What should be read in school?

[The Duskblade]

Some quick background. As a kid I was a crazy reader. In years 3 or 4 I had read Lord of the Rings multiple times (It'd take about two weeks). And I could tear through most novels in a few days. But when I got into high school and we started having to do analysis and essays I found it really started to kill my love of books. A part of that was that over analysis and the search for the ever important symbolism killed a lot of the enjoyment. But an even bigger factor was that many of the books just weren't entertaining. Particularly since Australian schools tend to promote Australian authors and works featuring Australia even when the work really is sub par. (Not saying Australia doesn't have good Authors but I got really sick of that particular niche)

The book that broke me was a novel called Maestro, that made up most of my final term's English work. I ended up reading the damn thing 4 or 5 times and kept finding new ways to hate it. Worse the many essays we had to write about it meant I constantly had to search for new details to extrapolate on and for me there really was nothing redeemable about it. I'll spoiler a bit more info on it not to distract from the topic. But as a result I basically stopped reading Novels during university with the exception of the excellent American gods. Though I did manage to fill the gap somewhat with graphic novels like Sandman and Transmetropolitan.

Maestro and why I hate it:
First of all Book set in Australia by an Australian author. As I mentioned I was already thoroughly sick of this genre.

Second, the protagonist was utterly insufferable. And since this was a first person novel inescapable. The premise of the book being he wants to be a concert pianist but is only "Technically Perfect". Which to hear him tell it is the worst thing that could possibly happen to him. My sympathy is immense. He also cheats on his girlfriend and shows no real remorse beyond not wanting to lose her. And worst of all he never actually grows out of being awful.

So my question is what books should be read in schools to actually promote reading. And as a followup what can be changed in how books are analysed to prevent the fun from being drained from them.

A few books that I think should be taught in schools.

Basically anything by Neil Gaiman. American Gods would probably cause some issues due to the uh, unbirthing scene but Neil Gaiman has books that work for any age. Particular favourites being Neverwhere and Good Omens.
Speaking of Good Omens, the Co Author Terry Pratchett is excellent in his own right. I think the Tiffany Aching books in particular would be great for younger readers.
Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl books and the Supernaturalist for younger readers.
Roald Dahl was one of the Authors who introduced me to reading. I'm not sure if he's still included in schools but if not he should be.

[Rynjin]

Maestro sounds like Australian Catcher In The Rye. The proudest A I ever got was an essay ripping that book a new *******.

A lot of the classics are still worth reading as far as what I had to read in school. The better Shakespeare plays (but for the love of god, no Romeo and Juliet), the stories of Beowulf, Animal Farm, To Kill A Mockingbird, etc.

Ideally every book would teach you something specific, rather than being required reading because the book is old and therefore must be good and have lessons pertaining to the modern era.

[The Duskblade]

Haven't read Catcher but from what I've heard it's a good comparison.

Beowulf sounds like a great idea to me. Introduce students to olden style epics.

[BWR]

But when I got into high school and we started having to do analysis and essays I found it really started to kill my love of books. A part of that was that over analysis and the search for the ever important symbolism killed a lot of the enjoyment.

I can relate to this. That's exactly what I felt when I started high school.
What I realized as I got to university is that analysis makes sense.

In short, analyzing a piece of art/literature is not about tearing the work apart and reading into it things that aren't there, it's about noticing and understanding what is there. It's about getting the full picture of what the creator put into the piece. We all analyze everything we perceive and we pick up lots of stuff without having to think hard about it. The sort of analysis we start in school is just to get us thinking about the stuff that doesn't come automatically. It's whether we interpret literature or art only based on what we are presented with or if we think about it in relation to other things we know.

For example: the Narnia books. "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." If you are young and especially if you don't know a lot about Christianity or its apologists, it's a fun story. If you do know a bit about Christianity, the story has parallels and meanings that are not explicit. The sort of literary analysis we learn in school is when the ignorant reader sits down and learns about Christianity and sees the Christian bits in the book. Whether or not you enjoy the innocent reading of TLTW&TW more than the other one is neither here nor there, because the author put the 'hidden' message in there deliberately and it has a purpose.


As for what sort of literature should be read in school, most of the ones taught are on the curriculum because a bunch of people think they are important. To some degree it's just because a bunch of lit-wallahs (as my supervisor so dismissivly called them) think it should be there, and much of this is popularity, but lots of works on are chosen for something more. There is a depiction of some aspect of society, some snapshot of time that is important. Influence of the work/author on the rest of the literary community and society in general is another good criteria.
The OP's choices, though I enjoy them, do not really fit most of these criteria. Sure, we all would want to read books we like rather than the ones we don't, but if the purpose of a class is to teach the broad strokes of the development of literature and its trends, to see how contemporary culture influences and is influenced by the literature of its time, then lots of the books we like will not fit the bill.

In short, Duskblade, you are not interested in learning about literature, you are interested in reading things you like. Nothing wrong with this, but the point of the class isn't reading things you like. Putting whatever authors you like on the reading list instead of what is there will mess up the point of the class and bore a lot of other people to tears, people who would enjoy Gaiman no more than they would James Joyce.

[The Duskblade]

To be honest I would quite happily analyse the Narnia books. Granted the religious background would be potentially an issue in public schools but the important thing there is not only are the Narnia books good but there actually is symbolism and background to analyse. To cherry pick one of your lines "In short, analysing a piece of art/literature is not about tearing the work apart and reading into it things that aren't there" I'm in total agreement. The problem is from my own school experience a lot of the time your analysing stuff that just wasn't intended. Look at the Beetles song "I am the walrus" Lennon actually wrote it just to confuse the hell out of people who insisted on trying to analyse their songs.

I'm not opposed to interesting critiques. Neil Gaiman wrote a short story that was basically exactly this for Narnia. Called "The Problem of Susan" (Mature content warning) which criticises Narnia for the implications of Susan's exclusion at the end of the series.

Maybe more important than what the books are would be knowing when to move on. There are only so many essays you can write on a single work. Thinking about it more, I think introducing more short stories could be a better approach. Since it allows you to tackle different topics more easily.

[BWR]

Sure, deeper analysis doesn't make sense in all cases but how do you know until you've tried?

The point of having the same books and stories on the reading list and analyzing them isn't to discover new stuff. You don't expect people to make advances in maths when teaching them high school math, nor do you expect people to make new insights into history when teaching history. The point is to teach the basic way of thinking, rudimentary skills and give a basis of knowledge to work from.
If you have a specific set of works to study, it's easier for the teachers because they don't have to change a lot of stuff simply for the sake of novelty. Also, as my reception studies showed me, seeing how any given work is received and interpreted at a given time is fairly interesting. You can't get a good picture of that if you change the curriculum all the time.

[Manga Shoggoth]

I suppose I was lucky in school, as the O-level course in English Literature (English Language was a seperate course) reserved most of the analysis for poetry and Plays (Here and Human {poetry collection}, Julius Caesar and She Stoops to Conquer in my year). This left me with a profound dislike of Shakespeare, increased my dislike of poetry and for some reason left me with rather a liking for She Stoops..., which I still quote to this day. Guess which two areas the course concentrated on.

(In all fairness to my English teacher {who, like most English teachers, worshipped Shakespeare. I think it's a pre-requisite}, he was quite clear on the subject - it's all right to hate Shakespeare as long as you can say why you hate Shakespeare.)

I think that it is better that the courses - the basic ones, at least {if you decide to specialise in it then all bets are off) - concentrate on classical items rather than modern ones. I don't think it really matters if you are put off Shakespeare or Dickens as you are less likley to associate that with modern work.

[Anonymouswizard]

. And as a followup what can be changed in how books are analysed to prevent the fun from being drained from them.

Here I have to respectfully disagree. In several ways my ability to analyse a book has made me enjoy reading them more.

The only book I have ever read all the way through twice is Starship Troopers. It's the book I discuss with my friends, because a couple of them really like it. But each time I read Starship Troopers I saw different things.
-The first time I read the book I saw it as an argument for a high tech military. To me it seemed like the point was the technology of the federation allowed them to stand toe to toe with the bugs. I was like 14 when I read it, so I wasn't used to real analysis.
-The second time I read it, last year, I had done some background research and did a bit more when reading it, and it became obvious to me that the point was a volunteer only military. The society of the book doesn't matter, it's possible to interpret the last couple of chapters as saying the society itself wouldn't work, it's entirely there to justify the volunteer only military.

No other book, no matter how much I've enjoyed it, have I read twice. It's just not interesting if there's no more to digest.


A few books that I think should be taught in schools.

Basically anything by Neil Gaiman. American Gods would probably cause some issues due to the uh, unbirthing scene but Neil Gaiman has books that work for any age. Particular favourites being Neverwhere and Good Omens.
Speaking of Good Omens, the Co Author Terry Pratchett is excellent in his own right. I think the Tiffany Aching books in particular would be great for younger readers.
Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl books and the Supernaturalist for younger readers.

I'm actually disagreeing fairly heavily here. Not that the books aren't good, Neverwhere and Stardust are personal favourites of mine, but they aren't useful for teaching analysis to younger people. As much as I hate the books themselves, I have to say that doing Wuthering Heights and Tess of the D-Urbervilles was beneficial for my English Literature A-level.

My list?
I say that some Shakespeare is good, but he shouldn't be focused on as much as he is. I like Othello as much as the next Student, but I loved Doctor Faustus so much more, it was both more interesting and more meaty for me to discuss (opinions may vary). So I say throw in a play by Marlowe, and a more recent playwright (I loved doing 'A Streetcar Named Desire', but The Crucible is also a good pick).

There should also be some classic literature in there. Even if it's not your cup of tea it's useful, but I loved doing Frankenstein. There's a lot in the book a decent amount of the class missed out because they didn't read it in it's entirety (and I was in the top set), although I was partially in that boat for Wuthering Heights (on the other hand, I was able to interpret a specific scene differently from the rest of the class, and still spark debates over it with people I meet).

There also should be more modern stuff. I loved taking apart The Kite Runner and putting it back together because I loved that book to bits, but even dissecting Disgrace was fun despite having a despicable main character (partially because it's obviously intentional).

Now I want to put one person on here I want to see removed from schools. I know I'm rather in the minority for my country, but I can't stand Carol Ann Duffy, and could never do any deep analysis of her poems. Not only are the themes right there on the surface compared to all the other poets I got to study, when she plays with a form she can't even be asked to use the form correctly (although this is a tad hypocritical of me, as I tend to write my poems in free verse).


Roald Dahl was one of the Authors who introduced me to reading. I'm not sure if he's still included in schools but if not he should be.

I actually think that there might be a worthwhile book or two here though. There's a couple that could have interesting alternative interpretations, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory springs to mind, and if done while the children are a tad older than the target audience should be simple enough to teach analysis at a younger age.

[Manga Shoggoth]

I actually think that there might be a worthwhile book or two here though. There's a couple that could have interesting alternative interpretations, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory springs to mind, and if done while the children are a tad older than the target audience should be simple enough to teach analysis at a younger age.

My daughter's English class was very heavy on the Dahl. It seemed to go down OK, to the extent that she went out and brought just about every Dahl book available...

[J-H]

I found the poetry selections for school to be far worse than the novel & play selections. Shakespeare and some of the other books were still okay, although I hated Moby ****. Crime & Punishment was a slog. Our 5th grade teacher read The Hobbit and Where the Red Fern Grows to us...and I think he may have read Old Yeller also.
Poetry? The crap they had us read in high school and college was terrible! Boring, boring, boring, boring, boring! Being dead or having committed suicide does not make a poet good.

Not until I was an adult and discovered authors like Robert W. Service (look up the Cremation of Sam Magee) did I start to appreciate poetry as anything other than utter junk. Folk poetry is usually good. Highbrow poetry is usually garbage, just like most modern so-called art.

I have a 2 year old and a baby, and we are planning to homeschool. I'm currently reading through the Read-Aloud Handbook, which has collected the relevant studies on the topic. Reading aloud to children (even babies) is a huge vocabulary-builder and is the main predictor of reading success.

[Murk]

A question: is there anyone here who hated reading before going to middle/high school, had to read mandatory literature, and then actually learned something of it? Because I'm not sure if something like that exists. It might, but I have never seen it.
I have seen a few people who liked reading (or wanted to like reading), who had to read mandatory literature and gained some knowledge because of it.
I have seen a few people who liked reading (or wanted to like reading), who had to read mandatory literature and only gained an aversion to literature because of it.
I have seen a few people who didn't like reading (or didn't want to read), who had to read mandatory literature, and didn't learn anything.
But someone who didn't want to read, was forced too, and then learned something? Eh, I haven't seen it happening yet.

Which is a shame.

As such, I'm going to say there is nothing that "should be read in school". I think there are a lot of books that should be offered, so that those who like to read or want to give it a try can, but as far as I know making it mandatory doesn't help anyone..

[Kato]

Good question and one I used to ask myself a lot. But let's just say, not what you want. Not that I don't like Gaiman. But because you like it doesn't mean others do. But sadly the point of reading in school is not to make kids love reading. I know, I hate that too but it just isn't. You'd have to ask a language teacher what it is though. But it's also quite impossible to pick books everyone likes.
I do however agree with the problem that apparently classics must be read because they are classics. Yuck. :smallyuk:


@anonymouswizard
I also rarely reread books but ST is among the few I read at multiple stages in my life. First as a 15ish year old. It's been a while :smallsigh: but I think I considered it mostly rather propagandistic putting soldiers and war in too glorious a light. Then during military service : I considered it giving at least a good view into the mind of a soldier, especially a young one. And then a few years ago and after reading a bit more of Heinlein : I'm not sure but I feel the propaganda might be ironic, like the movie does it :smalltongue: I could be wrong, I have a hard time knowing when he is sincere and when not, but it feels now like there is too much praise for a society that fights a brutal, pointless war.
That said... I really like the book :smallbiggrin:

[J-H]

As I recall it, the humans didn't start the 'brutal, pointless war.' The bugs did, by nuking several cities, including the main character's home city (Rio?).

[Anonymouswizard]

As I recall it, the humans didn't start the 'brutal, pointless war.' The bugs did, by nuking several cities, including the main character's home city (Rio?).

You're thinking of the excuse the film uses (while implying the humans did it as an excuse).

In the book I don't really remember why the war started (and I can't check because I lent my copy to a friend), but I think it's glossed over as Juan (speaking of which, we should use his actual first name more when discussing him) is in basic training. As far as I remember the route cause of the war is essentially there's a bunch of planets both humans and the pseudo-arachnids (who yes, did have eight legs in the book, it's explicitly mentioned) could live on, and it eventually went from just fighting over those to full scale extermination (yeah, remember the war at least theoretically has a point in the book? I mean, it's not like book humanity has any real need to colonise more planets, but it's basically a war over territory when you get down to it). It's not really clear who started it, maybe humanity put some colonists on a planet the bugs had a claim to. Maybe the bugs turned a few human settlements into livestock, as far as the book is concerned it doesn't really matter.

I don't believe Juan's home city was ever nuked either. We know his mother got killed by a bug bombing, but that because she was on holiday and his dad survives because he had to stay home and was going to join her later. I mean, it's not 100% clear if the bugs were the ones to bomb the cities, but they've been shown to have the technology to at the very least fly up and launch a ton of long-range bombs at earth.

Remember that Juan Rico is at least culturally Filipino, and may in fact be ethnically Asian as well. Tagalog is his native language.

I mean, unless you watch the movie, or the CGI cartoon, or the anime, which all turned Rico white. Yes, I've watched all of them, although I haven't seen the film's sequels.

[Kato]

We're getting a bit off topic but...
I can't recall or check the starting point either. I think, yes, the reason for escalation is the bugs nuking Earth. But I'm pretty skeptical on whether we are meant to take that at face value. I feel like Rico was not sure either and didn't care.

There was a cgi series? I saw the anime and second movie, which is hardly worthwhile. I heard the third is more interesting but couldn't track it down or forgot.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Yeah, the series was called Roughneck Chronicles or some such.

The book starts with the MI conducting a terror raid on the Skinnies to persuade them to break their alliance with the Arachnids and ally with the humans. That's where Dizzy Flores buys it.

As for what kids should read in school, I'd start with 'more'. A lot more.

