<p>Originaloog --I totally agree that students need to be encouraged to read whatever they will read for pleasure. I disagree with the idea of looking for books for my kids to raise their sATs.</p>
<p>But I think it’s clear that the main point of the article was what schools aren’t teaching, and that’s the thrust of most of the posts here.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t throw a steady diet of Dickens at a 13 year old, but in HS, I think some attempts to stretch like that are pretty realistic for a bright kid thinking about college. I just am appalled by the whole “archaic” dismissal that seems to be epidemic here.</p>
<p>IMHO, “Pride and Prejudice” is quintessential chick lit. It just happens to be fabulous.</p>
<p>I read fat Victorian novels for fun, but I absolutely hated a lot of my junior high English classes. The more I loved the book, the more it sickened me to see it dissected into constituent parts with color-coded flags and highlighting: green for foreshadowing, yellow for metaphor, blue for irony, etc. <em>shudder</em> I still remember the flayed corpse of “All Quiet on the Western Front” that my 8th grade English teacher held up as the ideal example of how to mark up your copy for easy use when essay-writing time rolled around.</p>
<p>Mark Twain, God bless him, told junior high English teachers where to stick it right at the beginning of “Huckleberry Finn”: “PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”</p>
<p>Yet this is probably the book abused by more 8th grade English teachers than any other. Twain would have enjoyed the irony (highlighted in blue…)</p>
<p>I just finished “Wuthering Heights” on the train out of the city last night. It was a transcendent experience, to say the least. Heathcliff! </p>
<p>I started James’ “Portrait of a Lady” on the way in this morning…absolutely gorgeous language! </p>
<p>In High school, we were allowed a mix of great literature, Flaubert, Faulkner, Fitzgerald etc, and were often assigned poor ideological fiction like “Inherit the Wind,” for obvious reasons.</p>
<p>Most of my great reading, all through school, came through my own personal choices—often encouraged by mentors or my parents. I attended a rather good school, as public schools go, I guess, but I had only one great English teacher that really inspired me to go beyond the humdrum norm.</p>
<p>A great teacher can do a lot…if you are lucky enough to find one.</p>
<p>I think my kids have had a decent mix of older and more recent classics. The APUSH year they read American classics including The Scarlet Letter, Ethan Frome, and Catch 22. He’s read several Shakespeares (Not Henry IV!). I’m a bit disappointed he hasn’t enjoyed the really fun classics he’s had to read (Pride and Prejudice and Tale of Two Cities for example.) My senior signed up for Myths and Legends and is reading The Iliad at the moment. My 9th grader read Lord of the Flies and Romeo and Juliet. Both kids read voraciously for pleasure mostly big fat sci-fi and fantasy books. The older one has also read kajillions of computer manuals. He had a stellar CR SAT score for what it’s worth.</p>
<p>I agree that a lot of high school students aren’t ready for some of the books they are required to read. However, when will they ever get ready if teachers continually patronize them and assume that they can’t grasp more complicated literature? When I first started reading adult literature, a lot of it must have gone over my head. I’m fairly sure that as a ten year old, I didn’t get that Nancy in Oliver Twist was a prostitute, or appreciate the wonderful irony of the first line of Pride and Prejudice. But I read it on the level that I could, and I grew as a reader and as a person because of it. On a more practical level, how do students approach college English if they have no background in serious literary analysis and can’t understand complex syntax?</p>
<p>I also agree that there is a lot of poor teaching at the high school level, and that is a shame. But at its best, high school English teaching is more than trying to reduce dead texts into pat themes and symbols. Its about finding the life in a narrative, and understanding how the author aachieves this. The teaching that Hanna is talking about is indeed destructive, but it doesn’t have to be that way. By the way, I also think that Twain is being somewhat tongue in cheek in his intro to Huck Finn. Analysis is not synonymous with overreading. While I think people who try to find evidence of Huck and Jim’s deep sexual longings for each other are really reaching, discussing ideas about language and consciousness or authenticity vs. convention can be valuable.</p>
