your comments read seem like an indictment on every teacher and I frequently encounter similar attitudes online based on anecdotal evidence of a single incident. The reality is the world is hard and people are increasingly bragging online about how little work they did in school to prepare themselves for it. This is increasingly going to translate to anti-intellectualism and lower outcomes in society. We already see it.
Going back to your case, you disliked reading Madame Bovary, which I know is just one example. And maybe you had a shit experience with teachers, which I’m sorry you had to go through. But that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t read Madame Bovary in school, it just means you didn’t like it and maybe had other shit you had to deal with as well.
You must be reading something wrong here then. I never disrespected teachers in any way. I also don’t believe the people I mentioned have any learning disabilites. They just slowly got soured on reading by being forced to read uninteresting books.
I actually love reading it’s just not fun having no choice. If the obligatory reading was a list of a couple things and you could choose what seems the most interesting I think that would work better.
My opinion on madame bovary was just to show that I can see how many people can have a dislike of several books that are on the curriculum and that can then fuel their dislike of reading. There were other books I was not the biggest fan of when I had to read them but bovary was the only one I actually found dreadful.
That’s fair, sorry for misunderstanding. There’s a tradeoff between “interesting to the student” and the teacher’s time as well. My guess is most teachers would love to cater reading more towards every student’s interest along with some required reading just because there’s a canon you need to understand, even if you don’t like it. Maybe technology will make that easier, but getting it in the classroom is an uphill battle very much outside of teacher control.
Tl;Dr.
(Sorry, I had to)
Mine was Bartleby the scrivener… I preferred not to read for quite a long time after.
Compared to Billy Budd, I was all in on Bartleby. I felt a certain kinship, if you will.
Is it also a realist work? Taking 3 pages to describe how someone walked out of the door into the garden?