Saying "devil's advocate" appears to imply you think I'm going to object to what you're proposing. :-)
I say, rock on.
Now, that's the short answer, and it leaves a lot out. So let me expand: first and foremost, I'm happy they're reading. Reading is a necessary precursor to getting them to think about books.
I don't think I'd personally get much out of street lit -- not unless I had a reason to be trying to understand that corner of culture, like I'm writing a story -- but for some kids, it might be a powerful thing indeed, speaking to their lives, rather than the lives of some people dead a hundred years ago. There's ways to teach the dead people stuff that makes it relevant to today, of course, but this could lead to that. (More people should approach Romeo and Juliet from a gang perspective, sez I.)
Stephanie Meyer? Use the squee to hook 'em, and then get them thinking critically about it. Might be a bit of a hurdle to clear, since there are readers so fanatical about it that any comment which is "critical" in the sense of "negative" will shut them down -- but hey, if you can channel that passion in the right direction, you're off and running.
Old-school erotica? I haven't ever tried to read Lady Chatterly's Lover, but dude, they are NOT going to be picking up Ulysses. If your point is more "books with sex in general" . . . my junior year, we were given a choice of three books by African-American authors; the one I read, and from what I hear the other two as well, contained some passages that were candidates for the Bad Sex Writing Award. By the time you're talking about sixteen, seventeen, eighteen-year-olds, I think "omg there's sex in it" is a dumb reason to exclude books from the curriculum (not that this stops parents from trying). As a hook to get students interested, though, I think it's pretty weak, since they'll skip right to the dirty bits, and ignore the rest of the book -- unless the rest of the book is really compelling.
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yati
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Date: 2009-02-06 06:04 pm (UTC)I say, rock on.
Now, that's the short answer, and it leaves a lot out. So let me expand: first and foremost, I'm happy they're reading. Reading is a necessary precursor to getting them to think about books.
I don't think I'd personally get much out of street lit -- not unless I had a reason to be trying to understand that corner of culture, like I'm writing a story -- but for some kids, it might be a powerful thing indeed, speaking to their lives, rather than the lives of some people dead a hundred years ago. There's ways to teach the dead people stuff that makes it relevant to today, of course, but this could lead to that. (More people should approach Romeo and Juliet from a gang perspective, sez I.)
Stephanie Meyer? Use the squee to hook 'em, and then get them thinking critically about it. Might be a bit of a hurdle to clear, since there are readers so fanatical about it that any comment which is "critical" in the sense of "negative" will shut them down -- but hey, if you can channel that passion in the right direction, you're off and running.
Old-school erotica? I haven't ever tried to read Lady Chatterly's Lover, but dude, they are NOT going to be picking up Ulysses. If your point is more "books with sex in general" . . . my junior year, we were given a choice of three books by African-American authors; the one I read, and from what I hear the other two as well, contained some passages that were candidates for the Bad Sex Writing Award. By the time you're talking about sixteen, seventeen, eighteen-year-olds, I think "omg there's sex in it" is a dumb reason to exclude books from the curriculum (not that this stops parents from trying). As a hook to get students interested, though, I think it's pretty weak, since they'll skip right to the dirty bits, and ignore the rest of the book -- unless the rest of the book is really compelling.