Salon: Books That should be Banned from Schools.

[Rob Lister]

Originally Posted by witeowl

Yeah, the vote kills me (as does her statement that she thinks that zero of her students completed the assigned reading).

To be clear, she thought everyone read it. I thought none of them did, even her. The truth was likely somewhere in the middle (but closer to my end that hers ) Hell, Tommy Russo raised his hand and he couldn't even read.

I was a smart ass but the whole 'vote' thing prompted my response.

[RDaneel54]

Originally Posted by witeowl

Respectfully expressing a differing opinion is gutsy? Well, thank goodness I have a ton of gutsy students, then. Dissent is the root of some of the best discussions in my class, whether it's genuine difference of opinion or dissent out of misunderstanding.

Gutsy given the type of teacher she was.

[Kevin8or]

Originally Posted by JDK1962

A book is "good" or "bad" for an individual at a particular time and in light of what experiences they've had and what they've read before.

Agreed. Try re-reading a clasic from high school. You might be surprised by a new-found appreciation. Don't pick a book you absolutely hated, of course. Nothing will make me touch Moby Dick again, but there have been others that astonished me. How did I miss the depth, the richness, of this book on the first go-around? I think we were too young and inexperienced to fully comprehend some of the literature we read in high school.

Hated it: Herman Melville. Loved it: John Steinbeck.

I'd like to hear your opinions on this one: Shakespeare in high school. Elizabethan English for teenagers? It wasn't so bad for me in college, but I think high school is too early. I wonder if I'll never love Shakespeare because it was forced upon me too soon.

Originally Posted by SmokeAndMirrors

An hour later, they told me I could go. My reply? "One sec, almost at the end of the chapter." There was a groan from the administrator - the one who'd given me the detention - as he realized that he had essentially done nothing but provided me a nice chair to hang out in.

LMAO

[DMB]

Originally Posted by Kevin8or

I'd like to hear your opinions on this one: Shakespeare in high school. Elizabethan English for teenagers? It wasn't so bad for me in college, but I think high school is too early. I wonder if I'll never love Shakespeare because it was forced upon me too soon.

I'm very sceptical about deciding things like that by age. I loved Shakespeare by the time I was 15. Not everybody does.

There is a very big problem about set books. If you give children something that is too difficult for the majority, it may put them off. If you give them something considered easy for the age group, it may bore some of the more advanced ones to screaming point.

I'm not sure what the solution is. When I was teaching maths to grades 10 and 11, I used to divide my class into sections. The majority would work on the syllabus for their age group and the more advanced ones would do more advanced work. By the end of grade 11 the majority would sit a public exam (GCE O-level in those days) and the advanced ones would already have passed it and would instead take an extra subject, Additional Maths. This set them up to do one or two maths subjects at advanced level in grades 12 and 13.

I don't know how difficult it would be to do the equivalent in English Literature.

[HomeInMyShoes]

^That's what choices are about. We had a choice between Brave New World and A Tale of Two Cities in Grade 12. I choose the latter. My hindsight says I should have read the former, but such is life. I didn't enjoy my choice much. But it is hit and miss. I liked Of Mice and Men when I read it when I was 16 and I really disliked Moby Dick when I read it when I was 30. There's no choice out there that's going to appeal to all the kids in the class, but having some choice might generate a little more interest in the readers.

When it came time for discussion, the teacher just split the class and some worked on some assignments and the rest did discussion and then we switched back and forth over a few classes.

[Keryl Raist]

Originally Posted by Kevin8or

Agreed. Try re-reading a clasic from high school. You might be surprised by a new-found appreciation. Don't pick a book you absolutely hated, of course. Nothing will make me touch Moby Dick again, but there have been others that astonished me. How did I miss the depth, the richness, of this book on the first go-around? I think we were too young and inexperienced to fully comprehend some of the literature we read in high school.

Hated it: Herman Melville. Loved it: John Steinbeck.

I'd like to hear your opinions on this one: Shakespeare in high school. Elizabethan English for teenagers? It wasn't so bad for me in college, but I think high school is too early. I wonder if I'll never love Shakespeare because it was forced upon me too soon.