[Ruslan]

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are still a must-read for every generation, and probably will remain so forever.

[Knaight]

In short, analyzing a piece of art/literature is not about tearing the work apart and reading into it things that aren't there, it's about noticing and understanding what is there. It's about getting the full picture of what the creator put into the piece. We all analyze everything we perceive and we pick up lots of stuff without having to think hard about it. The sort of analysis we start in school is just to get us thinking about the stuff that doesn't come automatically. It's whether we interpret literature or art only based on what we are presented with or if we think about it in relation to other things we know.

For example: the Narnia books. "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." If you are young and especially if you don't know a lot about Christianity or its apologists, it's a fun story. If you do know a bit about Christianity, the story has parallels and meanings that are not explicit. The sort of literary analysis we learn in school is when the ignorant reader sits down and learns about Christianity and sees the Christian bits in the book. Whether or not you enjoy the innocent reading of TLTW&TW more than the other one is neither here nor there, because the author put the 'hidden' message in there deliberately and it has a purpose.

That's what it should be - the extent to which it actually matches that in practice is debatable. The IB program at my highschool heavily emphasized New Criticism - strictly speaking it was taught as one of three analytical methods alongside New Historicism and Reader Response, but in practice it got two years of intense focus and the others shared a week (the other two years involved less formal criticism and more learning the elements that are more universal). More than that, there were serious systemic flaws in how it was taught even by the standards of New Criticism. This included things like the idea of effectively universal symbolism, as any actual look into specifics of the cultures underlying these books would have left the New Critical method. To use just one example, say that there's a scene in a book where the main character comes across a snake. The way we were taught, based on the whole idea of universality and of ignoring structural factors around the text was to interpret the snake as inherently allegorical to the literary history of snakes in the western tradition*. If the original story was something like Native American myth, we were effectively supposed to ignore that.

To put it bluntly, this was obvious nonsense. Those classes taught how to BS more than anything else, and I spent an entire year writing essay after essay with increasingly ludicrous theses**, backing everything up with book quotes, implicit claims of universal meaning, and similar. We weren't learning the background to understand a particular book, we were learning a bunch of generalized hookum that can be used as a primitive analytical model on a narrow selection of books, and we were learning it in the context of it being universal literally the year following a world literature class full of books for which this model would have failed.

*I'm being a bit vague here, because otherwise this gets into religion quickly and the board rules on religion are really tight.
**"A Tale of Two Cities as a Criticism of the Morality of Arthurian Myth" still stands out here. I got a B on that one (following a series of As on essays that were marginally less ludicrous), and it was clearly written to be openly contemptuous of New Criticism and consisted of a series of workable arguments in frame work for a series of completely absurd conclusions.

[Cheesegear]

I often read whatever I felt like at school, and I read two things in high school that were not on any book lists that we had to read;

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. Later in life I discovered that this book was actually on many school readings lists - just not mine.

The Losers. The only reason I picked it up was because it had David Eddings' name on the cover, and I'm glad I did.

[J-H]

Ender's Game.

I assume 90% of the board population has read it.

My college roommate one year hadn't read it. I sent him the txt file version of it one evening, and he stayed up until 10am the next morning reading it straight through.

It actually portrays preteens and teenagers as people, takes them seriously, and shows them making a difference in the adult world. It can also be an excellent springboard for discussions on everything from ethics (just war theory, down to "when do you stop hitting a downed bully?") to insect biology (hive organization) to politics & rhetoric.
It's not for kids though. I remember that Ender tearing through the giant's face was really gross the first time I read it.

[Razade]

I read Beowulf in High School. I also read most of the Tragedies by Shakespear and a few of his Comedies. Also read Canterbury Tales, a lot of the Romantic works. Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner was my final paper topic. I'd have liked to read less European stuff. Maybe we could have gone over the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam or some other Persian classics. We also went over a lot of the Greek Classics. Hell I read god damned Oedipus Rex every year of High School and two semesters in college.

[NichG]

There's a premise here that teaching analysis should be a primary goal of highschool education, e.g. that it's always worth damaging someone's desire or enthusiasm for books so long as it teaches them analysis effectively. Rather than debate about whether standardized or novel, modern or classical works are best for teaching analysis, doesn't it make more sense to ask what the pros and cons of teaching literature analysis in particular are in contrast with teaching for example, understanding and application of the technical aspects of writing (e.g. characterization, setting, stuff like Hemmingway's 'iceberg' method), or even just teaching stuff like reading subtext, allusion, and bias in for example news media or historical documents.

When I compare my highschool education with other people who seem to have been burned on various topics (here it's reading, the usual case is mathematics, sometimes its history, and for me it was Spanish) the commonality is that the teacher or school has an attitude of 'you have to learn this, so just learn it, okay?' with respect to the thing the subject in question, without a deeper understanding of what learning it means for the student. It may be true that studying Shakespeare provides more opportunities for analysis (and, of course, provides a much larger set of reference analyses that other people have done that you can look at to provide examples), but if you can't make the student actually say to themselves 'I feel like I can (and want to) use this skill on my own interests' then that's a failure to provide something of use.

The difference in university settings is that classes are much more self-selective. Even at a university with mandatory out-of-major curriculum requirements usually offers a range of courses that satisfy them - someone who is interested in analysis can take that course, but someone who is interested in creative writing or technical writing or debate or research can probably substitute that as one of their English requirements. So it's okay in that context for classes to assume the importance of their own subjects to a much greater degree. But in a highschool curriculum, I think that deserves to be questioned.

[Rynjin]

Ender's Game.

I assume 90% of the board population has read it.

My college roommate one year hadn't read it. I sent him the txt file version of it one evening, and he stayed up until 10am the next morning reading it straight through.

It actually portrays preteens and teenagers as people, takes them seriously, and shows them making a difference in the adult world. It can also be an excellent springboard for discussions on everything from ethics (just war theory, down to "when do you stop hitting a downed bully?") to insect biology (hive organization) to politics & rhetoric.
It's not for kids though. I remember that Ender tearing through the giant's face was really gross the first time I read it.

At least at my high school, it was on the required reading list. Two if my Chemistry class counts.

[Tentreto]

What I remember reading mostly for my GCSE's was Thomas Hardy's short stories and Poetry. He is not half bad, but is so depressing and morbid that they all begin to flow together...
Similarly, we did Romeo and Juliet, plus the films, which made it impossible for me to reread or rewatch it for years...

Aside from that, I mostly read by myself, and was far better read than most. Possibly the strangest book we were told to read though was Sophie's World, to introduce us to the idea of Philosophy, which was more interesting.
Scratch that, the weirdest was a book my English teacher wrote, which I will not name, but it was the driest and dullest book I have ever read. As a historian who jaunts into legalism sometimes, that's saying something.

Either way, Shakespeare should be taught to some degree, but I feel a modern comparison is also good, just to analyse, such as maybe Hunger Games?
They should at least be enjoyable though. The dryer the book, the more the student bangs their head into the table...

[Blackhawk748]

I second Ender's game, its an excellent read and actually stands up to analysis fairly well. Though i do hate the "but what was the author really trying to say?" How about you ****ing ask them? Seriously, hated that question, its stupid and doesnt really help anyone. Anyway, things i feel should be read:

A poem of two by Poe, hes excellent and the poems tend to be interesting

Something by H.P Lovecraft, just make sure it isnt To the Mountains of Madness or Rats in the Walls, Mountains drags to much and Rats just has a weird ending that doesnt feel satisfying. I wqould go for The Color Out of Space or Whisperer in Darkness. Both great examples of his writing style and not so vague as to confuse the worse of readers.

Seconding Beowulf, i certainly liked it.

Golly Springs by Michael Frederick: Read this recently and i feel it would be a good story for High School students. Its set in the 1860s and it moves at a fairly brisk pace, so it should keep them at least semi interested. Theres a lot in there to talk about too.

Things not to read:
Flowers for Algernon. Just..... no. At the end i was basically screaming WHAT WAS THE POINT?!?!?! and as such my teacher gave me a C on the paper cuz she didnt like how i ripped that book apart. Not to mention its freaking boring.

Moby ****: Its a classic. I know that, but its long and has a tendency to ramble on. Dont subject High School students to this.

Wuthering Heights.: For gods sake no, its so boring i almost died of boredom from a friend describing the book to me.

[Peelee]

1984. Because it's amazing, and making it mandatory amuses me.

[Blackhawk748]

1984. Because it's amazing, and making it mandatory amuses me.

Or at least bits of it. It is a really well written book, and i had to read Brave New World, so why not 1984 too?

[BWR]

There's a premise here that teaching analysis should be a primary goal of highschool education, e.g. that it's always worth damaging someone's desire or enthusiasm for books so long as it teaches them analysis effectively. Rather than debate about whether standardized or novel, modern or classical works are best for teaching analysis, doesn't it make more sense to ask what the pros and cons of teaching literature analysis in particular are in contrast with teaching for example, understanding and application of the technical aspects of writing (e.g. characterization, setting, stuff like Hemmingway's 'iceberg' method), or even just teaching stuff like reading subtext, allusion, and bias in for example news media or historical documents.


Analysis is one of two goals of literature studies in school. The other the actual study of the literary works that shaped the language in question. Ideally, studying notable literature should not only help in ability to analyze content but also give a sense of history, culture and community due to shared experience. Sadly, as many have pointed out, it usually ends up with people disliking all older literature. And frankly, lots of the stuff we are expected to read is rather dull and tedious or actually unlikable (Catcher in the Rye, for instance), but the point isn't to read what we like. That we can do on our own.

[eggynack]

Most things by Junot Diaz, probably either some selected stories from Drown or Oscar Wao, would be pretty great picks. I was assigned Oscar Wao in college, and then I eventually individually read some of Drown, and moving from a school assigned author to other stuff by that author is pretty rare for me. His stuff has a lot of great stuff for a school setting, in my opinion. A different culture, some history, some variety of perspective, but especially a seriously bad ass style of writing. You can feel this energy in his words, a touch of the poetic without being pretentious, and the man's seemingly a total nerd so that's a big benefit. There's even some clear cut and well defined symbolism at work there if you really need it. I think there's something there for everyone, really.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is something I'd strongly consider, which I was assigned in highschool (though it was during this weird period where we weren't examining much of anything, due to rapid teacher turnover in that specific class). Bradbury has a relatively light writing style, in my opinion, and his stuff is pretty fun to read. The biggest reason I'd like it to be read, however, is because it offers this really interesting death of the author question. To just about anyone reading 451, it's a book about censorship. There's book burning all over the place, and it's all about the preservation of literature in the face of government whatevers. But, by my understanding, Bradbury's main point in the book wasn't the censorship at all, but was people being made docile by the book's television analogues, such that they'd be willing to abandon literature. And sure, Bradbury might've had some censorship in there, and some of the television thing is kinda clear to a reader, but there's this massive distance between how a reader perceives the book and how it was intended, and that's a really cool thing in analysis. What do we do with this information? Notably, I also read some Bradbury after school, but it's also worth note that I was, at the time, faced with the extenuating circumstance of living in a foreign nation and having limited access to books I could read.

Third one worth note is The Stranger by Albert Camus. It's just this super classy book that happens to be simultaneously readable and short. Was assigned this one in college, finished it in a single night in order to write an essay, and managed to enjoy it despite those extenuating circumstances. You get a two for one out of it, both a relatively straightforward if insane narrative that's intelligent and kinda fun to read, and a treatise on existentialism. Recommended it to my brother recently, because I thought it'd help with a project he was working on, and he really liked it, so I don't think it's a crazy suggestion. He has pretty high taste reading habits though, so we could be doubly crazy.

Fourth, I'll give another recommendation to Ender's Game. Fun, well written, and raises some interesting baseline analysis things. One interesting angle on that one could also be that Orson Scott Card is super bigoted and homophobic, so, as with 451, we could ask how much that should impact the way we read and analyze the story. Especially that weird naked shower fight scene.

Along those same lines is one I actually haven't read at all, but that I've been constructing weird mental curriculum for from some point after I heard a This American Life about it. That book is The Education of Little Tree. Ostensibly, it's this autobiography by a guy named Forrest Carter, a story about him learning about his native american roots, and has themes you'd expect like leading a simple life and dealing with prejudice. Semi-secretly though, the book is actually by Asa Earl Carter, a KKK member and segregationist who was famous for working on the line, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever," from George Wallace's inaugural speech. What do you do with that kinda conflict between writing and writer? Is there secretly not as much conflict as one would immediately expect? I'd probably have to sit down and read the thing to know whether it's worth assigning on this basis alone, but there's possibility there, especially because I think it's been assigned in the past before the author's history was widely known.

Sixth, maybe House of Leaves? I really love that book, and there's a ton there worth finding, but it might be too long/difficult for a classroom. Could be worth it at least partially on the basis that a lot of it satirizes literary criticism, and students so frequently forced into such a mindset themselves might get a kick out of that.

Finally, some books I read in school that I thought were pretty good at the time, so they should stick around in curriculums on that basis. Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, maybe 1984, and I think I liked Of Mice and Men too. Not a complete list, but still. Also, we read a Raymond Carver short story or two in one of my classes, and I really liked it, and read a bunch more. Not sure what students would necessarily get out of it, but there's probably something to it. The book I'd recommend against most is Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Really hated reading that book. So boring. There's a limit to how much we should value historical knowledge gained in the books assigned.

[Kato]

I don't get why so many people enjoy Ender's Game... Ah, wait, I do, I just don't share that sentiment. At least by far not to the extent others do. I could go into detail but I think it's not the point of the thread.

(What I don't get is why people who are not into existentialism enjoy The Stranger. It's ike 200 pages and I still had to fight my way through those few)

So, I get people like to recommend things they like but... why do others need to enjoy it/why should pupils be required to read them? Because you liked it? What kind of argument is that. People enjoy the classics, that's not argument enough to tell kids to read those. (And taste is so different between people or are we supposed to get everyone to like the same stuff?) Because you can learn stuff from them? At parts this is debatable and even if not, there are SO MANY books where this is true. I'm not sure what OP was looking for but there's a different between a list people enjoy to read and books that should be read in school.


I wonder if maybe people should read obviously bad books instead and discuss why they are bad and what could be done to improve them. Then again, who wants to slug through Twilight just to talk about how stupid it is for vampires to sparkle :smalltongue:

[eggynack]

(What I don't get is why people who are not into existentialism enjoy The Stranger. It's ike 200 pages and I still had to fight my way through those few)

I think it has a really interesting perspective, a character removed from context in a sense, and I think it's pretty well written, and those two things are enough to justify what little length is there to me.

[J-H]

Fourth, I'll give another recommendation to Ender's Game. Fun, well written, and raises some interesting baseline analysis things. One interesting angle on that one could also be that Orson Scott Card is super bigoted and homophobic, so, as with 451, we could ask how much that should impact the way we read and analyze the story. Especially that weird naked shower fight scene.
You could get a great class discussion out of that criticism on intolerance of opposing views, bigotry and ignorance towards religion, the pseudo-moralism of post-modernism, and the use of media & legal institutions to penalize people who hold differing views... but I don't think it's the same discussion you're thinking of.


What is the goal of literature classes in school?
a) To help children learn to enjoy reading, so that they will continue reading and learning on their own?
b) To expose them to a certain portion of the main English-language "canon" so that they have a good understanding of the foundations of our ideas and major reference points?
c) To teach them how to do academic-style literary analysis?

I suspect that most teachers or curriculum designers would answer (c), thinking that they're teaching critical thinking, and that simply forcing the kids to read the selected books will take care of (b) and (a).

Unfortunately, (c) usually turns into "How to BS my way to an A," since you can write anything and get a good grade if you support it from the text. Without (a), (b) doesn't happen because the kids use Cliff Notes or remember just enough for the test, and then forget it.

Poetry is meant to be read aloud, where you can hear the rhythms, rhymes, and patterns. Plays are meant to be performed, not read.
I can't tell you anything about King Lear (11th grade?). We read that play.
I can tell you some about Hamlet (12th grade). We watched a performance version of it after reading it.
I can tell you more about Romeo & Juliet (8th grade). We were broken up into groups and had to put on our own (videotaped) versions of it.
I can't tell you anything about Shakespeare's Sonnets, except that they're about love.
I can tell you quite a bit about the Cremation of Sam Mcgee (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/45081), because my dad read it to me once.

