I never understand why we are forced to read so much of the literary canon. Most of it is so hard to read, and so unenjoyable. Many of them could be re-written in a more enjoyable way for young children, through teenagers. I am exactly like you: I hardly ever read for pleasure when I was younger unless there was a blatant bride ("award") awaiting me. Most of the time, I was underwater reading some garbage prose from 1850 that doesn't stay with me today.
As an alternative perspective, I am glad that my middle and high school curriculum included several works of Shakespeare, especially Macbeth and Hamlet, and several 19th century classics.
They really do require time, they’re hard to make time for, and while reading them wasn’t exactly fun, I’m glad that I did it. Many of the themes are timeless, the prose is elegant if difficult, and there are cultural references to these works everywhere.
They form a big part of the English speaking world’s cultural history. I think it’s worthwhile for children to be exposed to that history.
And if not then, when? I couldn’t make myself do the work now; I’m too busy and tired to read anything but easy/fun fiction after work. And I’m not sure I would have had the focus then if it hadn’t been assigned. Sometimes education isn’t fun or easy. That doesn’t make it less valuable.
My point is the prose is a huge turn-off for most people and serves very little purpose in a modern society. As I mentioned in my post, I recommend to re-write these titles using a prose that will be more appealing to the age group. You can keep all of the same lessons to be learned in the re-write. I do not support this idea that learning needs to be painful or needlessly difficult. For most people, success in education is a positive feedback loop: If you do average or well, you look forward to more of it. And vice versa: If you below average, you try to avoid it and see it as a chore. I'm not saying to dumb down everything, but this "pain == good learning" seems from the 1980s and before -- outdated.
I wouldn't use the term "garbage prose", but I do agree that many books from the literary canon aren't the greatest choice to assign to kids.
Steinbeck and Faulkner come to mind.
I understand that they're important, influential, and well-written. But I just didn't relate to them. There was almost nothing about the main characters' challenges or desires that I could understand.
My son was assigned "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton - he didn't mind reading it, but he said he just didn't really relate to any of the characters. Even though it's set just 50 years ago, the culture it describes bares basically no resemblance to modern-day life for a teenager.
The Great Gatsby is the one that comes to my mind. How exactly is a modern high school student supposed to relate to any of the characters in this book? Even when I was reading it in school I kept stopping and questioning just what these characters even were. It felt like reading about aliens, totally disconnected from reality. I not only lacked the historical context, I didn't have enough social context to grasp the character motivations or actions.
The whole book was like the allegory of the cave.
Steinbeck is a close second, though. I had to read three of the man's books (The Pearl, Of Mice and Men, and Grapes of Wrath) and I don't think I enjoyed a single page of it. I remember finding a copy of The Pearl as an adult and being shocked it was less than 100 pages. We somehow extracted 18 weeks of discussion and essays and tests on that book. No wonder I hated it. We tortured every word of it.
“ My son was assigned "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton - he didn't mind reading it, but he said he just didn't really relate to any of the characters. Even though it's set just 50 years ago, the culture it describes bares basically no resemblance to modern-day life for a teenager.”
Maybe that’s ok? I read the Outsiders when I was young (25 years ago or so) and although I thought it was a bit weird, it wasn’t bad. My life bears little resemblance to many current contemporary people’s lives the world over, but exploring those differences can be good. I am all for giving the kids a chance to see a different world and get a sense of how things can change.
> I am all for giving the kids a chance to see a different world and get a sense of how things can change.
Not if you're discouraging children from reading as a hobby by assigning the driest works there are. With the exception of Faust, all 'homework books' were horribly dry and frankly boring. For example, The Sorrows of Young Werther - utterly irrelevant. I would understand any child or teenager who gave up on reading if they were forced to read books like these - and even worse, spend endless hours discussing and being tested on them.
