Quote:
Originally Posted by QuantumIguana
|
No, I am serious. Some stuff you have to learn, fun or not. School is meant to educate... what message are we sending, that everything should be fun and giggles? Maybe this attitude has something to do with the problems in our workforce - people are not learning to WORK, intellectually or whatnot.
Second, even if you want to assign only enjoyable material, obviously 'enjoyable' is subjective. I, for one, enjoyed most of the books on that list - others might have not.
Also, I think school should offer a broad spectrum of selection and thus allow students to identify what type of literature most appeals to them. In the process, they will discover also what does NOT appeal to them. And that's fine. But the idea 'I don't read because high-school made me hate reading' is just a poorly formulated excuse for laziness. Do you not eat because once you tried food you didn't like?
And I constantly discover that my younger sister, now just out of high-school, has been assigned all sorts of sub-par material. Agatha Christie in high-school. I, myself, had to read Dracula the first year of college. Literature one should be able to understand and master at age 12, not 20. That's why I am so offended by this. We are already pretending way too little from these kids, now someone argues we should expect even less?
And, just to give you an idea... I have thought Finance to undergraduate and graduate students at multiple, all fairly high-ranked, universities. If I complain, it's because I can see the effects of our primary education first-hand. It is, flat-out, scary.
By this pace, by the time I am old, there won't be anyone capable of performing a medical procedure, because they won't be able to read a medical textbook. Or because they will not feel like doing it, because it's 'too boring'.