My ideal approach to a classroom literature program is currently something like this:

1/3 to 1/2 of the class is spent on reading aloud - either the teacher reading from a certain selection (poetry), or the class going through a few scenes at a time from a play (assign parts for each day in advance, have them get up and "perform it" - quality doesn't matter as much as involvement)
1/3 to 1/2 of the class time is spent in what the books call Sustained Silent Reading. I'd give the kids a list of books with short descriptions of what they're about, drawing mostly from the main-line literary canon, but with some more fun books in as well (Ender's Game, 1984, Farenheit 451, etc from this thread).
Once finished with a book, the kids' job is to "sell" it to their classmates with a speech, a several-page paper, or some type of artsy thing like a big poster with pictures, who the characters are, notable things that happen in the book, etc. I'm not an artsy person, so I'm not as sure what to do for the artsy stuff. Q&A follows each presentation.

The presentation/"sell it to your classmates" approach lets each student demonstrate completion and retention of the material in a less-boring way, and encourages the other students to go read the interesting books. Giving the kids choices about what to read reduces reliance on skipping ahead and cliff notes, and means that they are more likely to enjoy the reading - children always learn better about things that interest them, which is why a three year old can keep track of "Parasarolophus" and "Tyrannosaurus Rex."
The reading aloud (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwi-4vLDyZnRAhXo44MKHYPIAzoQFggmMAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FRead-Aloud-Handbook-Seventh-Jim-Trelease%2Fdp%2F014312160X&usg=AFQjCNHDC5XB4qsQliwwFgBKV2WAaaWwEA&bvm=bv.142059868,d.amc) is worthwhile for books as well as poetry, see linked book, which I'm currently reading.

I got the first and second Foxfire books (http://www.foxfire.org/thefoxfirebooks.aspx) for Christmas, and started on Book #1 yesterday. The series started in the late 1960s, when a 9th and 10th-grade English teacher at a small school in rural Appalachia was completely losing his classes just 6 weeks into his first year of teaching. His BA and MA and literature were less interesting than trying to light the lectern on fire, throwing paper airplanes, carving on the desks, etc.

Instead of doubling down on already-failing discipline, he threw the curriculum out the window. The kids started interviewing elderly relatives and neighbors, and documenting their stories of old traditions, old ways, and old tools: Hog-butchery, the uses of different trees, how to make hand tools, planting by the stars, their interesting experiences, life growing up on a just-barely-above subsistence level farm, etc. Also included was folk & local poetry (both from others and from the students). They practiced research, writing, taking pictures, doing layouts, raising funds (to cover printing costs), editing, and everything else. The magazine is still around 40 years later, and there are a dozen volumes of collected writings at the link.

I don't think a teacher in the American public school system can get away with that approach now, but it certainly worked well to teach practical English language skills!

[Rynjin]

All of my English courses up through AP Lang had us sort of act the plays (and, kind of weirdly, Christmas Carol). We each got a role, and read those parts. Some people acted, some people didn't, bit either way it was more fun than reading alone. It made some of the stories a lot more fun (I love the opening bits of Romeo and Juliet...entirely because I got to play Mercutio, the objectively best character in the play), and everybody seemed to really appreciate most of them better with even that little engagement. My most fond exposure to Shakespeare being that Romeo and Juliet run through (despite the fact that I actually hate the play) and our read of Othello (I got to be Iago!). On the other hand, Hamlet comes off as tepid and boring because I did that one in AP Lit/Comp and we just read it on our own time (that teacher made up for it by being personally a very interesting person and having us read some more off the wall books like Rozencrants and Guildenstern Are Dead to accompany it).

Part of the problem aside the reading content is too few English teachers actually attempt to get their students engaged in the material. Say what you will about the point of school not being to instill a love of [Subject] in the student, but children and people in general learn better when they enjoy what they're doing. If you go out of your way to make the material a dry slog (spending 3 months accompanying the the whiny unlikable prick Holden Caufield made me hate JD Salinger even before I learned more about him), even teh students who would otherwise be engaged will coast through the class and learn nothing.

[J-H]

You can't teach kids to love something unless you love it yourself.

[Peelee]

You can't teach kids to love something unless you love it yourself.

I'll take that bet.

[1dominator]

I suggest Hear of Darkness, I read that in High School and thoroughly enjoyed it. Why not have something on the list about Africa? Well... actually about white men, but white men IN Africa. Africa defines the book.

[Ninja_Prawn]

So, the literature I did in school...

Year 7 & 8 (age 11-13)
Smith (Garfield). Can't remember it. Pass.
The Miller's Tale (Chaucer). We did this in the original Middle English, so it was a bit of a joke.
Lord of the Flies (Golding). Pretty good. Worth a read, I suppose.
The Tempest (Shakespeare). Can't remember this one either. :smallfrown:
Animal Farm (Orwell). Excellent book, and this is the right age to read it.

Year 9 (age 13-14)
1984 (Orwell). Like Animal Farm, I strongly recommend it.
Macbeth (Shakespeare). It's pretty good, but maybe more suitable for a younger age group?

Year 10 & 11 (age 14-16)
The Crucible (Miller). I really enjoyed this one.
Romeo & Juliet (Shakespeare). Eh, it was easy to write about. And we got to watch the Baz Luhrmann adaptation in class, which was cool.
Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck). This one was good and, again, easy to write about. I'd have to recommend it.
Far From the Madding Crowd (Hardy). Execrable. Making kids read this is borderline child abuse.

So the ones I'd recommend are Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, 1984, The Crucible and Of Mice and Men.

The one author I really wish I'd gotten into as a teenager is Kurt Vonnegut. If I could go back in time, I'd take a copy of Galapagos or Slaughterhouse 5. I think there comes a point in your mid-twenties where if you haven't read any Vonnegut, you'll never be able to get it.


A question: is there anyone here who hated reading before going to middle/high school, had to read mandatory literature, and then actually learned something of it? Because I'm not sure if something like that exists. It might, but I have never seen it.
I have seen a few people who liked reading (or wanted to like reading), who had to read mandatory literature and gained some knowledge because of it.
I have seen a few people who liked reading (or wanted to like reading), who had to read mandatory literature and only gained an aversion to literature because of it.
I have seen a few people who didn't like reading (or didn't want to read), who had to read mandatory literature, and didn't learn anything.
But someone who didn't want to read, was forced too, and then learned something? Eh, I haven't seen it happening yet.

Which is a shame.

*Raises hand*

I hated reading, literature and English in general until I got to years 9-11, at which point I had two teachers that made me completely re-evaluate my understanding of literature. I'd say it was having to properly analyse the texts (and poems) that made me realise how much there was to them. And, as someone who'd always liked the finality of maths and science where there was always one right answer to each question that you could get to if you followed the steps, it was revelatory to me that English could be the same; I just had to make the steps up for myself. I hadn't twigged that before.

[eggynack]

You could get a great class discussion out of that criticism on intolerance of opposing views, bigotry and ignorance towards religion, the pseudo-moralism of post-modernism, and the use of media & legal institutions to penalize people who hold differing views... but I don't think it's the same discussion you're thinking of.
For the sake of non-derailing, I'll just say there's a whole bunch of possible discussions and perspectives on this one. Which is cool, because that just makes it a better topic for teaching.

[Rodin]

I think that high school is probably not the time to be teaching high end literary criticism and interpretation of symbolism. Even as an avid reader I hated The Scarlet Letter because we spent an entire class period on how a character went into the forest, and because the forest is green that character is evil since green is associated with the devil. That sort of thing isn't helpful for high school students who are likely reluctant readers and doesn't give a better understanding of the important elements of the story. Save all of that stuff for college courses where the students are actually invested in the material.

What should be focused on is important context that influences how the book was written. We didn't cover 1984 in school, but the edition I read had a third of the paperback dedicated to an essay on how the story was influenced by the political situation in the world at the time and the approaching Cold War, along with details about how prophetic it was and how close we came to having a dystopia actually happen.

I'm fully behind that sort of analysis - it's fascinating and gives additional appreciation of the material. What shouldn't happen is overly analyzing - my English class once spent the entire hour covering a single chapter in a book, and said chapter was only several pages long. We had a question on a test about Dandelion Wine with the question "What was the name of the junkman's horse?" Said horse appears on one page of the novel, is named once, and has zero significance to anything, even the chapter it appears in.

Mostly, I think that high school English classes should be moving as fast as possible through novels, rather than spending a long time in-depth on a single one. There isn't time for that, and the students will fall asleep. Hit as many classics as you can, cover as much background information is as feasible, then move on. You're more likely to hit something that appeals to your class if you cast a wide net, and simply getting them to read the stuff is a big triumph in the first place.

[Ninja_Prawn]

I have two questions here:


Save all of that stuff for college courses where the students are actually invested in the material.

If students aren't taught the rudiments of literary criticism, how will they even know whether or not they want to do it at college? And college lecturers would be in uproar about the new intake being illiterate, like what happened with maths, science and engineering professors when people were leaving school without ever having encountered calculus.


Mostly, I think that high school English classes should be moving as fast as possible through novels, rather than spending a long time in-depth on a single one.

If you don't spend a decent amount of time on any one piece, how are the students supposed to write coursework? How can you set exams? Plus it takes some kids months to read even one book - having to go at the speed of the slowest is a pain, but there's no escaping from it.

[Gnoman]

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is something I'd strongly consider, which I was assigned in highschool (though it was during this weird period where we weren't examining much of anything, due to rapid teacher turnover in that specific class). Bradbury has a relatively light writing style, in my opinion, and his stuff is pretty fun to read. The biggest reason I'd like it to be read, however, is because it offers this really interesting death of the author question. To just about anyone reading 451, it's a book about censorship. There's book burning all over the place, and it's all about the preservation of literature in the face of government whatevers. But, by my understanding, Bradbury's main point in the book wasn't the censorship at all, but was people being made docile by the book's television analogues, such that they'd be willing to abandon literature. And sure, Bradbury might've had some censorship in there, and some of the television thing is kinda clear to a reader, but there's this massive distance between how a reader perceives the book and how it was intended, and that's a really cool thing in analysis. What do we do with this information? Notably, I also read some Bradbury after school, but it's also worth note that I was, at the time, faced with the extenuating circumstance of living in a foreign nation and having limited access to books I could read.


This is my big problem with literary analysis. You're quite correct that Fahrenheit 451 is a massive author rant against TV and radio, with anti-censorship themes being a significant afterthought. However, mentioning this in any class I've ever attended, heard directly about, or read the textbook for would result in failure, as The One True Meaning of the work is censorship.

To the other extreme, I've failed school assignments for daring to claim that A Tale Of Two Cities isn't a complex metaphor for Charles Dickens's suicidal impulses (the existence of which is without evidentiary support) and Moby **** is not a story about forbidden gay love. Both works do have deeper meaning, although I have a tendency to answer the question of "Why did -author- write this" by looking up the size of his paycheck as a form of rebellion, but those are not anywhere close to supported.

[Rodin]

I have two questions here:



If students aren't taught the rudiments of literary criticism, how will they even know whether or not they want to do it at college? And college lecturers would be in uproar about the new intake being illiterate, like what happened with maths, science and engineering professors when people were leaving school without ever having encountered calculus.



Rudiments is different - like I said above, giving context to the stories is important. I'm not saying that you can't cover the basics, but diving in deep into a single novel for months at a time isn't helpful to anybody.




If you don't spend a decent amount of time on any one piece, how are the students supposed to write coursework? How can you set exams? Plus it takes some kids months to read even one book - having to go at the speed of the slowest is a pain, but there's no escaping from it.

If you're taking several months to read a single book at high school level, then there certainly isn't anything to gain from literary criticism as I consider those students to have been very badly educated in the first place. That's more getting into failures of the education system though, which is an entirely different barrel of fish.

It also depends on the work you're covering. If you're covering The Odyssey, then that's obviously going to take a while. My English class spent 3 months on The House on Mango Street, which is 110 pages long. Good book, but 3 freaking months?

Basically, I value exposing the students to the literature more than I do the literary criticism. As to college prep, well, that's what Honors/AP English is for. I also took Honors English classes at college to fulfill the requirements for my degree, and even there we started learning literary criticism, rather than it being expected of us to know it going in.

[Kato]

The one author I really wish I'd gotten into as a teenager is Kurt Vonnegut. If I could go back in time, I'd take a copy of Galapagos or Slaughterhouse 5. I think there comes a point in your mid-twenties where if you haven't read any Vonnegut, you'll never be able to get it.

Huh? Why? Because it can only appreciated if you are not fully mentally mature yet? :smallconfused: I understand an older person will have a different perspective on a story than a kid/teen but I have no idea how this would apply e.g. to slaughterhouse..

Also, I'm not sure if you know what 13 year olds are like.. I'm all for challenging kids but most 13 year olds I came across couldn't fully follow animal farm. And 15 year olds reading 1984 will end up buying an awful lot of tinfoil... Oh, wait.
No, seriously, kids that age mostly aren't sharp enough to properly think about these stories and at best take away the obvious statements only.

[WhovianBeast]

I like books like The Count of Monte Cristo and Les Miserables an awful lot. Sure, they'd take the semester or possibly the whole year to read at the pace of the typical middle or high-school lit class, but the analysis that's possible is astounding.

[J-H]

The Charlotte Mason homeschooling method relies largely on children reading books of interest in a given concentration, and then discussing them. Some friends of ours who were using it with their 7 year old were very happy with it.

I just ran across this gem in the Read-Aloud Handbook (page 119):


Many of the classics were not written for children. They were so popular among the adult elite that they became the adult standard and therefore were foisted upon children. Reading the classics too soon as a child can do more to turn you off reading than on to reading. Remember: The goal is to create a lifetime reader, not a future English teacher.

[Darth Ultron]

So my question is what books should be read in schools to actually promote reading. And as a followup what can be changed in how books are analysed to prevent the fun from being drained from them.


Well, if the goal is to ''promote reading'' you would need a school approach that was not out of the 17th century. The idea that the old, old people with political agendas in secret meetings pick books they like and then they use threats and force kids to read them.....is not the way to do that.

You would need a more 21st century approach...like forming kids into book clubs biased on their interests. Then the kids would read books they want to read....and amazingly...when a kid wants to read a book...they do. And few people don't have fun analyzing a book they like. Though this again goes back to changing the insane 17th way schools do things.

But most schools are not ''promoting reading'', they are ''pushing an agenda''. They don't want kids to ''learn to like to read'', they want to ''put one sided ideas'' in their heads.

[Velaryon]

This is a wonderful discussion, and I wish I had gotten into it before there were so many posts! I want to reply to like everyone's comments, but if I quote everything the post becomes a huge mess. So if I'm mentioning someone's post without quoting it, I'm gonna bold their name. Here goes:


Maestro sounds like Australian Catcher In The Rye. The proudest A I ever got was an essay ripping that book a new *******.

A lot of the classics are still worth reading as far as what I had to read in school. The better Shakespeare plays (but for the love of god, no Romeo and Juliet), the stories of Beowulf, Animal Farm, To Kill A Mockingbird, etc.

Ideally every book would teach you something specific, rather than being required reading because the book is old and therefore must be good and have lessons pertaining to the modern era.

I absolutely love your last sentence here. I'm firmly of the opinion that older does not necessarily mean better when it comes to literature, and The Catcher in the Rye is usually Exhibit A in my argument. If you still have your essay ripping apart the book, I would dearly love to read it if you're willing to share.


A question: is there anyone here who hated reading before going to middle/high school, had to read mandatory literature, and then actually learned something of it?

I'm glad you asked this, and also glad that Ninja_Prawn answered it. I believe that a lot of people are likely turned off of reading by having "classics" shoved down their throats in school, in the name of teaching them analysis and criticism. I do think a love for and interest in reading would be much easier to cultivate by offering choices rather than predetermined selections chosen for their alleged literary merit. Different people like different things, and so when the entire class is required to read the same book, a lot of people aren't going to like it. Do that enough times, and you teach many of those people that books are boring, especially since students are often led to believe these are some of the best books out there.

