Salon: Books That should be Banned from Schools.

[JDK1962]

Originally Posted by emellaich

In support of what you are saying, I remember being assigned a book that I hated. After graduating, I was desperate for something to read, and found my old book and reread it. This time around I loved it. I wasn't enough older for my tastes to change. The only change was that I wasn't forced to read it.

This.

What's also important is how it's presented by the teacher; a bad teacher can kill a good book.

Take Beowulf (in Annie Hall, recall Alvy's line "Just don't take any course where they make you read Beowulf."). Easy to make the assigned reading into torture. Yet, in my 8th grade daughter's language arts class, the instructor kicked off the semester with Beowulf, making it the entry point into a larger lesson plan about the hero's journey, how ideas in Beowulf show up in modern literature and cinema, and how it relates to some of the basic truths about humanity.

[abookreader]

Originally Posted by Apache

The worst book I ever read was The Scarlet Letter. I was forced to read it in High School.
Apache

OMG me too. We suffered through that our freshman year of High School. I think our Teacher thought it was some kind of feminist enlightenment to go on and on about the unfairness of poor Hester's life, but even as a budding feminist I couldn't muster up one bit of fondness for that book.

[curtw]

I can't believe that nobody has yet mentioned The Last of the Mohicans. My, what a waste of paper and ink.

I don't think that the selection of books to be assigned should be based on how popular the book is with students or how much they will enjoy the book. If that was the criteria it would all be young vampires in love and science fiction or fantasy.

My defense of a few titles mentioned:

Scarlet Letter. If your teacher told you it was supposed to be about feminism she was off her rocker. It's about the nature of guilt and revenge and the toll it takes on a person. Though I will say that, at least for the first read, one should skip the introduction by Hawthorne and start with I. The Prison Door.

Beowulf? I would agree that forcing students to plow though the original Old English would be pointless. In my opinion the translation by Seamus Heaney (actually a best seller when if was first published) is the way to go and a very nice read.

I must admit that Catcher In the Rye still does nothing for me. It is good though that I got that right of passage out as assigned reading in school long ago.

[voracious71]

Originally Posted by JDK1962

Personally, I think a lot of people have their opinion confused with fact.

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.

I'd be happy to rag on Jane Eyre all day, since as an 8th grade male, being forced to read that book was torture. There was nothing in it for me. On the other hand, I loved Catcher in the Rye when it showed up as an assigned reading, and I loved Watership Down when I picked it up outside of class, and I loved Ivanhoe when I finally got to it in my 30s (Jude the Obscure, read around this same time, made me want to kill myself...I'm surprised there isn't more Hardy on that list).

Liking/disliking books is like throwing spaghetti at a wall: some will stick, some won't. But blaming the spaghetti seems dumb.

I agree. And sometimes, I was assigned a book, thought I would hate it and ended up loving it. People are so vastly different that we can't be sure who is going to hate any given book.

And I don't see anything wrong with "forcing" a child to read something. If you left it up to most kids, they wouldn't be in school at all. They need to be taught discipline, and the concept of sticking with something even though it may be hard at the time. I had books that I didn't enjoy that I had to read. But, actually I'm still glad I read them.

[RDaneel54]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

I must admit that Catcher In the Rye still does nothing for me. It is good though that I got that right of passage out as assigned reading in school long ago.

I think it's only purpose is as a trigger for brainwashing; see "Conspiracy Theory" movie.

[xg4bx]

[QUOTE=patrickt;1798154]And for me, if a school library chooses to not buy a certain book, it's a responsible decision they're made and not "banning". For example, I would not encourage a high school, or junion high, to have "The Anarchists Cookbook" on their shelves. Books on combat knife fighting would probably best left for other venues. The same would go, in my opinion, for racist hate-literature regardless of the source.

[QUOTE]


but if we don't teach our kids about knife fighting for fun and profit, who will? better they learn it from books and dad than on the streets.

i'd put Fight Club, both book and film, in every school. i've learned more about being a man and a citizen of the modern age from that movie than i have from anywhere else.

[Keryl Raist]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

I don't think that the selection of books to be assigned should be based on how popular the book is with students or how much they will enjoy the book. If that was the criteria it would all be young vampires in love and science fiction or fantasy.

Assuming they actually read the books, this would be bad why?

I've got a buddy who teaches HS English now, and has taught JRH English in the past. The breakdown goes something like this: 50% of the kids don't read the assignment at all. 25% read the Sparknotes. 23% read the book and resent the hell out of it. 2% read and enjoy.

I'd think that maybe picking books kids liked, or books that at least bridge the gap between YA teen-vamps-in-love and the Scarlet Letter (there has to be at least a few well written Vamp love books with some actual depth and symbolism and meaning.) and actually nourishing a love of reading might be a good plan.

For me personally (I was in the read and resented the hell out of it group) The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (high school) and The Awakening (college) were the two books I'd rather scratch my eyes out than read again.

[FizzyWater]

In my Junior year in high school, we read only American literature from 1700-1800s. It was awful. So much of it was from the Puritans and had Every other Word Capitalized.

I remember reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles in 6th grade and arguing with my teacher that the "heroine" was a total wimp and just "needed to get over herself". I've always meant to pick it up and try it as an adult to see what my impression would be now.

On the other hand, my Sophomore English teacher liked us to read Shakespeare out loud in class. It was my first realization that I could follow it, as long as I read it out loud!

[phenomshel]

Some classics I loved, some I hated. I understood The Scarlet Letter, but the language, to a modern teen, was booooorinnnnggg. And still is, to this modern adult.

