Some classics are good enough to read. The problem is in forcing kids to try to do in-depth analysis. Charles Dickens isn’t all that bad to read, until you are squinting at every third word and wondering if this could mean something in the context of the whole book and just maybe you can write about it well enough in your stupid journal that you really want a B in so your parents don’t whip you with the belt again.
Comment on I learned so much
itsgroundhogdayagain@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Also ruining children’s love for books by making them read a “classic”.
FilterItOut@thelemmy.club 2 months ago
FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org 2 months ago
You mean ‘Great Expectations’? The most fucking boring book ever written in thebhistory of mankind?
TheDoozer@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I disagree and offer Old Man and the Sea.
I get it, there’s a bunch of symbolism and blah blah blah… I could sum the book up in a sentence and not miss much.
Jarix@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Lol you are missing a lot. You just don’t give a shit about what you are missing and that’s entirely fair to have that experience
Einstein@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Grapes of Wrath. My class spent an hour and a half discussing a 2 page chapter about a turtle crossing a road…
It was torture.
aphlamingphoenix@lemm.ee 2 months ago
That was roughly my experience with East of Eden.
CynicRaven@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The Glass Menagerie. Introduction of sad, boring characters. Nothing happens. The end.
AFallingAnvil@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Of Mice and Men: a book in a hurry to get from nowhere to nothing at all.
AVincentInSpace@pawb.social 2 months ago
I’m talking about Touching Spirit Bear (a book that contains two chapters worth of graphic descriptions of a boy, having been mauled by a bear and barely staying alive, doing things like cramming a live mouse into his gullet to survive). I’m talking about The Jungle (a book my brain has blocked out most of which involves a lot of main character deaths, committing horrific sins just to survive and then not surviving anyway, and a general endless barrage of “so there’s this guy, right, and his life sucks. I mean, it sucks. His wife just died, he watched his coworker get chopped to bits, his boss is raping his sister and if he speaks up about it he’ll be fired and they’ll both starve, everybody has shunned him, oh his life might be looking up never mind he just got outed as a fraud, suffice it to say, his life SUCKS. Also communism is good.”) I’m talking about Fahrenheit 451. I’m talking about Lord of the Flies. I’m talking about books that make kids hate reading.
Why can’t we read Discworld instead?
atomicorange@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Those books are all fucking awesome.
AVincentInSpace@pawb.social 2 months ago
My brain is having trouble with the idea that anyone could read any of the books I just listed and come away feeling anything othet than revulsion
psmgx@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That’s often the state curriculum. Don’t hate the player hate the game baby