[kandwo]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

My personal opinion (yes, I get that it's an unpopular one) is that school should not teach any books at all. People either read or don't and personally I don't know a single person who reads because of what they were taught at school. Those who like to read generally read despite what they had to do at school. That's my personal experience, at least. I loved to read long before I even went to school; OTOH, most of my well educated relatives don't read for pleasure at all and never have.

Of course I might be biased, as I hated school and anything to do with it since the very first day. So nothing can convince me that school is the right place to make someone love something.

I don't think one should expect school to instill some sort of love of reading in kids. One can discover that on one's own. The point of reading classics is to have a common cultural framework and a general appreciation for the culture and history that one is surrounded by.

Originally Posted by issybird

School is the place to educate people. Kids can find love on their own. Reasons to teach books include general cultural knowledge and appreciation and the ability to engage with a text, to question it and to understand it. Kids might not love algebra, but they still need to learn it.

I agree with the general cultural knowledge part. But school is horrible at teaching some sort of critical thinking and deeper analysis in my experience. It's a good goal, I guess. Maybe if they taught logic at the same time... But then nobody would use it anyway.