|
After all is said and done, it's the books that you have fond memories of that are great to each of us. Not that books are not great if we have not read them. But part of the reading problem is that teachers in school force books at us that we tend to no like and then force us to really go into depth with them. I don't see the need to have to memorize "To be or not to be". That is a real turn off for a lot of kids. Shakespear (IMHO) is a bad idea to teach in school. A lot of kids have enough trouble reading as it is. And to force books that they don't understand is just wrong. We need to be learning from works that have to do with today. Ones kids can relate to.
But overall, reading should be fun. I was lucky. I was given books that were fun for me to read before school got me and ruined reading. So I was able to keep reading what I liked. In school I read some pretty awful books. That's a big issue there. Books then are seen as not fun for kids and they decide they'd rather not read. I grew up before video game consoles. When I was 13 the first video game console was pong & breakout. So we didn't have the fancy concoles we have now. I spent a lot of time reading. But kids today have so many distractions from reading that to force books they don't like means they won't find the time to bother to read. Parents need to try to foster an interest in books by helping them find books they may enjoy. The library is a great resource for that until they find what it is they like.
To me, I don't care if a book is called great literature. If I don't like it, it's not great to me. But I do understand that some are great even if you don't like them because of the impact they've had outside of the body of work, like Dickens and Tolkien (for example). They have work that has helped shape a lot of the literature to follow. and that does make them great even if you don't like them.
|