Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I guess it depends what you consider the purpose of English Lit. classes to be. Personally I regard their purpose to be what their name says: to teach at least some of the great works of literature that are our cultural heritage. To my mind it's a parent's job to instil a love of reading in their children, not the school's.
Reading for pleasure does not necessarily have the same purpose as reading to learn. If you want to read SF for pleasure (as I did as a teenager, and still do today) that has a different purpose to reading the classics.
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Not everybody has a native taste for classics.
And it has, as a prerequisite, a love of reading.
If you had teachers that made the classics enjoyable, lucky you.
(I had a history teacher you presented history as gossip, focusing on the people and their follies as well as their achievements. A rarity that made history fun.)
But way too many students have teachers that treat literature as medicine ("It's good for you!") and make no effort to get students engaged. For them it's a checklist item in the curriculum: read MACBETH, check. Discuss, check. Move on to TALE OF TWO CITIES.
The intent isn't to teach literary appreciation at all.
It's just another assembly line step.