However, at the same time it seems to me that the goal of such education is and should be more than simply cultivating an enjoyment of reading. I definitely think students should be able to choose a lot, maybe even most, of what they read. In particular I like J-H's model in which the students try to "sell" the book to their classmates. That's basically what a librarian does when giving a book talk. I've done my share of them, and I've seen some good discussions come out of them, as well as seen a few people actually choose to read some of the books based on sales pitches.

I do think though that there's also value in having everyone read the same book, then discussing it as a group. There are pros (people might find something new they enjoy) and cons (they might hate it), but doing so allows students to learn from each other as well as the teacher, and discourages the "BS-ing to get a good grade" which, as others have said, is often what writing an analysis paper turns into.



There's a premise here that teaching analysis should be a primary goal of highschool education, e.g. that it's always worth damaging someone's desire or enthusiasm for books so long as it teaches them analysis effectively. Rather than debate about whether standardized or novel, modern or classical works are best for teaching analysis, doesn't it make more sense to ask what the pros and cons of teaching literature analysis in particular are in contrast with teaching for example, understanding and application of the technical aspects of writing (e.g. characterization, setting, stuff like Hemmingway's 'iceberg' method), or even just teaching stuff like reading subtext, allusion, and bias in for example news media or historical documents.

When I compare my highschool education with other people who seem to have been burned on various topics (here it's reading, the usual case is mathematics, sometimes its history, and for me it was Spanish) the commonality is that the teacher or school has an attitude of 'you have to learn this, so just learn it, okay?' with respect to the thing the subject in question, without a deeper understanding of what learning it means for the student. It may be true that studying Shakespeare provides more opportunities for analysis (and, of course, provides a much larger set of reference analyses that other people have done that you can look at to provide examples), but if you can't make the student actually say to themselves 'I feel like I can (and want to) use this skill on my own interests' then that's a failure to provide something of use.

The difference in university settings is that classes are much more self-selective. Even at a university with mandatory out-of-major curriculum requirements usually offers a range of courses that satisfy them - someone who is interested in analysis can take that course, but someone who is interested in creative writing or technical writing or debate or research can probably substitute that as one of their English requirements. So it's okay in that context for classes to assume the importance of their own subjects to a much greater degree. But in a highschool curriculum, I think that deserves to be questioned.

I agree with this in large part. I don't think destroying a student's passion for reading is ever productive. I do believe that students have to invest themselves into the subject and do the work in order to learn, but I think it's more helpful to meet them halfway by letting them do it on their terms whenever possible. Obviously students need to be exposed to things outside their comfort zone and sphere of knowledge, but if you completely disregard that sphere, then that's how you end up with students who either quit trying or do the bare minimum to get their grade.

I'd like to see the list of books that students are required to read greatly reduced (but not eliminated, as per my reply above), so that they can spend more time reading, analyzing, and thinking critically about books that actually interest them. To this day I hate The Great Gatsby because of how we analyzed it to death in my junior year class, and I have a similar hatred for all discussion of symbolism for the same reason. If I had a time machine, I would stop that book from ever being written.

[Rodin]

The Charlotte Mason homeschooling method relies largely on children reading books of interest in a given concentration, and then discussing them. Some friends of ours who were using it with their 7 year old were very happy with it.

I just ran across this gem in the Read-Aloud Handbook (page 119):

This reminds me of a set of books my parents got me when I was a kid. They were little kid versions of a bunch of classic novels - Treasure Island, Black Beauty, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, etc. I still have a great fondness for them even now, because it got me reading these adventure stories that would have been far too advanced when I was that age. Heck, Gulliver's Travels was a summer reading book in high school and I didn't manage to get into it because the writing was so dense, but I loved the kiddie version when I was young.

Hitting the originals is obviously preferable, but getting young kids to read abridged versions of the classics is a good way to get them to have a basis for approaching those books later in life.

[J-H]

Are those the little hardback ones that are about 4" tall, hardback, and have a picture on every facing page? Our school library had some of those. I had forgotten about them completely.

[Gnoman]

That would be the Illustrated Classics Edition series from Moby Books.

[An Enemy Spy]

I used to have a bunch of those as a kid. The Red Badge of Honor, Great Expectations, Munity on the HMS Bounty, David Copperfield, probably more but I can't remember the specific titles.

They're a great way to introduce kids to the classics with overwhelming them.

[SaintRidley]

If students aren't taught the rudiments of literary criticism, how will they even know whether or not they want to do it at college? And college lecturers would be in uproar about the new intake being illiterate, like what happened with maths, science and engineering professors when people were leaving school without ever having encountered calculus.



College lecturer here. They're already coming to us practically illiterate. Most of them mistake summary for analysis, are lucky if they come to me knowing what the word 'prose' means, and some of them will never let it stick in their heads that Shakespeare is not Old English.

I do my best to give the rudiments of analytical thinking, as applied to literature, and to explain to them that even if they don't intend to do exactly that, it's only going to be beneficial to them if they learn any of it. A lot of my students wind up being business majors taking the gen ed class, and others want to go into x or y industry.

Regardless of what they end up doing, I remind them they're going to have to deal with people. And people have motives and subtext underlying the things they say that may not always be apparent at first glance, unless they know how to read between the lines and pick up on patterns. Reading a book isn't much different from reading a person, except with a book you have the words right there in front of you and as much time as you want to try and figure out why the words are written the way they are and what they could be doing at a deeper level than their face value. If they can figure out understanding a book or poem and how/why it uses allusions, metaphors, etc. to convey a meaning/feeling/idea beyond the simple literal meaning of the sentences on the page, they'll be vastly more prepared for dealing with other people in the real world. Also they'll get some useful history about the development of the language and other nifty bits and pieces I throw in along the way.


This is my big problem with literary analysis. You're quite correct that Fahrenheit 451 is a massive author rant against TV and radio, with anti-censorship themes being a significant afterthought. However, mentioning this in any class I've ever attended, heard directly about, or read the textbook for would result in failure, as The One True Meaning of the work is censorship.

Well, that's a problem with high school level analysis. Because the thing that high schoolers tend not to be able to grasp, resulting in the one true meaning approach being adopted at that level because it makes it easier to help them understand one aspect of the text, is that there is no one true meaning. Words are tricky little blighters, and there's loads of ways to read them, and when you have something as big as a novel, you're going to have a lot of themes and messages put together. Some of them may even contradict each other, which is when you have to work to determine which one the text seems to be supporting more strongly and figure out why the other ones are there at all. But high schoolers are developmentally not at the stage where they really get the whole idea of subjectivity. They think subjectivity means every idea is valid, and that if that's the case, then every idea is right. Which sounds stupid. Because it is. Because it's an understanding of subjectivity born out of a child's understanding, and high school teachers are stuck trying to teach the rudiments of analysis to students who are developmentally not there yet. So they focus on one reading as a way to try and make it work. Which turns off those students who are beginning to develop a little beyond the binary "there's a specific right answer" level, but aren't quite at the "okay, subjective, but that doesn't make all ideas equally valid" level.

[Peelee]

The Count of Monte Cristo was no less badass in that format.

[Rynjin]

I absolutely love your last sentence here. I'm firmly of the opinion that older does not necessarily mean better when it comes to literature, and The Catcher in the Rye is usually Exhibit A in my argument. If you still have your essay ripping apart the book, I would dearly love to read it if you're willing to share.


Heh, no. I never thought much about keeping my old high school essays.

[Bohandas]

Well if they want to promote reading they definitely should NOT read Catcher in the Rye or The Great Gatsby. Though I wouldn't be averse to Catcher In The Rye being read in a class about abnormal psychology; I will cede that Holden is best dang depiction of an insane person I've ever seen


I think that high school is probably not the time to be teaching high end literary criticism and interpretation of symbolism. Even as an avid reader I hated The Scarlet Letter because we spent an entire class period on how a character went into the forest, and because the forest is green that character is evil since green is associated with the devil. That sort of thing isn't helpful for high school students who are likely reluctant readers and doesn't give a better understanding of the important elements of the story. Save all of that stuff for college courses...
That's still too broad. Most of it shouldn't be done at all. Only such parts as are relevant to making clear dated cultural references and idioms are important. The rest is mostly BS.

EDIT:
This brings me to another point, which is that anything with a strong philosophical point is right out (no Dickens, no Rand, no Orwell)

So is anything not actually meant to be read (ie. Shakespeare's plays [or indeed any play]).

I recommend the works of Christopher Moore and early Terry Pratchett (before he got preachy).

Also, many books teenagers would be keen to read would probably not be easily approved due to containing things the parents disapprove of. But I know that I would've paid a lot more attention in highschool French class if we'd read L'ecole Du Libertinage (a novel by the Marquis De Sade filled with sex, violence, and scatological references); Unfortunately if they'd done that the entire highschool would probably have been shut down

[Manga Shoggoth]

I just ran across this gem in the Read-Aloud Handbook (page 119):

Many of the classics were not written for children. They were so popular among the adult elite that they became the adult standard and therefore were foisted upon children. Reading the classics too soon as a child can do more to turn you off reading than on to reading. Remember: The goal is to create a lifetime reader, not a future English teacher.


Are you sure? That is far too sensible to be appearing in any educational handbook...

[Ninja_Prawn]

Wow, this conversation moved fast while I was asleep...


Huh? Why? Because it can only appreciated if you are not fully mentally mature yet? :smallconfused: I understand an older person will have a different perspective on a story than a kid/teen but I have no idea how this would apply e.g. to slaughterhouse...

Maybe it's just me? The way I see it is that 'young people' (by which I mean late teens - early twenties) are more open-minded, get more emotionally invested in things and are more willing to put up with unusual stylistic choices. In other words, they're less set in their ways. It's the best time to expose them to stuff like Vonnegut.

I've found the same thing with the music of the Pixies. I never got into them when I was young, and now I just can't 'get' them. I'm sure that if I'd heard them at 15, I would have done.


Also, I'm not sure if you know what 13 year olds are like.. I'm all for challenging kids but most 13 year olds I came across couldn't fully follow animal farm. And 15 year olds reading 1984 will end up buying an awful lot of tinfoil... Oh, wait.
No, seriously, kids that age mostly aren't sharp enough to properly think about these stories and at best take away the obvious statements only.

You may be right here. I went to a very good grammar school; my perspective on what kids are capable of is probably quite distorted. Perhaps add a few years to my recommendations?

[eggynack]

Well if they want to promote reading they definitely should NOT read Catcher in the Rye or The Great Gatsby. Though I wouldn't be averse to Catcher In The Rye being read in a class about abnormal psychology; I will cede that Holden is best dang depiction of an insane person I've ever seen.
Dunno about other folks, but I enjoyed both works.


This brings me to another point, which is that anything with a strong philosophical point is right out (no Dickens, no Rand, no Orwell)
Why? I read 1984 in school, so it's not like that stuff is strictly denied by the school itself. And, as long as the writing is good, I don't see a reason why there can't also be philosophical or political elements. Way I figure, a philosophical argument is a "thing", and you want to fit as many "things" into a curriculum as possible without sacrificing student enjoyment. That way you get exposure first to the wide variety of possible focuses in literature, second to the specific ideas being shared, and third to the possible arguments you can make about those focuses and ideas. The goal isn't to foster allegiance to a particular philosophy, as an ideal approach would allow for criticism of the ideas put forth.

[A.A.King]

As I am not an Englishman myself my main 'literature' education in High School was in another language so I can't give very specific answers but to the question "What should be read in School?" my general answer is:

"Very Little" and/or "Just about anything"

With that I mean that IMO Classes really shouldn't be abut specific books, and certainly not teach that "book X is better than book Y" or that "book Z is an absolute grand master piece you must read and love and if you don't love it you just don't get it"

First of all; if it was up to me we'd scrap most of the Literature analysis of books (and any teacher asking the question "Why did the Author write this book" shall be fired.. from a cannon... straight into a brick wall). This may just be a failure from my countries system I don't really remember us putting any time on Narrative Structure analysis. We put way too much time on the whole "What does it mean" aspects of works the teachers liked (and the answer "Give The Author Money" was deemed incorrect), and no time on why certain choices were made. We only were ever asked "What is the purpose of Character X" in some weird existentialist way and never in a Narrative Structural way (like how for example the main purpose of Watson from Sherlock Holmes is to make Sherlock both seem smarter by comparison as well as to have Sherlock someone to explain to. A Hyper-Genius character needs a layman sidekick for it's laymen audiance). The Conflict we had to discuss in class was the (for a lack of a better word) Philosophical conflict of the piece, the Clash of Ideas the teacher assured us that the author very sneakily sneaked in (though they never used quotes from the Author to back-up thess claims, all very unscientific). We weren't asked about the narrative need for conflict; how a smaller conflict in chapter 3 was clevery put in by the author to create extra beats between the msin conflict in chapter's 4 & 5.

I am droning on a bit but I hope you get my point. Very little on the choices a writer has to make to grab and hold the attention of the reader, very little about actual plot or about characters that serve that plot, very little about narrative drab to create beats that allow you reach a better climax.

The books we give children in class shouldn't be chosen because of the well hidden (or made-up) message and themes they contain, but because they are first and foremost good stories and secondly have easy to disect narrative choices. The books everyone has to read should be few and chosen because they make it easier to illustrate certain lessons and the individual books you have to read because of Oral Examinations required to get your final grade should be whatever the student wants to read.

[Bohandas]

We put way too much time on the whole "What does it mean" aspects of works the teachers liked (and the answer "Give The Author Money" was deemed incorrect)

This makes me appreciate the college course I took about the Arthur Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes" novels, as the professor was quite clear about the fact that all of the installments after Holmes' fight with Dr.Moriarty were written solely because Sir Arthur needed money

[Rodin]

This makes me appreciate the college course I took about the Arthur Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes" novels, as the professor was quite clear about the fact that all of the installments after Holmes' fight with Dr.Moriarty were written solely because Sir Arthur needed money

One thing that bugs me about the coverage of Shakespeare is that it's all treated as sacrosanct high art when a lot of it was "Willie needs some cash" and was meant as pop entertainment. I always think Romeo and Juliet gets a lot more coverage than it deserves, since it's basically the Shakespearean equivalent of a summer blockbuster.

Sadly, that sort of thing is rarely delved into.

[Avilan the Grey]

The thing is that there really ARE books you should read as part of your education because they ARE significant, even if you think they suck. Refusing to learn about those is as bad as refusing to learn math, IMHO. Of course that list changes with region. For a Swedish person 99% of all American litterature is not important, which is why there are far more French authors on our lists, for example.

That still does not explain why we had to read A Catcher In The Rye though (in Sweden). I got out of it by simply walking up to the teacher and pointing out that she might as well give me an F on it, because I couldn't stay focused enough when reading it to actually get thru it and understand it. It was that badly written and uninteresting to me. She gave in, allowing me to pick any other book (I picked LOTR, just because) and I guess that had something to do with me having straight A in Swedish class before that all semesters.

[Kato]

Maybe it's just me? The way I see it is that 'young people' (by which I mean late teens - early twenties) are more open-minded, get more emotionally invested in things and are more willing to put up with unusual stylistic choices. In other words, they're less set in their ways. It's the best time to expose them to stuff like Vonnegut.

I've found the same thing with the music of the Pixies. I never got into them when I was young, and now I just can't 'get' them. I'm sure that if I'd heard them at 15, I would have done.]
Putting aside whether or not this is true for the majority of people, let alone everyone, I still can't entirely agree.
Yes, depending on your age you will see works differently. And as an adult reading "young adult" novels will usually not work because you're past the phase in your life where you try to figure things out (not in the "stop to learn" kind of way but in the "becoming an adult" kind of way). But Vonnegut's books, or what I read aren't really children books. Their style might not be too difficult, but there's nothing in it that an adult wouldn't enjoy, unless he's against the genre. But so can be a teen or tween.



You may be right here. I went to a very good grammar school; my perspective on what kids are capable of is probably quite distorted. Perhaps add a few years to my recommendations?
That might work better. e.g. a kid won't even start to understand AF without knowing about facism. And a 13 year old usually doesn't know that yet... of course, this differs from kid to kid but here even in better schools kids that age (most of them) are not at the point where they'd get it. A few years later, more likely. (My point about not pushing books on kids still stands. Though, AF is one of the few books I might consider to be fit to be pushed on kids at the right time :smalltongue: )

[Tvtyrant]

But for most kids Animal Farm is how they are introduced to totalitarian governance. Saying that you need to know the history before the book is like saying kids should memorize the morals before reading aesop.

