Quote:
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.
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.
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.
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In my experience, people who blame their school for putting them off classics for life are people who never would read them anyway.
What I find strange about your argument is school making someone dislike Shakespeare. I actively disliked Romeo and Juliet and didn't like our class discussions about Hamlet. Did that ruin Shakespeare for me? No. Why would it? He's written a range of completely different plays in a variety genres and the fact that I dislike Romeo and Juliet doesn't mean that I won't like Henry V. And even if I dislike reading his plays, I might enjoy watching them.
I've read very little Shakespeare, but that's because I'm not that interested. I want to read him some day, just not now. And I'm under no illusion that my bad experiences in school spoiled him for me.
Furthermore, there are several books that I have found boring when first trying to read them, and yet, when returning to them at a later stage in my life, have loved.
I hated, absolutely loathed Dickens in school. Still I plan to start re-reading his works (yes, even the ones that school spoiled for me).
Are people really that brittle? One bad experience and nevermore! Listening to some people reading a boring classic in school means that a person who otherwise would be an avid reader and maybe the next Shakespeare will now be put off for life!
And finally, as for your last point - isn't one of the main points with reading developing empathy and learning about other viewpoints? If you're only going to read about stuff "relevant to you" - how are you going to develop? Don't you find it useful to explore how people function in other conditions, radically different to your own? To find out what unites us as humans and what sets us apart?