1) There's no way to have a set of readings that every Xth grader is going to enjoy. It's just impossible. There is a wide range of interests and predispositions and reading ability among people of the same age. It's obvious just from this sub-thread; everyone pipes up with a different set of books they disliked in school and they therefore think no one should have to read. I loved reading Julius Caeasar in high school and hated The Catcher in the Rye. I loved Dandelion Wine and hated Absalom, Absalom. Them's the breaks.
2) Part of the point of reading literature is to see things from a different perspective. i.e. to read things that are not necessarily "relatable", and thereby possibly expand your mind about the range of human experience. It's an opportunity to learn about history and learn about cultures other than your own.
I hated Romeo and Juliet. Teachers loved to explain how this was so relevant to us teenagers and yet it’s two people in a deeply concerning relationship who die for each other for pretty stupid reasons. Modern interpretations are far more interesting.
I wouldn't say it's "garbage prose" but I read A Tale of Two Cities in school and found it impossible to form a mental image from the text in some parts.
I'm still struggling to understand what "Tellson’s Bank had a run upon it in the mail." means.
Or more recently, the run on SVB last year where everyone started panicking that the bank was no longer able to hold its deposits, just because it announced that it had taken action to generate something like $40 billion in liquidity. And then the next day alone, customers withdrew $42 billion.
All of this was much worse during the Great Depression, before we had FDIC insurance guaranteeing deposits up to a certain threshold. If you've ever seen It's a Wonderful Life, it depicts a bank run during that era as George Bailey is about to go off on his honeymoon. (I remember my 6th grade history teacher describing this as we watched that movie around the holiday season.)
Not really the media were covering it a lot in 2008 - Front page headlines in newspapers and first story on TV news.
Ok people did not lose money directly. But they were withdrawing from some banks (e.g. Northern Rock) and it made massive economic and political issues.
I wasn't familiar with the passage but having read it I think it means that the sounds and sights of the nighttime mail carriage ride made the bank messenger fantasize a run (i.e. an excess of customer withdrawals) upon his bank. The wider context is that the shadows of the night are cast as various phantoms in the minds of the people on the carriage, and even the horse pulling it:
> While he trotted back with the message he was to deliver to the night watchman in his box at the door of Tellson’s Bank, by Temple Bar, who was to deliver it to greater authorities within, the shadows of the night took such shapes to him as arose out of the message, and took such shapes to the mare as arose out of HER private topics of uneasiness. They seemed to be numerous, for she shied at every shadow on the road.
> What time, the mail-coach lumbered, jolted, rattled, and bumped upon its tedious way, with its three fellow-inscrutables inside. To whom, likewise, the shadows of the night revealed themselves, in the forms their dozing eyes and wandering thoughts suggested.
> Tellson’s Bank had a run upon it in the mail. As the bank passenger—with an arm drawn through the leathern strap, which did what lay in it to keep him from pounding against the next passenger, and driving him into his corner, whenever the coach got a special jolt—nodded in his place, with half-shut eyes, the little coach-windows, and the coach-lamp dimly gleaming through them, and the bulky bundle of opposite passenger, became the bank, and did a great stroke of business. The rattle of the harness was the chink of money, and more drafts were honoured in five minutes than even Tellson’s, with all its foreign and home connection, ever paid in thrice the time. Then the strong-rooms underground, at Tellson’s, with such of their valuable stores and secrets as were known to the passenger (and it was not a little that he knew about them), opened before him, and he went in among them with the great keys and the feebly-burning candle, and found them safe, and strong, and sound, and still, just as he had last seen them.
I actually think it's a really neat passage, it invokes the surreal more than I would expect from 19th century prose. Also, this part just before is very vivid and quite funny:
> Except on the crown, which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing jaggedly all over it, and growing down hill almost to his broad, blunt nose. It was so like Smith’s work, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog might have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world to go over.
Shakespeare and Chaucer were fucking awful. They did nothing but make me hate reading and English class. It took me years to enjoy reading after the "classics". Many of my classmates were similar.