[J-H]

I agree. Animal farm is a fairly reader-friendly introduction to socialism and the tendencies of those in power to abuse that power for their own benefit. It provides an easy-to-remember small-scale mental framework, which you can then use to discuss all sorts of 20th-century historical events.

[Ninja_Prawn]

Plus, like, we were studying WWI and WWII in history at the same time as we read Animal Farm in english. At that point there's only one year of school left (year 9) before history becomes optional, so if you're not going to introduce kids to the major political systems of the twentieth century then, when are you going to? Year 8s may seem small and immature, but the ones I've known are perfectly capable of understanding this stuff.

[Peelee]

But for most kids Animal Farm is how they are introduced to totalitarian governance. Saying that you need to know the history before the book is like saying kids should memorize the morals before reading aesop.

As someone who read both Animal Farm and 1984 as a kid, Animal Farm can go die in a fire.

[Tvtyrant]

As someone who read both Animal Farm and 1984 as a kid, Animal Farm can go die in a fire.

Okay. Animal Farm is clearly meant for a much younger demographic than 1984. I read the former in middle school and the latter as a freshman in high school, I think there is room for more than one book on the subject.

My point remains though, that at some point readers need to be introduced to a subject if they are ever going to have a deep understanding of it. I wouldn't read Das Kapital to my 9 year old nephew and expect him to understand it, but I do think it is important for him to understand early on the historical advantages and dangers of chasing utopian ideals.

[Bohandas]

Well, I'm not sure if teaching history is really the point of literature class, but I will cede that it's much more important than teaching literary analysis, interpretation, and criticism, which are entirely useless to anyone who does not grow up to be a professional critic.

EDIT:
Now, this isn't to say that it's not important to understand what you read. Just that it's only important to be able to understand things like contracts, scientific papers, tax forms, and product instructions, those are the important things to be able to read; and besides, an inanimate kitchen appliance is a much more compelling and relatable character to read about than Holden Caulfield anyway

[Traab]

I think that you could get a large amount of the benefit from reading and analyzing the classics as you could with another idea that might help get kids interested in reading. Basically, Break it down into genres, then pick a solid list of say, three per genre that cover as wide a range within it as possible. That way the kids not only can potentially find a genre they enjoy, they also get the ability to analyze everything from sci fi to detective novels to historical fiction to sword and sorcery and who knows how many in between. Lets face it, they may be "the greats" but often the classics make for fairly dry reading. Shakespeare is awesome, but the effort in mentally translating all the writing into terms we understand today drains a lot of the humor out of his work. LOTR is the baseline for fantasy novels and world building, but it was still written by a guy who would rather be writing dictionaries and it shows. Dont get me wrong, I read them as a kid and loved them, but I will admit a large number of people would get bored reading that instead of something by david eddings, terry brooks, or david gemmel.

Long ramble short, give kids a book list both contemporary and classic, 3 books per genre, 6-9 books per year. That way they get exposed to a wide variety of story types and hopefully find something they like as well as learn how to analyze novels. You could even arrange things so they read the classic first, then when they read the newer one they can see how the classic influenced the new work. Its one thing to TELL the kids that fantasy writers rely heavily on the stuff tolkien established, its something else entirely to actually read them doing it.

[Bohandas]

Yeah, I like to describe Tolkien, Dickens, and Lovecraft as guys that "told really good stories really badly"

[J-H]

Plus, like, we were studying WWI and WWII in history at the same time as we read Animal Farm in english. At that point there's only one year of school left (year 9) before history becomes optional, so if you're not going to introduce kids to the major political systems of the twentieth century then, when are you going to? Year 8s may seem small and immature, but the ones I've known are perfectly capable of understanding this stuff.

That varies by school system. We had history classes all the way through 11th grade, and then 12th grade was Government & Economics (1 semester each).

I skipped most of middle school, so I don't know what 7th grade history was. I think 7th grade was Texas History, 8th & 11th were US history (to 1865, and 1865 to present, with the textbook trailing off around 1990 for a class taught in 1997), 9th grade was World Geography (I don't remember what this covers aside from maps), and 10th grade was World History.

The last 2 decades of the 3 latter classes were always very rushed. The most recent history (most relevant for understanding context) is the stuff that gets the least attention! Silly.

[Bohandas]

As for history I think it should be mostly taught in the context of what not to do. By today's standards even the likes of ancient rome, and imperial china, and medieval persia were a bunch of ignorant barbarians and that fact needs to be pounded home or else people start taking things like powdered rhino horn seriously as cures or people unsatisfied with their parents' faith converting to paganism instead of atheism

[GloatingSwine]

That still does not explain why we had to read A Catcher In The Rye though (in Sweden). I got out of it by simply walking up to the teacher and pointing out that she might as well give me an F on it, because I couldn't stay focused enough when reading it to actually get thru it and understand it. It was that badly written and uninteresting to me. She gave in, allowing me to pick any other book (I picked LOTR, just because) and I guess that had something to do with me having straight A in Swedish class before that all semesters.

I straight up didn't read one of the books we studied for my English A Level. To The Lighthouse was that dull and Virginia Woolf can sod off.

I wrote three pages of absolute bull**** for that book on my exam. Still got a B overall.

[Bohandas]

That's another issue. Most literary analysis is falls more into the category of apophenia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia) than meaningful understanding of the book's actual content

[Velaryon]

EDIT:
Now, this isn't to say that it's not important to understand what you read. Just that it's only important to be able to understand things like contracts, scientific papers, tax forms, and product instructions, those are the important things to be able to read; and besides, an inanimate kitchen appliance is a much more compelling and relatable character to read about than Holden Caulfield anyway

Well said! So well, in fact, that I'm strongly tempted to ask for permission to sig that last part. :smallbiggrin:

[Bohandas]

Excellent! Sure!

[NichG]

What's with this fascination with 'the author just needed money' as an analysis? I mean, one of the important things to learn is that just because a statement isn't false or isn't easily shown to be false doesn't mean that that statement is useful, relevant, insightful, etc.

Maybe that's the kind of understanding that literature analysis is attempting to teach, but it's doing it so indirectly that some students don't get it, get marked down for not getting it, and then afterwards become resentful of it because it was never explained clearly in the first place.

I could also see it as a form of questioning or denying the premise of an assignment, but at that level its just a slightly obfuscated version of saying 'I don't feel like writing this essay' as opposed to actually demonstrating that the premise is flawed in detail.

[WhovianBeast]

"the author's in it for the money" is witty and correct that doesn't follow the intent of the assignment. That doesn't mean I wouldn't do it.

[Bohandas]

What's with this fascination with 'the author just needed money' as an analysis? I mean, one of the important things to learn is that just because a statement isn't false or isn't easily shown to be false doesn't mean that that statement is useful, relevant, insightful, etc.

It's more useful than finding symbolism that isn't there and/or isn't important


This brings me to another point, which is that anything with a strong philosophical point is right out (no Dickens, no Rand, no Orwell)

Also, no Steinbeck either. I don't know how I forgot him the first time.

[Bohandas]

As for the "for the money" answer, it has also always bothered me that this answer isn't taken to kindly in job interviews either. Especially since in both cases any other answer is an outright lie.

EDIT:
On second thought, this isn't quite true. If it's clear that the thrust of the question is "why this specifically, rather than something else" In which the true answer for a job interview is "because this company has given me an interview" and the answer for books and authors is either "self-righteousness" or "pandering" depending on whether they're a heavily philosophical author or not, respectively

[NichG]

To me, if someone gives an answer like that, it's sort of like if I asked them 'tell me about this book' and they said 'well, it has 310 pages, it has a red cover, it's made of paper'. It indicates a total lack of understanding as to why I asked about the book in the first place. It also shows me a lack of willingness to engage in the question - at best, the person could answer the question in a useful way but is intentionally choosing to answer it in a non-useful way as an expression of discontent or snark. At worst, they really don't understand why that's not a good answer even if it's factually correct. Snark isn't wit. Worse, being proud of that kind of answer really communicates to me 'I'm proud of being ignorant', which whatever you actually feel is a bad message to send.

Take the interview thing for example. In school, you might get a bad grade on an essay but honestly that's not going to impact your future much. If your teacher thinks you're proud of being ignorant, it'll piss them off but probably that's where things stop. But if you give that impression in a job interview, you have a purpose for being there, and the impression you give can sabotage that purpose. If you understand that but still can't help yourself because it's more important to you to feel that you're being witty than to understand what the interviewer (and your future job) are asking from you, then the interviewer has a good reason not to hire you.

So the question I have is, what's a good way to make this point to students in school early on, and in a way that they'll understand and feel reasonable rather than just resent or dig in their heels? Asking for literature review on some dry classic and then giving an F isn't an effective method - the student can too easily justify their failure as 'the school system is just penalizing me for creative thinking' or 'the teachers are so in love with the classics, they won't tolerate a word against them' or things like that. I think that the essays/analyses/whatever assignments need to be done in a way where the student is writing to achieve a goal, and that goal is made explicitly clear as part of the assignment, rather than just 'what do you think about X' or 'please write about X'. For example, you could do something everyone writes an analysis, hand a copy to the person on their left and on their right (so everyone receives two essays), and then everyone has to present something using the essays they received as sources of support for their claims.

[The Duskblade]

On the Author did it for the money type answer. While Authors need to eat like the rest of us there is certainly a difference between an author supporting themselves telling the stories they want to tell and an author doing what will sell such as post Reichenbach Sherlock. Although even that doesn't necessarily mean a work is bad or without merit.

I have something of a theory about books like Catcher in the Rye and Maestro. I think alot of the hate these books get is because growing up with our own adolescent issues no one wants to deal with the adolescent issues of people who let's face it were written by adults who probably don't have much in the way of connection to the current generation. It's in retrospect through the eyes of an adult that coming of age stories gain their appeal. Both as a way of reconnecting with the past and for those of us who maybe made some mistakes a sort of justification. So whether or not someone will like these books is largely dependant on if they read them while young or old.

Putting it simply no one wants to grow up to be Robin, but some adults miss being Robin.

[Ninja_Prawn]

To me, if someone gives an answer like that, it's sort of like if I asked them 'tell me about this book' and they said 'well, it has 310 pages, it has a red cover, it's made of paper'. It indicates a total lack of understanding as to why I asked about the book in the first place. It also shows me a lack of willingness to engage in the question - at best, the person could answer the question in a useful way but is intentionally choosing to answer it in a non-useful way as an expression of discontent or snark. At worst, they really don't understand why that's not a good answer even if it's factually correct. Snark isn't wit. Worse, being proud of that kind of answer really communicates to me 'I'm proud of being ignorant', which whatever you actually feel is a bad message to send.

I very much agree with this.

What I would say, is that 'author in it for the money' style lines of inquiry can be useful when they contribute something to a bigger picture. For example, Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd was serialised - released chapter-by-chapter - and he was paid by the chapter. Thus, he inserted blatant filler chapters to pad out his paycheck... but knowing this, a student can provide useful answers about the novel's structure that acknowledge the flaws of serialisation as a way of publishing novels.


So the question I have is, what's a good way to make this point to students in school early on, and in a way that they'll understand and feel reasonable rather than just resent or dig in their heels? Asking for literature review on some dry classic and then giving an F isn't an effective method - the student can too easily justify their failure as 'the school system is just penalizing me for creative thinking' or 'the teachers are so in love with the classics, they won't tolerate a word against them' or things like that. I think that the essays/analyses/whatever assignments need to be done in a way where the student is writing to achieve a goal, and that goal is made explicitly clear as part of the assignment, rather than just 'what do you think about X' or 'please write about X'. For example, you could do something everyone writes an analysis, hand a copy to the person on their left and on their right (so everyone receives two essays), and then everyone has to present something using the essays they received as sources of support for their claims.

The way we did it was to start from the marking scheme. We studied what the examiners are looking for to get an A or an A* (i.e. evaluation and insight, supported by evidence from the text) and then focussed on writing essays that hit those criteria. Probably half of our lessons at GCSE level were 'here are two questions about the novel: choose one, write a side of A4 on it. You have 10 minutes.' The focus was on making every single sentence A* quality, while there was almost no emphasis on what the factual content of our answers was. We did a lot of peer-review and peer-marking, which was good because it channeled our natural competitiveness. It was also good practice for the written exams.

So, we weren't necessarily taught how to analyse stuff; we were taught how to satisfy the mark scheme, which happened to demand a kind of analysis.

[NichG]

The way we did it was to start from the marking scheme. We studied what the examiners are looking for to get an A or an A* (i.e. evaluation and insight, supported by evidence from the text) and then focussed on writing essays that hit those criteria. Probably half of our lessons at GCSE level were 'here are two questions about the novel: choose one, write a side of A4 on it. You have 10 minutes.' The focus was on making every single sentence A* quality, while there was almost no emphasis on what the factual content of our answers was. We did a lot of peer-review and peer-marking, which was good because it channeled our natural competitiveness. It was also good practice for the written exams.

So, we weren't necessarily taught how to analyse stuff; we were taught how to satisfy the mark scheme, which happened to demand a kind of analysis.

This still feels incomplete to me, because it lacks a way of really explaining to the student not just what the skill is, but when and how it can be used. That is, it leaves in doubt the real motivation for what 'evaluation and insight' should consist of.

[Kymme]

In my senior English class there were two stories that really, really stood out to me. Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse, and The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien.

Those two books were better by far than pretty much everything else I'd read in high school. I'd heartily read them again if I can find the time.

[Donnadogsoth]

What should be read in school?

1. 50% Universal principles - what's the principle of Hamlet? What about The Odyssey? Harmonices Mundi? If there are none, they go to 2 or 3.

2. 25% Cultural currency - the best examples of what defines, both traditionally and to a lesser extent contemporaneously, the society the students are a part of. In the West that means emphasis on the Graeco-Roman, Christian, European heritage. If it's principled stuff like understanding certain key points of the Bible it goes to 1.

3. 25% Teacher's choice - yes, I advocate teachers not being hamstrung by curricula at all times and instead having the chance to introduce their classes to literature that they think is important. This includes potentially (over)exposing the class to junk culture using reverse psychology to turn them off it.

[nyjastul69]

Some quick background. As a kid I was a crazy reader. In years 3 or 4 I had read Lord of the Rings multiple times (It'd take about two weeks). And I could tear through most novels in a few days. But when I got into high school and we started having to do analysis and essays I found it really started to kill my love of books. A part of that was that over analysis and the search for the ever important symbolism killed a lot of the enjoyment. But an even bigger factor was that many of the books just weren't entertaining. Particularly since Australian schools tend to promote Australian authors and works featuring Australia even when the work really is sub par. (Not saying Australia doesn't have good Authors but I got really sick of that particular niche)

The book that broke me was a novel called Maestro, that made up most of my final term's English work. I ended up reading the damn thing 4 or 5 times and kept finding new ways to hate it. Worse the many essays we had to write about it meant I constantly had to search for new details to extrapolate on and for me there really was nothing redeemable about it. I'll spoiler a bit more info on it not to distract from the topic. But as a result I basically stopped reading Novels during university with the exception of the excellent American gods. Though I did manage to fill the gap somewhat with graphic novels like Sandman and Transmetropolitan.

Maestro and why I hate it:
First of all Book set in Australia by an Australian author. As I mentioned I was already thoroughly sick of this genre.

Second, the protagonist was utterly insufferable. And since this was a first person novel inescapable. The premise of the book being he wants to be a concert pianist but is only "Technically Perfect". Which to hear him tell it is the worst thing that could possibly happen to him. My sympathy is immense. He also cheats on his girlfriend and shows no real remorse beyond not wanting to lose her. And worst of all he never actually grows out of being awful.

So my question is what books should be read in schools to actually promote reading. And as a followup what can be changed in how books are analysed to prevent the fun from being drained from them.

A few books that I think should be taught in schools.