I liked most of my literature classes, but I already read everything I could get my hands on anyway. But I do think that assigning boring reading material is a sure way to turn kids off reading, or at the least guarantee that they read marshmallow fluff for the rest of their lives. Even my preferred reading material is cozy mysteries or urban fantasy - I read for relaxation and brain candy - and I'd bet that it is, in part, due to having to plow through some of those "classics".

[SmokeAndMirrors]

I agree that, of course, taste in books is personal. Also that some things might be better at certain points in your life, with certain understandings, than at other points. I read Catcher in the Rye on my own when I was 15 or so. I loved it, but I refuse to read it again. To me, it felt like I was reading it at the perfect point in my life for that book, and I think it would spoil it for me to read it now.

And I did like some of the books I read for school at various points- Of Mice and Men, Dharma Bums (yes, really), The Outsiders...

And some of them I think I would have liked better had we read something different from that author. For example, I wouldn't say I "hated" Romeo and Juliet, but it certainly didn't resonate with me very well at 17 - and I wasn't the only one. A few months later, I wound up reading some of Shakespeare's comedies, and enjoyed them greatly.

I don't think I'll ever like Watership Down - the subject matter itself doesn't appeal to me in any way. But being forced to read it for class made me hate it infinitely more than I probably would otherwise.

There's an argument to be made that I was an especially ornery child, but I don't think I'm alone in some of the lit that I was forced to read in school turning me off from reading. There is definitely a large gap in my life where I did very little reading on my own - incidentally, it coincides nicely with the heaviest years of forced reading in school. And it was never heavier than how I read now, so I doubt it has anything to do with the amount of reading.

School reading assignments turn a lot of kids off from reading. I think some of this has to do with the content itself, much of which hasn't held up well with modern changes in storytelling and writing. Something being more than 70 years old does not automatically make it better than something that came out 5 years ago, and in some cases can make it less accessible to young readers.

I'm not saying let's assign Twilight (although I certainly think you could derive an interesting discussion about the fundamentalist movement in America from it... but that's only if you can stand to read it). But I am saying that we should give more thought to how these novels hold up. 100 years ago, trains were pretty amazing too. But now we have airplanes.

Also, I do think more thought needs to be given to how they teach them. Taking Twilight again, I can only read as far as 100 pages into the first book if I look at it from the perspective I mentioned above - one of evaluating its timeliness and popularity against current trends in American society. If I pay too much attention to the story itself I just go insane.

Psychologically speaking, this is something that teens and adults are capable of, but usually not younger people (or at least not to the same degree). It's a meta skill you gain as your brain develops. And you only *really* develop it by using it. It's one of those processes that you have to work at.

Looking back on it, I think the majority of the books I was assigned in the later half of school were intended to teach us about something unrelated to the book itself, in the same way Twilight doesn't actually talk about the fundamentalist movement. But there was very little, or no, direction towards thinking that way about it, and without that context, some of these books are completely insufferable. It is only the cultural and social context that makes them readable.

Teachers need, as the Salon article mentions, to be giving clearer instruction to minds that are only beginning to have this ability, as to how to read it for its context. Some of these books come alive if you look at them from that direction. Others are merely more tolerable. But lacking that context, they are just painful and often feel pointless. And I don't remember ever getting a ton of direction when I was in school.

I take that back. I had one teacher who was great at that. I'm fairly sure that's why I liked every book he ever assigned.

[wvcherrybomb]

Classics are just classics because there wasn't that much to choose from back in the day and people were much more easily impressed. They pretty much all suck in comparison to some of the stuff we have to read now. *

*Opinion only, yours may differ.

[Darqref]

Originally Posted by Keryl Raist

Assuming they actually read the books, this would be bad why?

I've got a buddy who teaches HS English now, and has taught JRH English in the past. The breakdown goes something like this: 50% of the kids don't read the assignment at all. 25% read the Sparknotes. 23% read the book and resent the hell out of it. 2% read and enjoy.

For me, the bad one was Of Mice and Men, which put me off Steinbeck forever, and off the whole genre too. On the other hand, a different class and teacher had us read 1984, and I didn't have any problems (I told the teacher, read that already, and she had me read something else...)

The difference is all in the class presentation. Because those 50% don't bother to read, the teacher had a lot of class time devoted to plain reading. Then you add all the dissection and investigation of deeper meaning, and I was ready to walk out of class. The other class? The subject was SF, and only about 3 days total was spent on 1984, with intelligent discussion instead of rote dissection. (Then, I had to give a book report to the rest of the class about the book I read instead.)

The bottom line for me, it wasn't *Just* about a particular book with annoying language, subject, and story, but because the rest of the class was so slow that I was *BORED*. Move through the material at a pace that holds interest, and much can be forgiven about a particular book.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Darqref

For me, the bad one was Of Mice and Men, which put me off Steinbeck forever, .....

.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by emellaich

In support of what you are saying, I remember being assigned a book that I hated. After graduating, I was desperate for something to read, and found my old book and reread it. This time around I loved it. I wasn't enough older for my tastes to change. The only change was that I wasn't forced to read it.

Interesting. What was the title if you don't mind the question?

Steve Allen had an article about reading and how some books are best read at certain ages by a given person. Of course in a class room setting I can imagine that some teachers are just better at helping bring the world of the book to life too. My mom had to read some Shakespeare (Julius Caeser) in High School and thought it boring but then years later she saw a presentation of it on T.V. and something clicked for her. There is also the matter of personal tastes. The Harry Potter books inspired many kids to read because the stories appealed to them. In part it may be due to the genre of the books, but I think it's also due to the fact that the kids could relate to Harry & his friends. A lot of kids know how it feels to be either abused or picked on by others so they could see a kindred spirit in Harry. Who doesn't like to see the schoolyard bully get his comeuppance? I imagine a lot of kids cheered when Hermione clobbered Malfoy both in the book and in the movie version.