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Originally Posted by kandwo
In my experience, people who blame their school for putting them off classics for life are people who never would read them anyway.
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There are so many books out there that hy would you keep trying to find a classic you like when you didn't like the ones you've read? Just go find a genre you do like.
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.[/quote]
The problem is that Shakespeare was meant to be seen and not read. You might find you like
Hamlet if you saw it performed. I've seen movie adaptations of classic books that I would not like to read. Sometimes, the problem is the style of writing.
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!
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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?
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But, some of these other viewpoints aren't relevant to anything today. Sure you can read about different viewpoints, but not viewpoints that are obsolete. The problem also is in the way some of these books were written back then. If schools read books that were relevant to current times and using current language, then they might be more accepted.