Basically anything by Neil Gaiman. American Gods would probably cause some issues due to the uh, unbirthing scene but Neil Gaiman has books that work for any age. Particular favourites being Neverwhere and Good Omens.
Speaking of Good Omens, the Co Author Terry Pratchett is excellent in his own right. I think the Tiffany Aching books in particular would be great for younger readers.
Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl books and the Supernaturalist for younger readers.
Roald Dahl was one of the Authors who introduced me to reading. I'm not sure if he's still included in schools but if not he should be.

I don't like Gaiman's work. He shouldn't be pushed upon persons. People shouldn't be forced to read things they don't like, Gaiman included. Read whatever.

[Peelee]

I don't like Gaiman's work. He shouldn't be pushed upon persons. People shouldn't be forced to read things they don't like, Gaiman included. Read whatever.

So..... any kids in school have an instant out for any book they just don't want to read? Handy.

[Gnoman]

To me, if someone gives an answer like that, it's sort of like if I asked them 'tell me about this book' and they said 'well, it has 310 pages, it has a red cover, it's made of paper'. It indicates a total lack of understanding as to why I asked about the book in the first place. It also shows me a lack of willingness to engage in the question - at best, the person could answer the question in a useful way but is intentionally choosing to answer it in a non-useful way as an expression of discontent or snark. At worst, they really don't understand why that's not a good answer even if it's factually correct. Snark isn't wit. Worse, being proud of that kind of answer really communicates to me 'I'm proud of being ignorant', which whatever you actually feel is a bad message to send.


That is the point. It is a way of saying "I have nothing but contempt for the entire attitude that lead you to put this question in here, and I will make a point of showing that I could have put effort into it but I refuse to dignify it with an answer."

[nyjastul69]

So..... any kids in school have an instant out for any book they just don't want to read? Handy.

Not necessarily, but in Gaiman's case, yes.

[An Enemy Spy]

Not necessarily, but in Gaiman's case, yes.

Why, because you don't like it? The whole world just conform to what you like?

[An Enemy Spy]

Human nature skews toward complacency. If you want to achieve personal growth, you have to go outside of what you're comfortable with from time to time. Just because you don't like a book doesn't mean you can't learn anything from it.

[Dalinale]

I think the answer should be something the lines of 'anything'. Most young adults, from what I can tell, do read, even if it's stock YA. The typical suggested reading in the UK and North America is actually rather good at variety and usually allows individuals to create projects based on what they personally enjoy. However, I would say that Gaiman and the like shouldn't be the sort of books to guide the typical month-long English book class reading, if only because it is important to first go through the major texts that make up English literary canon first. On that, I mostly agree with Donnadogsoth's breakdown on what should be covered in a school setting.

[Bohandas]

If not aiming either for technical comprehension/reading ability or getting people excited about reading It should be skewed towards things that are likely to be referenced in the things that they actually want to read. This leaves a limited subset of the classics. Steinbeck and Salinger are still out as is Fitzgerald. It mostly leaves Dickens and Shakespeare. Although as I've said before Dickens is better condensed and Shakespeare's plays are best taken in as plays (or on film)

[BWR]

People shouldn't be forced to read things they don't like, Gaiman included. Read whatever.

And this is exactly the point a couple of us have been making for a while: the point of literature class isn't to read what you like - you can do that on your own time.
The point is to teach people how to understand what you are reading and to familiarize you with the general history of [insert language]'s literature with some examples.
Your argument basically results in no one reading anything they don't like and entirely failing to even attempt the point of the class.

[eggynack]

And this is exactly the point a couple of us have been making for a while: the point of literature class isn't to read what you like - you can do that on your own time.
The point is to teach people how to understand what you are reading and to familiarize you with the general history of [insert language]'s literature with some examples.
Your argument basically results in no one reading anything they don't like and entirely failing to even attempt the point of the class.
I don't strictly agree. I agree with the part of not every book needing to be super appealing, but my problem is with the point of literature class. Cause, sure, there's some value in getting familiarity with the classics, but I think that, in its ideal state, the point of education is to teach some new ways to think, not just a set of information. And, in the case of literature class in particular, a lot of the point is learning how to think in a textual analysis oriented way, figuring out how to make connections you wouldn't otherwise be able to, read deeper into a work than someone without the class would generally be able to. At the very least, it's a way to familiarize yourself with the notion that books can be more than their most obvious surface layer. Because, as stupid and endlessly boring as some instances of deeper reading can be.

Moreover, the books themselves may offer a new way to think beyond what teaching the book offers. For example, 1984 was perhaps my first introduction to the idea that language could inform thought the same way that thought informs knowledge, and that can easily be generalized to the mental approach that non-obvious elements of culture or otherwise can have some variety of causal or correlative link with other things. This is one of the main reasons I selected a number of the books on my book list. I thought that those books could generate in the classroom, either with or without the aid of a teacher, some new way of thought in someone who reads them.

So, what I'm getting at here is that I think classics do have a place in class. There's a reason they got to be classics, and it's because they often have a lot of depth or some other thing to work through. However, if the only justification for including a particular classic in a curriculum is, "This is a thing you're somewhat expected to know," I don't think that's enough. You gotta have something else it's bringing to the table. I also think that, while you shouldn't prize student enjoyment above everything else, people like exploring worlds they enjoy, so it seems like you'd be liable to bring students into the critical thinking fold if you work with them rather than against them. If I had a choice between two books of comparable complexity, where one was a kinda boring classic and the other was a more fun book with less cultural cache, I'd thus likely go with the latter.

Side-note: As a response to the possible argument that this philosophy of education doesn't hold all that well with other subjects, I have pretty lenghty thingamajigs about those too. Especially math. Just didn't wanna get bogged down in this particular post.

[Murk]

And this is exactly the point a couple of us have been making for a while: the point of literature class isn't to read what you like - you can do that on your own time.
The point is to teach people how to understand what you are reading and to familiarize you with the general history of [insert language]'s literature with some examples.
Your argument basically results in no one reading anything they don't like and entirely failing to even attempt the point of the class.

Before you can "understand what you are reading", you actually have to read, though.
To me, being comfortable with reading, being an easy reader, not struggling just to read a page - that is all essential for understanding literature, history, text structure, etc. "Enjoying reading" is not just a hobby or something you should do "in your own time", it is fundamental to literature education.

I think "reading enjoyable books can be done in your own time" sounds a lot like "you can learn basic tables of multiplication in your own time. In school we'll just start with advanced maths".
Before you can even think to educate children about text structure and morals and cultural values and whatnot, they first have to be able to read a page without sweating or yawning.

Now, maybe I'm underestimating the reading abilities of children, but I remember clearly from my own school time that the majority of my class did exactly that: yawn or grumble before they had even finished the first page. Heck, most of them read maybe two pages an hour. How can you ever understand literature if you read two pages an hour? It'll take a year to even finish the book!
(And this was the "highest level" of education in my country, so probably the smartest and quickest kids around. I think it's bound to be even worse on other levels).

[eggynack]

I think "reading enjoyable books can be done in your own time" sounds a lot like "you can learn basic tables of multiplication in your own time. In school we'll just start with advanced maths".
Kinda off-topic, but I feel like your literature quote here is more analogous to the inverse of your math quote. After all, multiplication tables are pretty boring. Not saying math classes should open up on super advanced stuff right away, but giving kids year after year after year of rote learning of arithmetic and stuff on that level strikes me as what scares kids away from math as much as year after year after year of dense and boring "classics" scares kids away from reading. It's telling that, all the way through the end of high school, our only dalliance with what I'd consider real math was a brief period of learning triangle proofs, with my next time coming pretty late in college. There's obviously some baseline definitional stuff a kid needs to know to do most more interesting math, but there's some pretty cool stuff that I think would be doable early on. For the record, this is a shortened version of the math edition of my "Education gives you ways to think" argument.

[Drascin]

Well, as a newbie teacher, my feelings on this matter would be way longer to explain than I'm honestly willing to type out on this crappy laptop keyboard, but generally speaking, I can't help but think as follows:

The objective of these literature classes is twofold, on one hand to get students acquainted with highly referenced classics and on the other hand to teach them the value and tools of critical literary analysis.

What seems to actually be achieved in 80% of cases, however, is causing the students to develop an utter disdain for the entire discipline of literary analysis. This very thread has shown just how many people think the entire field is nothing but make believe, seeing ghosts, and varying levels of confirmation bias and apophenia.

So it's pretty obvious that our current focus is not working.

Personally, I'm quite willing to try and separate a bit the two objectives. See, I don't think that critical literary analysis needs to be taught on texts that were influential some centuries ago but which, by and large, are completely orthogonal to the sensibilities and knowledge of a modern 11-12 year old. In fact, sometimes I can't help but think that the less the teacher needs to explain the context the better, because if I explain to my students the facts about 15th century Spain they will need to do any kind of analysis on La Celestina, well, at that point I'm basically just telling them to connect dots I'm already putting out for them and nothing else, and the whole thing will feel completely detached from everything and entirely made up. And so on.

[Manga Shoggoth]

And this is exactly the point a couple of us have been making for a while: the point of literature class isn't to read what you like - you can do that on your own time.
The point is to teach people how to understand what you are reading and to familiarize you with the general history of [insert language]'s literature with some examples.
Your argument basically results in no one reading anything they don't like and entirely failing to even attempt the point of the class.

I can't speak for "modern times", but back in my day English was split into two "courses" - English Language and English Literature.

In the Language side we had a number of reading books (Moonfleet and A Horse without a Head are the the only two I can actually remember) and the goal here was simply to read. The selection the teacher had was limited as the school had to hold copies of all the books for all the pupils and that gets expensive.

The Language exam had two sections - Comprehension (where you were given a passage and asked questions on it - since this was printed on the exam paper the passage could come from anywhere) and Composition (which generally consisted of one essay on a given subject and one letter (business or personal) based on a given scenario).

The analysis was on the Literature side, and the scope was defined by the exam board. It would usually be one Shakespearian play and one non-shakespearian play, plus one set of poets. Again, the school had to hold copies of all the books for all the pupils.

[Bohandas]

The objective of these literature classes is twofold, on one hand to get students acquainted with highly referenced classics and on the other hand to teach them the value and tools of critical literary analysis.

The "highly referenced" part is key. There are many good reasons to read Dickens, Shakespeare and possibly also Verne, Poe, and Doyle, and to a more limited extent Hemmingway and Lovecraft, but there's no reason to read "Catcher in the Rye" or "The Great Gatsby"

EDIT:
I take that back, there's no reason to read it in a reading class, but in a course trying to teach people how to write interesting fiction it could be held up as an excellent example of what NOT to do.

EDIT:
And steinbeck is still right out. I don't know how I keep forgetting him.

[SaintRidley]

Bohandas, perhaps you don't see any reason to, but as you've already admitted you see the entire endeavor of analysis to be pointless (way to crap on other people's work, too. I don't see anyone saying what you do for a living is pointless, but I digress), perhaps you're not in the best position to determine what, if any, literary works are worth teaching.

I've not read Steinbeck (medievalist, I'm fairly hazy on most American lit from the 19th-early 20th centuries), but that doesn't mean I'd toss him out. I'd as an Americanist their opinion, personally, though I wouldn't teach him because I'm not particularly well equipped to do so. I'm more comfortable with medieval stories and neomedieval stories (here's where I would be able to turn Gaiman's American Gods into a good experience in an introductory class by being able to relate it back to the sources which inspired it, if it weren't so long).

[Rogar Demonblud]

EDIT:
And Steinbeck is still right out. I don't know how I keep forgetting him.

Traumatic amnesia, I'd guess. I had to read enough of his stuff in one class or another (and Hemingway, and Fitzgerald) to despise it.

[Bohandas]

Bohandas, perhaps you don't see any reason to, but as you've already admitted you see the entire endeavor of analysis to be pointless (way to crap on other people's work, too. I don't see anyone saying what you do for a living is pointless, but I digress), perhaps you're not in the best position to determine what, if any, literary works are worth teaching.

I've not read Steinbeck (medievalist, I'm fairly hazy on most American lit from the 19th-early 20th centuries), but that doesn't mean I'd toss him out. I'd as an Americanist their opinion, personally, though I wouldn't teach him because I'm not particularly well equipped to do so. I'm more comfortable with medieval stories and neomedieval stories (here's where I would be able to turn Gaiman's American Gods into a good experience in an introductory class by being able to relate it back to the sources which inspired it, if it weren't so long).

We don't need to know Steinbeck because nobody ever references his work, which is really basically the only reason anyone even needs to know Shakespeare and Dickens, because they're quoted and imitated constantly.


Traumatic amnesia, I'd guess. I had to read enough of his stuff in one class or another (and Hemingway, and Fitzgerald) to despise it.

At least people quote that "from Hell's heart I stab at thee" line. I don;t think anybody ever references Steinbeck or Fitzgerald

[The Glyphstone]

Isn't 'From hell's heart I stab at thee' from Melville, not Hemingway?

[Razade]

Isn't 'From hell's heart I stab at thee' from Melville, not Hemingway?

It's from Moby **** so I'd imagine so.

[GloatingSwine]

Which probably means that people are referencing things all the time, but Bohandas doesn't recognise them because he doesn't read :P

[Bohandas]

Dang! I always get Melville and Hemingway confused! and I have no idea why!

EDIT:
On that note, please disregard all my previous comments about Hemingway being semi-relevant. Melville is semi-relevant. Hemingway is irrelevant.

[SaintRidley]

My period's closer to Shakespeare than Dickens, so I can't say anything on the latter, but for Shakespeare just a handful of reasons why he's still read beyond references:

* poetic form, meter, and how to break meter for emphasis/meaning
* puns
* play structure
* history of English theatre
* early modern historicization of the Middle Ages
* breadth of styles from the same author
* history of the language (huge number of words earliest attested to Shakespeare, including "eyeballs")
* understanding of drama as a literary form (point of fact, a movie is not going to do the same thing to your understanding as an actual theatre production will, and those differ from the written script as well - all three are valid ways of approaching a play, and each medium brings different assumptions to bear. Just one thing: with a movie or a performance, you can study the performance; with a play you can study the potential performability and performativity of the words)



Dang! I always get Melville and Hemingway confused! and I have no idea why!

EDIT:
On that note, please disregard all my previous comments about Hemingway being semi-relevant. Melville is semi-relevant. Hemingway is irrelevant.

You've shown that your opinions on literary relevance are irrelevant. So no.

[Rogar Demonblud]

We don't need to know Steinbeck because nobody ever references his work, which is really basically the only reason anyone even needs to know Shakespeare and Dickens, because they're quoted and imitated constantly.



At least people quote that "from Hell's heart I stab at thee" line. I don't think anybody ever references Steinbeck or Fitzgerald

Ahem.

"I will love him and pet him and hug him and call him George!"

It's kinda surprising the amount of stuff Looney Tunes references.

"Kill the Wabbit! Kill the Wabbit! Kill the Wabbit, kill the wabbit."

[NichG]

If the primary justification of teaching something is that it establishes a shared culture of references that can be used to communicate a feeling or idea quickly... shouldn't people study modern internet memes in school? For every Shakespeare reference I've encountered, I'm sure I've encountered a dozen leetspeak, lolcat, etc references. More to the point, I tend to think that you organically learn references no matter what in the same way that you learn colloquialisms and common figures of speech - through usage and through encountering them in the wild, so I wouldn't want to expend much curriculum time towards that end.

[Razade]

If the primary justification of teaching something is that it establishes a shared culture of references that can be used to communicate a feeling or idea quickly... shouldn't people study modern internet memes in school? For every Shakespeare reference I've encountered, I'm sure I've encountered a dozen leetspeak, lolcat, etc references. More to the point, I tend to think that you organically learn references no matter what in the same way that you learn colloquialisms and common figures of speech - through usage and through encountering them in the wild, so I wouldn't want to expend much curriculum time towards that end.

How many of those have you encountered in meatspace? And cartoons are already referencing memes. Which kids learn via the internet. So I don't particularly see the need to teach them in school when they're already part of a culture children are exposed to.

[NichG]

How many of those have you encountered in meatspace? And cartoons are already referencing memes. Which kids learn via the internet. So I don't particularly see the need to teach them in school when they're already part of a culture children are exposed to.