LMAO

I liked Shakespeare when I got R&J in 8th grade, Julius Caesar in 10th, and a full on Shakespeare seminar in college. Poe rocked my world in 6th grade and last week

For the most part my opinions of the 'classics' have stayed the same. I loathed The Awakening at 18 and still hated it at 30. The Old Man and the Sea still makes me want to claw out my eyes. Les Mes didn't do anything for me both times I went after it, with a decade in between.

What I have noticed is my take on popular works has changed quite a bit. Some of the fantasy novels I adored as a kid read like cardboard cut outs of themselves. And my take on 'good' tv has changed radically.

[ScalyFreak]

The biggest problem with assigned reading in school is that most teachers probably have no idea why they're assigning what these books to the kids to read. At best, they'd be able to say, "because it's a classic" or something equally mundane and lacking in through and comprehension.

At least in high school, our literature teacher would give us a good reason for why we were assigned the books we were reading. She made us read The Chocolate War the semester one kid in 10th grade tried to kill himself because he was bullied (that's a whole other and very tragic story) so at least she put some though into her reading selections. Also, she gave us options, by telling us to pick one of three options for the next assignment.

[Bookpossum]

Originally Posted by Kevin8or

I'd like to hear your opinions on this one: Shakespeare in high school. Elizabethan English for teenagers? It wasn't so bad for me in college, but I think high school is too early. I wonder if I'll never love Shakespeare because it was forced upon me too soon.

Back in the mists of time when I was at school, it seemed the teachers did everything they could to make Shakespeare as dreary as possible. But I had been lucky enough to go to a good production of "Twelfth Night" the year before I went to high school. So I KNEW Shakespeare was wonderful, however dreary the teachers made him.

And "Twelfth Night" is still my favourite Shakespeare play - I haven't seen all of them (or read all of them) but I have seen and/or read quite a number.

It seems to me that the way to introduce high school children to Shakespeare is to take them to see a professional performance of one or more of the plays - that's what grabs you and that's how they were meant to be experienced. Preferably ones with plenty of action, like "Macbeth".

And to add to the list of loathed books: "Crime and Punishment" which I had to read at University, where I was a mature age (well, in my twenties) student. I remember saying something about it to a friend who was herself a high school teacher of English, and she said "Just be glad you don't have to read "The Idiot"!" So Dostoievsky is definitely not on my reading list.

[Kevin8or]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

It seems to me that the way to introduce high school children to Shakespeare is to take them to see a professional performance of one or more of the plays - that's what grabs you and that's how they were meant to be experienced.

Yes! Curling up with a script from Shakespeare might never become my idea of a good time, but he comes alive on the stage. And, I've enjoyed reading the play afterward, before the glow has faded. (Thinking of Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet, here.)

Also, some theater productions are very witty modern adaptations. Purists dislke them, but I believe if Shakespeare were alive today, he'd applaud them.

[DMB]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

Back in the mists of time when I was at school, it seemed the teachers did everything they could to make Shakespeare as dreary as possible. But I had been lucky enough to go to a good production of "Twelfth Night" the year before I went to high school. So I KNEW Shakespeare was wonderful, however dreary the teachers made him.

And "Twelfth Night" is still my favourite Shakespeare play - I haven't seen all of them (or read all of them) but I have seen and/or read quite a number.

It seems to me that the way to introduce high school children to Shakespeare is to take them to see a professional performance of one or more of the plays - that's what grabs you and that's how they were meant to be experienced. Preferably ones with plenty of action, like "Macbeth".

And to add to the list of loathed books: "Crime and Punishment" which I had to read at University, where I was a mature age (well, in my twenties) student. I remember saying something about it to a friend who was herself a high school teacher of English, and she said "Just be glad you don't have to read "The Idiot"!" So Dostoievsky is definitely not on my reading list.

I do wonder how much of the problem with Dostoevsky is due to the fact that most of us read them in translation. I find nearly all the Russian classics I have tried hardgoing and I think a lot of it is down to the inevitable loss in translation. It's not the fault of the translators; the languages and related modes of thought are so different. I even get confused with the names of the characters in huge works like War and Peace.

