[issybird]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I didn't like mot of the classics I read in school. That's why a lot of people won't read them or try to find ones they may like. School puts them ff and I can fully understand that. Teachers pick the worst ones and then make us read them. The books read in school should be more relevant and better books. I did read The Brothers Karamazov in school and I really disliked it. There were other books I disliked. I also disliked Shakespeare. So I do think it;s the fault of the teachers for picking rubbish. Not everything was rubbish, but most was.

You might dismiss two of the great authors in the western canon, Dostoevsky and Shakespeare, as rubbish, but not with a lot of credibility. It can be a bad idea to generalize from one’s individual experience, even more so when it’s not based on facts or reason.

If I had picked classics myself, I could have stopped reading any I didn't like and found ones I liked. But I do feel that schools turn kids off to the classics so they don't want to find ones they like and I think also because of schools picking classics that are not good, they can and do cause kids not to want to read for pleasure.

Perhaps students are not the best judges of what they ought to learn? Where did the idea arise that school was for fun? Sometimes you need to eat your sprouts.

I'll disagree. If you want kids to confront their ideas about the world, you have to have them reading books that are more relevant to the world as it is now and not as it was. That's part of the problem. Teachers need to pick more modern books that kids can relate to in some way.

Just as one example, the wonderful film Clueless shows just how relevant a 19th century author can be. In any case, it’s in the teaching, not in the books. Part of what makes a classic a classic is its timelessness.