Quote:
Originally Posted by Mortis
In the case of Harry Potter I don't thin the teachers, professors or education professionals are afraid of what they don't know, but rather to set in their ways to change or explore the newer books available. Contemporary fiction is rarely used for teaching unless the class is contemporary studies (what ever its called  |
It's not the education professionals specifically that I was referring to (well, not most of them, I would like to believe). Some are indeed unwilling to approach anything new, for various reasons. It's the "rest" I had in mind, and by that I mean, the public at large, the parents (in the case of younger kids), the school management... the apparatuses that, either overtly or covertly, monitor what is being taught in class.
And yes, these new books are relegated into fringe modules, like contemporary fic -- which could be a way for them to garner attention (and at the same time "be made safe") and become mainstream. At the same time, they're always held against the "canon" (which this is my experience) and shown to be lacking in worth (the completely wrong way to go about it -- just an example: Beethoven's 9th Symphony and his Ode To Joy were harshly dressed down by critics at the beginning, as being music for the rabble, excessively emotional, not for the elite...... well, time has been a better judge...)