I regularly encounter lolcatspeak and references to Leeroy Jenkins. Also, though I imagine this won't be shared by most people, references to Evangelion, Doraemon, and Sazae-san are fairly frequent in my circles. I can't remember the last time that someone in meatspace made a Shakespeare reference around me; I'm actually far more likely to do that than the people I usually interact with.

[SaintRidley]

How many of those have you encountered in meatspace? And cartoons are already referencing memes. Which kids learn via the internet. So I don't particularly see the need to teach them in school when they're already part of a culture children are exposed to.

Building off that, let's see which ones survive the next hundred, or five hundred years. It's not an exact comparison, since the references from Steinbeck or Shakespeare that have become so culturally ingrained are no longer completely transparent without education to familiarize people with the origins. If in 500 years "I herd u liek mudkipz" or "I can has cheezburger" still hold any meaning, then they might be significant enough things to study for cultural competence. My guess is that the sort of thing will be part of the historical context teaching involved in explaining some aspects of early 21st century literature/film/etc. and otherwise absent in any detail outside of specialized courses on particular literary productions fitting a type in this century (I could see selections of the lolcat translation of the Bible and some Japanese emoji poetry forming parts of such a syllabus).

[Razade]

Building off that, let's see which ones survive the next hundred, or five hundred years. It's not an exact comparison, since the references from Steinbeck or Shakespeare that have become so culturally ingrained are no longer completely transparent without education to familiarize people with the origins. If in 500 years "I herd u liek mudkipz" or "I can has cheezburger" still hold any meaning, then they might be significant enough things to study for cultural competence. My guess is that the sort of thing will be part of the historical context teaching involved in explaining some aspects of early 21st century literature/film/etc. and otherwise absent in any detail outside of specialized courses on particular literary productions fitting a type in this century (I could see selections of the lolcat translation of the Bible and some Japanese emoji poetry forming parts of such a syllabus).

Why wait that long? There's an internet site that documents all of this simply through the use of search algorithms.

[The Duskblade]

if you work off of the metric of what's stuck around for a century does that mean in in 20 years we can include Batman?

[Razade]

if you work off of the metric of what's stuck around for a century does that mean in in 20 years we can include Batman?

I should introduce you to Bill. Bill? He'll take it away (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWTJIBGNId0).

[eggynack]

More to the point, I tend to think that you organically learn references no matter what in the same way that you learn colloquialisms and common figures of speech - through usage and through encountering them in the wild, so I wouldn't want to expend much curriculum time towards that end.
I agree with this. I mean, really, how many commonly referenced classics are you really getting through in school? You get through maybe a few dozen books overall, and I recall a bunch of those with only limited reference factor, so you're really only scratching the surface if you expect schooling to get you anywhere in high class reference culture. So much of it comes down to method. The whole symbolic and literary analysis thing schools might be driven by some purpose, but that purpose is definitely not reference power, and it's actually counterproductive to that end. In fact, actually reading the books might be somewhat counterproductive to that end, because an average person isn't going to be clearing books at an insanely higher rate than the school rate.

If all you care about in literature education is a student's power to overcome the reference based shibboleths that exist in society, then the dumb pragmatic approach is covering a bunch of baseline facts about a book, combined with some fun trivia, as well as a couple of high end arguments one can make about the work, if really pressed. Like, I've seen cause to talk Romeo and Juliet in everyday life on a few occasions, but so rarely about whatever we learned about it in school. I'm more likely to say something like, "Y'know, wherefore actually means why, not where," or, "The protagonists were meant to be stupid, really," and neither of those talking points come from class. For another example, if I wanted someone to become sufficiently knowledgeable about philosophy to make it through crappy standard conversation, I wouldn't hand them a single book by a single author and ask them to read it. Unless they're pursuing philosophy in a long term way, such that they can make it through pre-graduate or post-graduate philosophy conversations without sounding stupid, that's an approach so depth first as to be useless. Realistically, I'd just ask them to spend a day or two reading through existential comics (http://existentialcomics.com/) and be done with it. Not perfect for sure, but it's helped me at least sound smart in this area, as opposed to actually being smart.

[SaintRidley]

if you work off of the metric of what's stuck around for a century does that mean in in 20 years we can include Batman?

We're already there. Comics are becoming an increasingly hot area of literary studies.

[Ninja_Prawn]

We don't need to know Steinbeck because nobody ever references his work, which is really basically the only reason anyone even needs to know Shakespeare and Dickens, because they're quoted and imitated constantly.

At least people quote that "from Hell's heart I stab at thee" line. I don;t think anybody ever references Steinbeck or Fitzgerald

I know this has already been answered, but I wanted to add that Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men was by far the best book I had to read for school. I know at least a couple of my classmates became interested in reading purely because of that one story.

Later, when I got around to reading East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath on my own time, I found them to be absolutely beautiful - both of them actually made me cry. I think they're the only non-Le Guin books that have done that to me. And there were a surprising number of things, particularly in Grapes, that I read and thought 'oh, so that's what they were referencing!'

[Drascin]

if you work off of the metric of what's stuck around for a century does that mean in in 20 years we can include Batman?

Not necessarily Batman specifically, but the comic medium already has a fair few proponents, in terms of what should be looked at in literary analysis. Superman and Batman themselves will probably end up being mentioned in 20th century culture and literature courses in fifty years or so, I think. Superman especially certainly has influenced rather a hell of a lot of works of media, and will probably be a necessary reference for future media historians delving into 20th century media.

[Rogar Demonblud]

But Batman needs all the previous pulp heroes he's cribbing off of (particularly The Shadow) for context, while Superman has strong roots in Jewish folklore (specifically the Golem).

[Drascin]

But Batman needs all the previous pulp heroes he's cribbing off of (particularly The Shadow) for context, while Superman has strong roots in Jewish folklore (specifically the Golem).

Well, yes, and Shakespeare's tragedies all had deep roots in Greek tragedies, and he himself didn't shy away from the occassional cribbing of Chaucer. Nihil sub sole novum and so on. Doesn't change that Superman has been a huge cultural touchstone and barometer for a a certain part of the world.

[BWR]

*snip*

But the point of lots of literature classes is not just teaching thinking and analysis but actual study of the history and corpus of the language's literature. Things become inexplicably popular and sometimes a bunch of crusty old lit-wallahs sitting around deciding something is good despite the fact that most people haven't read it is or enjoyed it when they have is enough to make sure a piece of literature is worthy of note, if for no other reason than other people have said so. The final determiner for whether or not something is an important part of the body of 's lit is not whether it pioneers or refines a new literary technique, whether it is deep or thought-provoking, whether it illustrates societal issues or even if it is any good; what is important is that it is on the list.

Now we may disagree about whether something should be on the list (like like Shakespeare and Chaucer, and think for a whole host of reasons they should be on the list), and ideally there would be nothing but interesting and fun things on the list, but at some point we come up against the literary equivalent of 'quantity has a quality all its own" - the fact that something has been considered important despite an apparent lack of good qualities is enough to take it at least somewhat seriously even if all you do is argue why it shouldn't be lauded.



Before you can "understand what you are reading", you actually have to [I]read, though.
To me, being comfortable with reading, being an easy reader, not struggling just to read a page - that is all essential for understanding literature, history, text structure, etc. "Enjoying reading" is not just a hobby or something you should do "in your own time", it is fundamental to literature education.

I think "reading enjoyable books can be done in your own time" sounds a lot like "you can learn basic tables of multiplication in your own time. In school we'll just start with advanced maths".
Before you can even think to educate children about text structure and morals and cultural values and whatnot, they first have to be able to read a page without sweating or yawning.

Now, maybe I'm underestimating the reading abilities of children, but I remember clearly from my own school time that the majority of my class did exactly that: yawn or grumble before they had even finished the first page. Heck, most of them read maybe two pages an hour. How can you ever understand literature if you read two pages an hour? It'll take a year to even finish the book!
(And this was the "highest level" of education in my country, so probably the smartest and quickest kids around. I think it's bound to be even worse on other levels).

But we are talking about high school (and beyond) level of reading, not grade school. The time to teach people how to read is grade school, not high school. The time to teach people to like reading is when the learn to read, not years down the line. At some point you have to learn how to learn and handle things you don't like. Ideally, all learning should be fun but the purpose of high school level language and literature is not to make things fun for kids, but to teach people about language and literature. At this point you should be able to handle reading in itself, even if you don't like the subject.

[NichG]

But the point of lots of literature classes is not just teaching thinking and analysis but actual study of the history and corpus of the language's literature. Things become inexplicably popular and sometimes a bunch of crusty old lit-wallahs sitting around deciding something is good despite the fact that most people haven't read it is or enjoyed it when they have is enough to make sure a piece of literature is worthy of note, if for no other reason than other people have said so. The final determiner for whether or not something is an important part of the body of [insert language]'s lit is not whether it pioneers or refines a new literary technique, whether it is deep or thought-provoking, whether it illustrates societal issues or even if it is any good; what is important is that it is on the list.

Now we may disagree about whether something should be on the list (like like Shakespeare and Chaucer, and think for a whole host of reasons they should be on the list), and ideally there would be nothing but interesting and fun things on the list, but at some point we come up against the literary equivalent of 'quantity has a quality all its own" - the fact that something has been considered important despite an apparent lack of good qualities is enough to take it at least somewhat seriously even if all you do is argue why it shouldn't be lauded.


The thing is, when you're a kid you don't have any choice about this. If someone says 'its on the list, you'll be tested on it, so just read it' you have to do so. But if you do that to a generation of kids and they come away with the impression 'gee, studying literature was a waste of time', then they're the ones (en masse or individually) who eventually get to make decisions like 'what's the point in studying literature, lets just defund it/remove it from the curriculum/etc'.

More micro, you get threads like this one, where people become less willing to listen to forms of argument like 'providing cultural context is important' or 'teaching the history of language is important' or 'we should study things that have been influential' because they went through the system, received an attempt to teach these presumably important things, and then later in life found 'actually, I would have rather done without that'.

[tantric]

all the major holy books, including the bible, lost gospels, the koran, the vedas, tao-de-ching, etc

guns, germs and steel, the origin of the species, the communist manifesto, a brief history of time, selfish gene....

gone with the wind, the tale of genji, journey to the west, the iliad,

[Ninja_Prawn]

a generation of kids and they come away with the impression 'gee, studying literature was a waste of time', then they're the ones (en masse or individually) who eventually get to make decisions like 'what's the point in studying literature, lets just defund it/remove it from the curriculum/etc'.

If the people who are setting your education policy are going to exhibit that attitude, you're screwed no matter what. 'We only need to teach the things that have been personally useful to me in my life/career' is an insane stance for them to take.

[A.A.King]

If the people who are setting your education policy are going to exhibit that attitude, you're screwed no matter what. 'We only need to teach the things that have been personally useful to me in my life/career' is an insane stance for them to take.

They already exhibit this attitude. In my country at least proper physics is an optional course, so most people don't learn anything about how the world really works, and while math is technically a mandatory subject it is defined into 'levels' and the level of math you can get away if you take a cultural path in High School is an absolute joke and frankly a sham. Economics, a subject on a different way that the world works, is only mandatory for half a year in your whole high school career (in my country anyway) after which it becomes just another optional course.

I remember my High School Literature Teacher telling in almost the same breath that she basically couldn't do any real sums while asking me to take her subject more serious. Why? Because she didn't deem Math useful and so felt no shame in her inability to do it yet as a teacher of Literature it was of course the most important thing anyone could ever learn in High School.

The mandatory curriculum has always been based not on what is objectively useful (because there really isn't such a thing) but on what the people in charge deemed useful (which is generally the stuff they use and/or like).

[NichG]

If the people who are setting your education policy are going to exhibit that attitude, you're screwed no matter what. 'We only need to teach the things that have been personally useful to me in my life/career' is an insane stance for them to take.

If the decision is made based on what was found personally useful for one individual, yes that's a problem. But this isn't one guy deciding he has a problem with literature studies, its a pattern of people finding that they all happen to agree that there's something wrong with the way and content of what's being taught. A response to that in the form of 'well thats what this group of scholars say is important' is trading off the reputation of those scholars in order to avoid having to give an actual answer - its just as much setting an education policy based on things that were personally useful to that set of people, its just a different set of people.

Ultimately, we have to decide what to teach and what not to teach, because time and attention are finite. 'What is useful, and to whom?' is an important question to ask, its not a betrayal of the educational system or an indication that you're screwed because of a systemic cultural attitude. It's giving due respect to the experiences and time spent by people who have gone through the system and are in a position after-the-fact to evaluate the quality of the education they received and the impact it has had on their lives.

[eggynack]

But the point of lots of literature classes is not just teaching thinking and analysis but actual study of the history and corpus of the language's literature. Things become inexplicably popular and sometimes a bunch of crusty old lit-wallahs sitting around deciding something is good despite the fact that most people haven't read it is or enjoyed it when they have is enough to make sure a piece of literature is worthy of note, if for no other reason than other people have said so. The final determiner for whether or not something is an important part of the body of [insert language]'s lit is not whether it pioneers or refines a new literary technique, whether it is deep or thought-provoking, whether it illustrates societal issues or even if it is any good; what is important is that it is on the list.

Now we may disagree about whether something should be on the list (like like Shakespeare and Chaucer, and think for a whole host of reasons they should be on the list), and ideally there would be nothing but interesting and fun things on the list, but at some point we come up against the literary equivalent of 'quantity has a quality all its own" - the fact that something has been considered important despite an apparent lack of good qualities is enough to take it at least somewhat seriously even if all you do is argue why it shouldn't be lauded.
But why does any of that matter? What particular value is the student truly gaining here, by slogging through the literary canon? It doesn't seem like this stuff really improves a student's life in any way outside of some poorly defined notion that these are things a student "should" do. If you really wanna teach about a lack of good qualities in a book, pick a book for that express purpose, and preferably make it short. Don't pick books arbitrarily out of the hat of Culture and hope kids get something out of them.

[Bohandas]

But why does any of that matter? What particular value is the student truly gaining here, by slogging through the literary canon? It doesn't seem like this stuff really improves a student's life in any way outside of some poorly defined notion that these are things a student "should" do. If you really wanna teach about a lack of good qualities in a book, pick a book for that express purpose, and preferably make it short. Don't pick books arbitrarily out of the hat of Culture and hope kids get something out of them.

Like I said before, Shakespeare is important because there's a lot of jokes that you won't get if you're not familiar with Shakespeare. Otherwise you're absolutely right, literature class isn't really useful. I honestly can't really see it even being particularly useful even to the small fraction of a percent who actually go into writing (with the possible exception, as I said before, of The Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye demonstrating what NOT to do). The important part of English class is over once kids know how to read and write, the rest is mostly pointless busywork (though on the reading and writing front, I suppose literature could be useful if they're reading someone like Lovecraft who uses a lot of unusual words, with the possible resultant effect of expanding their vocabulary).

[Bohandas]

But Batman needs all the previous pulp heroes he's cribbing off of (particularly The Shadow) for context, while Superman has strong roots in Jewish folklore (specifically the Golem).

I took a college course on pulp novels of the early 20th century. It was one of the better literature courses that I've taken. I actually chose it as an elective. It was still a fluff course though. (and unfortunately due to a combination of time taken up by my work for my science courses, as well as ADHD, I wasn't able to read all of the books all the way through, which is a shame because these ones were actually good).

Also, what does Superman have to do with the Golem? I get the general jewish part - the original writer was jewish, kryptonian seems to be based on hebrew, etc. - but how does he relate to the golem? He's not an artificial being, he can speak, he has an entirely different weakness

[eggynack]

Like I said before, Shakespeare is important because there's a lot of jokes that you won't get if you're not familiar with Shakespeare. Otherwise you're absolutely right, literature class isn't really useful. I honestly can't really see it even being particularly useful even to the small fraction of a percent who actually go into writing (with the possible exception, as I said before, of The Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye demonstrating what NOT to do). The important part of English class is over once kids know how to read and write, the rest is mostly pointless busywork (though on the reading and writing front, I suppose literature could be useful if they're reading someone like Lovecraft who uses a lot of unusual words, with the possible resultant effect of expanding their vocabulary).
I think that my aforementioned stated purpose for literature class, the learning of that particular mode of analytical thought. What I don't consider of particular value is studying the classics purely due to their nature as classics. Arguably, many of these books can stand on their own merits, at least to some extent, but if the prime metric by which you're choosing book A over book B is that book A happens to lay claim to a position in literary canon, I don't think that's a good thing. As for jokes in particular, I'm pretty convinced that you pick up a lot of that stuff by, y'know, hearing the jokes the first time. Might get caught off-guard for a bit, but eventually you catch on. As I noted earlier, I see way more works referenced than I've personally read, and I don't think I've experienced hardship on that basis.