<p>The fact is, most kids don’t dislike Dickens because he isn’t accessible. The kids who don’t like Dickens are freqently the same kids who don’t like Fitzgerald, or Hemingway, or Twain, or almost anything that requires sustained effort. That doesn’t mean the schools should give in to students most anti-intellectual tendency. While I’m all for integrating modern and classic texts, we shouldn’t exclude one just because students prefer another.</p>
<p>Dickens is accessible. But Rime of the Ancient Mariner is pretty tough going without a good teacher – I’m pretty sure I would have skipped that one if it were left up to me . . . Still, I remember it being kind of enjoyable because of the teacher . . .</p>
<p>I remember the Rime of the Ancient Mariner as being easy peasy. :)</p>
<p>Dickens was a best seller. He’s wordy by our standards, but he can tell a story. There are classics I consider difficult - but more on the lines of James Joyce or Faulkner or even Henry James at his wordiest (I went on a tear when we lived in Germany and read several, but just couldn’t get through The Ambassadors.)</p>
<p>Think of how much weight a high school English course is expected to bear: teaching language (grammar/vocabulary/syntax), critical analysis, moral education, multi-cultural appreciation, specifically literary analysis, expository writing, creative writing, literary history, common culture (which is somewhat the same, but not entirely, as literary history), and the relationship among disciplines (mainly with reference to history and other social studies). It can be done – and when it’s done well it’s beautiful – but it’s damn hard and easy to come up short.</p>
<p>Rime of the Ancient Mariner – tough going because it wasn’t very interesting to me. I just looked it up online and still feel the same way . . . long boring things = difficult reading IMO. Faulkner, though, I read for fun . . .</p>
<p>I just read DAVID COPPERFIELD for the first time…I plead to having been a science/engineering student from 4th grade until late in college. I made it a point during D’s at-home school years to hit some of the works I’d missed while I was younger, including Tolstoy and Hugo. Glad I did.</p>
<p>Kudos to ICargirl’s post #25. You don’t strengthen your intellectual muscles unless you tackle things that are weighier than your usual. I really dislike the computer-games-dressed-up-as-prose written for teenage boys. If you expect little, you will get little.</p>
<p>Garland, the irony that there’s a dating service called “Great Expectations” is lost on many.</p>
<p>OK, several of you make a good argument against using “archaic language” as an excuse for kids these days not appreciating (or reading) 19th century classic literature. True, David Copperfield was no more “archaic” in the early 1970s when I read it than it is now. Still, not everyone is suited for Dickens, et al, especially in their teens. They must learn to love the very act and essence of reading before progressing into territory that could potentially turn them off from ever picking up a classic book for pure enjoyment. Saying that we tend to underestimate kids today and that they are capable of reading/comprehending anything under the sun, does them a disservice, I think. Yes, there are many smart young people out there. Are they all ready to fall in love with Dickens … Shakespeare … Hemingway? No. </p>
<p>I like the idea of exposing kids to great writing from different eras, but if poorly done it can turn them off forever. I recall being force-fed Shakespeare by inadequate high school teachers, 'lo those many years ago. To this day, I simply don’t care for Shakespeare. Yes, I’m bad. … The key to my undying love for Dickens (and Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, etc.) was that I was introduced to his writing by my older sister, a dedicated bibliophile who gently encouraged me along the way to broaden my literary horizons. (To outgrow Victoria Holt and the “Black Stallion” books.) I wasn’t exposed to these classic authors for any purpose other than the love of reading good literature. I didn’t have to analyze them, review them, or write a BS paper about them. I simply learned to enjoy them.</p>
<p>One of the semi-incoherent points I’m trying to make is that family plays a huge role in a child’s literary experiences.</p>
<p>Looking back to HS in the late 70’s…
Liked the Illiad and the Odyssey, mythology in general. LOVED T.H. White’s Once and Future King. It lead me to a college course in Arthurian Literature that was just wonderful, the best class I ever took. </p>
<p>HS Sr son disliked a lot of the same ones I did - The Pearl, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies (what downers). He HATED Great Expectations. No complaints about Crime & Punishment, loved The Kite Runner, Gates of Fire, and The Killer Angels.
