Quote:
Originally Posted by Penforhire
I must've gone to an alternate universe HS. Most of my HS reading and related discussions were at least okay. Yes, they happened to be all Advanced Placement English classes. Maybe the mainstream classes were more shut-down.
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My problem with the AP english class was that there always seemed to *have* to be a deeper meaning to everything. I'm sorry, but for me, there's never going to be a deeper meaning to something like "Death of a ball turret gunner", and trying to *make* me come up with one is not going to improve my enjoyment of everything.
I can't say I particularly enjoyed that class, a lot of what we had to read was for me god awful boring. I'd sooner run a drill through my eyes than try reading Their Eyes were Watching God again. There were a few bright points, I did enjoy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, but found most Shakespeare to be boring, especially as reading material. I've always felt most Dickens could be vastly improved by an editor that would have made him write with about 1/3 the number of words he used.
Honestly, looking back, I don't know that I feel I gained much by taking that class. It didn't kill my desire to read, but I never did want to read what the teachers felt I should be reading. The class could have been vastly improved in my opinion by adding things like Verne instead of DH Lawrence.