[An Enemy Spy]

I took a college course on pulp novels of the early 20th century. It was one of the better literature courses that I've taken. I actually chose it as an elective. It was still a fluff course though. (and unfortunately due to a combination of time taken up by my work for my science courses, as well as ADHD, I wasn't able to read all of the books all the way through, which is a shame because these ones were actually good).

Also, what does Superman have to do with the Golem? I get the general jewish part - the original writer was jewish, kryptonian seems to be based on hebrew, etc. - but how does he relate to the golem? He's not an artificial being, he can speak, he has an entirely different weakness

It's not so much that Superman is an actual golem, it's that he's a super powered being who protects the downtrodden from the people treading on them just like the legendary golem does. Keep in mind that in the Golden Age, Superman primarily fought against people who were exploiting and abusing the poor for their own gains, rather than aliens and Lex Luthor like he does now.

[SaintRidley]

Again, just because you got nothing out of literature classes (due to a combination, it would seem, of putting nothing into them and dismissing the endeavor out of hand), Bohandas, that doesn't mean there's nothing to get.

[Knaight]

Like I said before, Shakespeare is important because there's a lot of jokes that you won't get if you're not familiar with Shakespeare. Otherwise you're absolutely right, literature class isn't really useful. I honestly can't really see it even being particularly useful even to the small fraction of a percent who actually go into writing (with the possible exception, as I said before, of The Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye demonstrating what NOT to do). The important part of English class is over once kids know how to read and write, the rest is mostly pointless busywork (though on the reading and writing front, I suppose literature could be useful if they're reading someone like Lovecraft who uses a lot of unusual words, with the possible resultant effect of expanding their vocabulary).

Basic literacy is a tiny fraction of what's useful in day to day life - learning to read critically, to pick up subtext, and to generally dissect texts is also fairly important. The vast majority of these skills will have more relevance to non fiction (or at least alleged non fiction) than fiction; we're bombarded with messages on a daily basis that have varying degrees of deception and spin. There's the pervasiveness of advertising and the extent to which it is blatant lies, there's news sources of highly varying reliability where even the best warrant a critical eye, there's the extent to which argumentative writing is based on assumptions that aren't spelled out and the utility of dragging those into the light for analysis, so on and so forth. Some of this also applies to fiction, and by using literature in particular students get to practice these skills while also learning cultural history, learning how to write, and acquiring the background needed to better understand contemporary writing.

[Lemmy]

Well... In my humble opinion, school should have a mix of classic books, i.e.: those that had significant impact in the culture of wherever the school is built, and entertaining books... These are books that while not necessarily culturally significant, are fun to read. To show kids that books can be fun too. Of course, this only works if the books are actually entertaining, so maybe teachers should offer a few options, so that kids can choose what kind of story they'd like to read.

[NichG]

Basic literacy is a tiny fraction of what's useful in day to day life - learning to read critically, to pick up subtext, and to generally dissect texts is also fairly important. The vast majority of these skills will have more relevance to non fiction (or at least alleged non fiction) than fiction; we're bombarded with messages on a daily basis that have varying degrees of deception and spin. There's the pervasiveness of advertising and the extent to which it is blatant lies, there's news sources of highly varying reliability where even the best warrant a critical eye, there's the extent to which argumentative writing is based on assumptions that aren't spelled out and the utility of dragging those into the light for analysis, so on and so forth. Some of this also applies to fiction, and by using literature in particular students get to practice these skills while also learning cultural history, learning how to write, and acquiring the background needed to better understand contemporary writing.

The way in which this is so much more relevant to non-fiction suggests a different way to organize things though. I guess the way I'd break things down is:

- Skill: Introspection, emotional intelligence. In-class activity: Journal-style writing. Subject matter: Student's selection of reading material

- Skill: Analysis of subtext, bias, motivation. In-class activity: Reading followed by persuasive writing or debate. Subject matter: recent or historical (within 100 years) news articles. Historical documents. Point is to use things with a clear purpose to them, or things for which there was an opposing piece of work at around the same time that can be contrasted to demonstrate bias concretely.

- Skill: Reasoning, logic, critical thinking. In-class activity: Debate or persuasive writing. Subject matter: Choose a broad debate topic and provide some fixed sources as the body of evidence to work from, teach the various kinds of logical fallacies, etc.

- Skill: Research, self-guided discovery. In-class activity: Library/internet searches, source discovery, report-style writing. Subject matter: Choose broad topics and ask students to compile a report or analysis of some aspect of that topic. Concretely, teach selectivity, source selection, presentation order ('funnel' style), logical flow and bridging. Abstractly, the point is to help a student gain experience at discerning relevant versus irrelevant material in the wild, ways to pursue their own interests.

- Skill: Technical writing ability. In-class activity: Write examples of things like resumes, letters, business documents, etc. Focus is on technical aspects - grammar, tone of voice, appropriateness of contents.

- Skill: Expression. In-class activity: Reading literature for technical quality, creative writing, discussion of methodologies. Subject matter: Things where the author clearly demonstrates a particular kind of writing skill - good characterization, understanding the audience, metaphor, worldbuilding, evocative prose, writing intelligent or diverse characters, etc.

- Skill: Communication. In-class activity: Write for the other students to read and make use of. Subject matter: Summarize or write about a short story or news article or something, then swap and write something about the writing you receive.

- Skill: Editing. In-class activity: Edit other students' work, understand revision process. Subject matter: Similar to above, everyone writes something and passes it to another student

At each point, I'd want that motivating skill to be directly explained to the students along with examples of how it can actually be useful personally and career-wise. I'd want the split of the class to be something like 2/5 of class sessions spent on writing activities, 1/5 in pure discussion, 1/5 of reading+activity, and 1/5 pure self-directed reading. Reading materials for activities would generally be chosen to be things that can be completed in a week or two at most - short stories over novels. Self-directed time could be anything.

[Bohandas]

Basic literacy is a tiny fraction of what's useful in day to day life - learning to read critically, to pick up subtext, and to generally dissect texts is also fairly important. The vast majority of these skills will have more relevance to non fiction (or at least alleged non fiction) than fiction; we're bombarded with messages on a daily basis that have varying degrees of deception and spin. There's the pervasiveness of advertising and the extent to which it is blatant lies, there's news sources of highly varying reliability where even the best warrant a critical eye, there's the extent to which argumentative writing is based on assumptions that aren't spelled out and the utility of dragging those into the light for analysis, so on and so forth. Some of this also applies to fiction, and by using literature in particular students get to practice these skills while also learning cultural history, learning how to write, and acquiring the background needed to better understand contemporary writing.

Why not just directly teach them about spin and how the news media lies then?

[Rodin]

Why not just directly teach them about spin and how the news media lies then?

Probably because that in and of itself is a political football. Which news sources do you pick as good and bad examples? How do you deal with such a sensitive topic without bringing a rain of phone calls from angry parents?

I mean, I guess it's probably possible, but I'm not surprised that most schools stay far, far away from that sort of thing.

One place I did feel let down by my school was modern history. Sure, it's great knowing that Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn, but on the grand scheme of things that's a pretty useless bit of information. Meanwhile, I didn't learn anything about the Cold War, Vietnam, or any other events from about 1960 onwards. Spending a semester on that stuff would have been a heck of a lot more useful than covering the founding of the USA for the umteempth time.

[Ninja_Prawn]

Why not just directly teach them about spin and how the news media lies then?

To be fair, we were taught quite a lot about rhetoric and how to interpret news stories. I remember one homework task where we had to write and format our own newspaper cover story, making it as misleading as possible. By teaching us the techniques in the abstract and then having us 'homebrew' a dishonest paper, they avoided political issues quite neatly, I think.

Then again, maybe my school experience was not... typical.

[Peelee]

To be fair, we were taught quite a lot about rhetoric and how to interpret news stories. I remember one homework task where we had to write and format our own newspaper cover story, making it as misleading as possible. By teaching us the techniques in the abstract and then having us 'homebrew' a dishonest paper, they avoided political issues quite neatly, I think.

Then again, maybe my school experience was not... typical.

That's a pretty awesome way to teach that.

[Bohandas]

Probably because that in and of itself is a political football. Which news sources do you pick as good and bad examples? How do you deal with such a sensitive topic without bringing a rain of phone calls from angry parents?

Ah yes, angry parents. There's a demographic that needs to be taken down a peg (or two) (or maybe even completely disenfranchised)

[Bohandas]

One place I did feel let down by my school was modern history. Sure, it's great knowing that Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn, but on the grand scheme of things that's a pretty useless bit of information. Meanwhile, I didn't learn anything about the Cold War, Vietnam, or any other events from about 1960 onwards. Spending a semester on that stuff would have been a heck of a lot more useful than covering the founding of the USA for the umteempth time.

Plus, William Penn is hardly modern. He only just barely qualifies as "not ancient".

EDIT:
Or did they mean modern simply in the sense of "not ancient"? We've really gotta get a third term in that set.

[Kato]

Ah yes, angry parents. There's a demographic that needs to be taken down a peg (or two) (or maybe even completely disenfranchised)

Yeah, how dare people be concerned with their childrens education.....
Obviously, angry parents can be terribly wrong and annoying. But they can alse be right and necessary. Especially if the school or teachers are... lacking.

[Rodin]

Plus, William Penn is hardly modern. He only just barely qualifies as "not ancient".

EDIT:
Or did they mean modern simply in the sense of "not ancient"? We've really gotta get a third term in that set.

I wasn't referring to William Penn as modern. Modern history would be anything 20th century and beyond, more preferably stuff after World War II. It's an area that we simply didn't cover in school in any detail, and I think it's more important to know history from the last 100 years instead of that from several hundred or thousand years ago because it's more likely to have an impact on our lives. Both are important for well-roundedness of course, but ultimately there's a time crunch and getting the more relevant history done should be a focus.

[Aedilred]

Plus, William Penn is hardly modern. He only just barely qualifies as "not ancient".

EDIT:
Or did they mean modern simply in the sense of "not ancient"? We've really gotta get a third term in that set.

"Medieval".

With that said I think the modern period could do with a little more gradation than it currently has.

[BWR]

But why does any of that matter? What particular value is the student truly gaining here, by slogging through the literary canon? It doesn't seem like this stuff really improves a student's life in any way outside of some poorly defined notion that these are things a student "should" do. If you really wanna teach about a lack of good qualities in a book, pick a book for that express purpose, and preferably make it short. Don't pick books arbitrarily out of the hat of Culture and hope kids get something out of them.

You are of course free to disagree with the purpose of learning about literature, but since one of the goals of the classes is to familiarize students with the history of a language and its greatest hits, and engender a sense of common history and cultural background. At least that's the way it is around here and I've been lead to believe this is the case in lots of English speaking places, which is why I have been making these arguments.
I'm arguing from the position of the stated goal rather than questioning the utility and validity of said goal. utility? Half the **** people learn in school will have little to no utility in daily life, and this includes stuff you learn in science class. I tend to view lit history much as I do world history: most history will have zero impact on the daily lives of the people who learn it. Even something as simple as learning why things are messed up today in [insert part of the world of your choice] doesn't really matter to most people or will have any meaningful impact on their lives if they don't live there.

[Radix]

To put it bluntly, this was obvious nonsense. Those classes taught how to BS more than anything else, and I spent an entire year writing essay after essay with increasingly ludicrous theses**, backing everything up with book quotes, implicit claims of universal meaning, and similar. We weren't learning the background to understand a particular book, we were learning a bunch of generalized hookum that can be used as a primitive analytical model on a narrow selection of books, and we were learning it in the context of it being universal literally the year following a world literature class full of books for which this model would have failed.

As somebody looking to being a high school history teacher some day, and have taken some education classes at university already...I totally get this. It's so difficult to teach literary analysis in a way that actually engages the reader, and since a lot of American "classics" (I'm from the US) are crazy diverse in writing style, plot style, and genre, finding ways to even just get students with entirely different interests to sit down and just read the same book is difficult. I feel like the only solution I can think of is to say "**** it" to IB/AP tests and let english teachers teach the books they want the way they want to teach them, but...American colleges would never go for that, so I dunno dude.

And a great book series to read/teach in a Creative Writing class would probably be the Night Angel trilogy by Brent Weeks. The level of character and plot development is INSANE. I don't think I have ever been or will ever be as in love with a book series as I am with the Night Angel trilogy.

[DomaDoma]

Literature is the foremost branch of the humanities for a reason. It's not about textual skills that might, but probably won't, make you prime in the work force one of these days. Nor is it about pretending to extrapolate symbols for thesis purposes. It's about exploring humanity. It's about life - that thing you pay the bills in order to get to. It's about why Angel St. Clare and Simon Legree are both destructive to their slaves, Macbeth's moral sunk-cost fallacy and just how far he fell to begin with, how the kids fighting over the candied peanuts in Grapes of Wrath are a microcosm of the discourse on poverty generally.

Or, shoot. Sherlock Holmes' ways of trolling witnesses for information, and Zaknafein Do'Urden's compromises, and whether Sirius or Snape or Dumbledore were basically good people in the end. Not as much to work with, but the basic thread is still there. But the typically erudite approach, and the Common Core approach, completely miss the point.

[J-H]

I just ran across this article (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/01/07/poet-i-cant-answer-questions-on-texas-standardized-tests-about-my-own-poems/?utm_term=.4ccbf0e1b143). High-stakes testing is another discussion; I am posting this here because it is an example of a living author taking issue with "literary analysis" of her own work.

[Bohandas]

I just ran across this article (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/01/07/poet-i-cant-answer-questions-on-texas-standardized-tests-about-my-own-poems/?utm_term=.4ccbf0e1b143). High-stakes testing is another discussion; I am posting this here because it is an example of a living author taking issue with "literary analysis" of her own work.

Reminds me on that one gag from Annie Hall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wWUc8BZgWE

[SaintRidley]

I just ran across this article (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/01/07/poet-i-cant-answer-questions-on-texas-standardized-tests-about-my-own-poems/?utm_term=.4ccbf0e1b143). High-stakes testing is another discussion; I am posting this here because it is an example of a living author taking issue with "literary analysis" of her own work.

Not sure it's an issue with analysis of her work that she takes issue. Seems more an issue with the fact that the questions are idiotic and don't actually engage with the poems at all. The issues seem to be twofold. The questions either prompt the student to guess her intent, which is not a terribly useful task and made doubly fruitless considering they never talked to her and managed to incorrectly transcribe at least one poem, or literally can't prompt analysis due to trying to pin everything down to an exclusive multiple choice format. If this is how high school kids are being asked to think about literature, no wonder my students come to me confused and uncertain about what analysis even is.

[Ninja_Prawn]

I just ran across this article (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/01/07/poet-i-cant-answer-questions-on-texas-standardized-tests-about-my-own-poems/?utm_term=.4ccbf0e1b143). High-stakes testing is another discussion; I am posting this here because it is an example of a living author taking issue with "literary analysis" of her own work.

Which genius thought multiple-choice was a good format for English Literature tests?

Also, 7th Grade seems kind of early to be studying poetry. We didn't do any poetry (excluding Shakespeare and brief flirtations with Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales) until Year 10 (=9th Grade). I really don't think we could have handled the poetry stuff before then.

[Avilan the Grey]

The way I see it the there are two major reasons works and authors should be read: cultural impact and historical commentary.
Many are both, while others are really just to be seen as comments on an historical period and therefore really more interesting as a complement to history studies.

[Bohandas]

The way I see it the there are two major reasons works and authors should be read: cultural impact and historical commentary.
Many are both, while others are really just to be seen as comments on an historical period and therefore really more interesting as a complement to history studies.

That's a good point. It becomes much more useful if synchronized with history class