Younger daughter is devouring the “classics” - Charlotte’s Web, Beverly Cleary books (Ramona and Henry Huggins). Older daughter (12) reads everything – adolescent girly fiction, manga paperbacks, loves mythology, and just finished The Secret Life of Bees (very good). I like anything that gets them reading.</p>
<p>A bit off the original topic, but any suggestions for a 14-year-old (boy)? Younger S. never caught the reading bug. There’s not much time in the school year, but there’s always required reading over the summer.</p>
<p>Coming from a current 9th grader…
We read Great Expectations for my Hon Eng class for our summer assignment. In short, the entire class despised it (though I suspect that also had something to do with that whole ‘She ruined my vaction’ mindset). otoh, everyone {but me} found it stupid and useless and excruciatingly boring. Other books that have been read in that class? Emmm… Snippets of ‘The Odyssey’. 'Bout it.</p>
<p>I myself read basically anything. Currently I’m exploring the whole Jane Austen-Bronte sisters mini genre. However, go up to any of my classmates and say, “Have you read ‘Anna Karenina’?” Basic Response: “Ran- Anna what?” Very depressing.</p>
<p>lspf, have you tried Harry Potter for your son? I’m obsessed with it. </p>
<p>Okay, I will admit I absolutely hated Ethan Frome, and not much of a fan of The Pearl, either. (Though I adore The Grapes of Wrath!)</p>
<p>My kids, as I said, both liked Tale of Two Cities, but hated Great Expectations (LOL, Thedad!). My own favorite Dickens is Bleak House. Other classics one or both of my kids have liked are Catch 22, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Iliad and Oddysey, King Lear, MacBeth, Huckleberry Finn. S devoured Killer Angels when he was nine. D adored Black Beauty and The Secret Garden. Never got into Alcott, though.</p>
<p>For the reluctant 14 year old, Harry Potter, of course. Beyond that,my kids were big fan of the Brian Jacques books and Dragonlance (there are bazillions of the latter!). These tided them over when they were not into the classic stuff. Always did lots of nonfiction, too, depending on their interests. S particularly liked (and still likes) books on everything from sports, poker, and comedy to politics and string theory.</p>
<p>For a 14 year old boy? Maybe Harry Potter, 4: Fantastic Novels by Daniel Pinkwater, The Once and Future King, anything by Terry Pratchett (if you like his kind of stuff), anything by Stephen King . . .</p>
<p>I see two threads throughout most posts here:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>It’s OK to hate a classic. Most readers have preferences/classics they like. In my case, I love Austen, Dickens, Bronte, Dostoyevsky, etc. I hate Steinbeck. really. The point is that just because a book is a classic, it doesn’t mean everyone will love it. Same with any book. So the argument that “classics are boring” because the student hated one or two books is disturbing.</p></li>
<li><p>The people who enjoy classics tend to be the people who make no distinction between classics and other books. It’s entirely OK to read both Harry Potter and Tale of Two Cities and judge them on the same level. Just because it’s a classic doesn’t mean it’s “good,” just because it’s modern lit doesn’t mean it’s bad.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I agree that good literature, including the “classics,” are important to read. I think it’s really necessary to instill a love of all kinds of books early in a child. My son (4th grade) has completed the Harry Potter series, the Narnia series, some of the Little House series, Hardy Boys, Tom Sawyer, Tuck Everlasting, and a bunch of other books. I buy him books and tell him, “This is a great book - I loved it!” He tries it with an open mind. Some books, like Tom sawyer, I mentioned were a “classic” after he had completed them, so he knows that those can be great books without any pressure or stigma.</p>
<p>I also read to them at an early age - but not just children’s books. If I happened to be reading a book and my son climbed into my lap, I read out loud to him. Kerouac is great for that - very lyrical. I’ve done the same with my 3 year old and caught her several times listening to my son read his books out loud to her with a rapturous expression on her face - she’s also snuck into all our books and “read” them repeatedly.</p>
<p>Of course, you can’t go 2 feet in our house without tripping over a book. But I think the attitude that reading - ALL reading - is fun and worthwhile from an early age made the difference.</p>
<p>As a teacher, I actually asked students every year how many of them had books available in the house to read for fun. It was horrifying. Suburban kids - maybe 50%. Inner city kids - about 5%. Both numbers are abysmal.</p>
<p>IMO the perfect book for a 14 yo boy is Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. It’s about about how an adolsecent boy saves the world, but also about how adults use kids. It’s on my top ten list of greatest sci fi novels of all time. If he likes it he should read Ender’s Shadow as well. It covers the same material from a different character’s point of view. In some ways it’s even better. Both my boys adored this book in middle school, I adored it in college when it first came out, my mother loved it. It’s an amazing book.</p>