Keryl Raist mentions Les Misérables. I wonder if that was in French or English. It was just about the first full-scale novel I ever read in French, and I found it gripping. But I was aware that the language would not translate well. Nineteenth-century French is a language that goes in for purple passages that seem fine in context but would look awkward to eyes used to modern English writing styles.

I wish I could read at a decent length in more languages. I wonder how much we lose through having access only to translations.

When my daughter was in 12th and 13th grades she was doing Higher English as her language A for the Internationale Baccalaureate. Although the subject was called "English" the material they were studying was "world literature in translation". She did a section on the position of women in the 19th century and had to study Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary and Middlemarch. I thought it was a great pity that Madame Bovary came up on her English syllabus, and therefore translated, rather than in her French syllabus.

Does anyone else think that translations are a barrier? Or should I start a thread on reading translations?

I can see there are good arguments for exposing children to writings from other cultures, but I'm not at all sure that this ought to be in "English Literature".

[mldavis2]

Originally Posted by DMB

I can see there are good arguments for exposing children to writings from other cultures, but I'm not at all sure that this ought to be in "English Literature".

Hmm...good post. I think one could make a case for classics being "international" in scope and hence outside of language restrictions. There is no doubt that many writings are best read in the original. One of the best examples is the Quran which loses virtually all of its poetry and meter when translated. But can we afford to ignore Dostoyevsky until we learn Russian? Sometimes the best answer is the lesser of two evils.

[ekster]

Originally Posted by DMB

I wish I could read at a decent length in more languages. I wonder how much we lose through having access only to translations.

A lot.

I'm lucky as I can read in both Russian and French. I've read some of Dostoevsky's works in Russian, and I looked over at the translations, and there's a world of difference. A lot of things simply cannot be translated and completely lose their meaning when they're written in English. A lot of people are also not used to the way the names get shortened or use, or the way people talk/write in Russian (especially novels from the 19th/early 20th century, when language was one of the most (if not the most) important things in the Russian culture and the criteria for a good work was extremely strict, anything containing more than 2-3 mistakes, having the slightest unprofessional tone, etc. was considered trash and thrown out on the spot.)

Same thing with French. Les Misérables really takes someone understanding French to really read the novel. No matter how hard someone tries to translate it, the language just cannot translate well.

Another perfect example for me is The Three Musketeers. It's (now) my favourite book ever. It's also my first book I've ever read. And while it was my favourite story ever, I really struggled with the book at first because I read it in Russian (it also didn't help that it was written for adults and I read it when I was 6 years old... but that's another story.) I re-read it again in Russian when I was older (10-12?) and I enjoyed it more, but it was still not an easy read. I then read it in English in my teenage years, and that made me question why I even liked it in the first place. And sometime later, I actually got the French version and finally read the original. What a difference! It actually became my favourite book ever at that point.

So yeah, translation is another thing to keep in mind. I'm not saying people shouldn't read translated work, but I don't think kids in highschool/college are ready to appreciate a translated book at that age and understand the differences compared to the language they're currently used to.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Originally Posted by ScalyFreak

The biggest problem with assigned reading in school is that most teachers probably have no idea why they're assigning what these books to the kids to read. At best, they'd be able to say, "because it's a classic" or something equally mundane and lacking in through and comprehension.

At least in high school, our literature teacher would give us a good reason for why we were assigned the books we were reading. She made us read The Chocolate War the semester one kid in 10th grade tried to kill himself because he was bullied (that's a whole other and very tragic story) so at least she put some though into her reading selections. Also, she gave us options, by telling us to pick one of three options for the next assignment.

A good teacher will make anything interesting and worthwhile.

[Fayth]

Originally Posted by SmokeAndMirrors

I was. Teachers never knew what to do with kids who read.

Couldn't be more true. I would often read in class during lessons and teachers rarely bothered me. I'm not sure they understood it was pure entertainment to me, or maybe they just didn't want to discourage someone reading.

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

A good teacher will make anything interesting and worthwhile.

True, and my high school teacher did her best. But there are far too few good teachers in the world...