swan_tower (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
swan_tower) wrote2009-02-05 11:36 am
swan_tower) wrote2009-02-05 11:36 am
It's Pick a Fight Day on LJ!
(No, it isn't. Just on my LJ.)
So, I'm mostly okay with this article in the Telegraph about how it's okay not to have read John Updike, or for that matter other literary greats. It's certainly true that it isn't possible for even the most well-intentioned of book lovers to have read all of the Great Literature that's been published in the last two hundred years, even if you aim only for the top tier.
But here's where the writer and I part ways:
Er.
Okay, middle first. I'm with him on the distressing notion that a whole book is too much for kids to read; God, I hope there aren't many schools doing that. But. But.
Dead, White, European, and Male. The blithe assumption that they've got a majority share on "quality and intelligence and depth." Gyah. I won't even waste space on arguing that one; you all can do that for yourselves.
The end; the end is where I start talking back to my monitor. The idea that you should form your taste by reading "proper" literature. That literary merit (as judged by, I presume, highly-educated White European Males) should be our primary criterion for handing books to kids -- because "relevance" and "accessibility" are silly little concerns, not something we should be wasting their time on.
How the hell does he expect anybody to learn to love reading, with that approach? How does an education in which you're forced to read books out of duty incline anybody to go on reading them when the duty is removed?
A couple of months ago, I finally managed to articulate one of the things that bothered me about high school English lit classes: I think they force-feed students lots of things the students have no particular reason to understand or care about, and they do it because this is the last chance society has to make you read those books. So who cares if Death of a Salesman is about a guy decades ago having a mid-life crisis and you're a sixteen-year-old barely aware that traveling salesmen once existed? Who cares if you have any reason to find Willy Loman's pain sympathetic or even comprehensible? You'll read it because we think you should do so before you die, and once you graduate our chance to enforce that is gone.
I don't think any power in the 'verse could have made me like that play, but I've got a tidy little list of authors I should give a second chance, because I might enjoy them now that I'm ready for them.
But I formed my taste by reading books I liked, books I cared about. It probably isn't the taste Mr. Dellingpole thinks I should have; it's okay for me not to read Updike, but probably less okay if the reason I'm not reading Updike is that I'm reading George R. R. Martin. But I submit that quality, intelligence, and depth exist as much in one's interaction with a book as they do in the text itself: all the literary brilliance in the world doesn't matter if my eyes are glazing over as I turn the pages. You want to know how I learned close reading? By obsessing over Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books and piecing together the fragments of prophecy and foreshadowing scattered through them. And it's entirely possible I never would have become an alert enough reader to survive Dorothy Dunnett had I not gone through those baby steps first. But if somebody had convinced me I ought to be spending my time on Zadie Smith instead of Jordan, it's also possible I would have never picked up Dunnett in the first place -- or, y'know, other books in general.
If I were in charge of high school curricula, you know what? Literary merit would not be my overriding concern. I would set out to give kids books they might enjoy, and then once they're engaged, teach them how to pay attention to what they're reading. Everything else can follow from there, because once you've done that, the chances of there being an "everything else" get a lot higher.
It's a fine irony when Mr. Dellingford decries readers who pick up literary books only out of a sense of obligation -- while also telling us we should obligate kids to do just that.
So, I'm mostly okay with this article in the Telegraph about how it's okay not to have read John Updike, or for that matter other literary greats. It's certainly true that it isn't possible for even the most well-intentioned of book lovers to have read all of the Great Literature that's been published in the last two hundred years, even if you aim only for the top tier.
But here's where the writer and I part ways:
This is not an argument against the literary canon. I do believe there are certain key authors – most of them Dead, White, European and Male – who jolly well ought to be studied at school by virtue of the quality and intelligence and depth of their writing. And I certainly don't believe in the modern anything-goes approach to teaching novels to children in school where they're served up in gobbets of "text" (whole books being considered too challenging for the Xbox generation) and where literary merit is thought of less importance than "relevance" or "accessibility".
All I mean is that once you've had a reasonable grounding in sufficient "proper" literature to form your taste, you should never again read a book out of duty.
Er.
Okay, middle first. I'm with him on the distressing notion that a whole book is too much for kids to read; God, I hope there aren't many schools doing that. But. But.
Dead, White, European, and Male. The blithe assumption that they've got a majority share on "quality and intelligence and depth." Gyah. I won't even waste space on arguing that one; you all can do that for yourselves.
The end; the end is where I start talking back to my monitor. The idea that you should form your taste by reading "proper" literature. That literary merit (as judged by, I presume, highly-educated White European Males) should be our primary criterion for handing books to kids -- because "relevance" and "accessibility" are silly little concerns, not something we should be wasting their time on.
How the hell does he expect anybody to learn to love reading, with that approach? How does an education in which you're forced to read books out of duty incline anybody to go on reading them when the duty is removed?
A couple of months ago, I finally managed to articulate one of the things that bothered me about high school English lit classes: I think they force-feed students lots of things the students have no particular reason to understand or care about, and they do it because this is the last chance society has to make you read those books. So who cares if Death of a Salesman is about a guy decades ago having a mid-life crisis and you're a sixteen-year-old barely aware that traveling salesmen once existed? Who cares if you have any reason to find Willy Loman's pain sympathetic or even comprehensible? You'll read it because we think you should do so before you die, and once you graduate our chance to enforce that is gone.
I don't think any power in the 'verse could have made me like that play, but I've got a tidy little list of authors I should give a second chance, because I might enjoy them now that I'm ready for them.
But I formed my taste by reading books I liked, books I cared about. It probably isn't the taste Mr. Dellingpole thinks I should have; it's okay for me not to read Updike, but probably less okay if the reason I'm not reading Updike is that I'm reading George R. R. Martin. But I submit that quality, intelligence, and depth exist as much in one's interaction with a book as they do in the text itself: all the literary brilliance in the world doesn't matter if my eyes are glazing over as I turn the pages. You want to know how I learned close reading? By obsessing over Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books and piecing together the fragments of prophecy and foreshadowing scattered through them. And it's entirely possible I never would have become an alert enough reader to survive Dorothy Dunnett had I not gone through those baby steps first. But if somebody had convinced me I ought to be spending my time on Zadie Smith instead of Jordan, it's also possible I would have never picked up Dunnett in the first place -- or, y'know, other books in general.
If I were in charge of high school curricula, you know what? Literary merit would not be my overriding concern. I would set out to give kids books they might enjoy, and then once they're engaged, teach them how to pay attention to what they're reading. Everything else can follow from there, because once you've done that, the chances of there being an "everything else" get a lot higher.
It's a fine irony when Mr. Dellingford decries readers who pick up literary books only out of a sense of obligation -- while also telling us we should obligate kids to do just that.
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(Anonymous) 2009-02-06 04:24 pm (UTC)(link)Allow me to explain.
When I was in high school, I had one of those, "why do I have to learn this stuff," moments with my parents about a book I was reading for an honors english class. After a lengthy discussion my parents got me to realize that the purpose of the class wasn't to learn the plot in these books but ultimately to teach me how to think, and critically analyze. I have always stuck with that as the ultimate purpose of english classes so, a lot of my opinion is based on that. If you disagree with that then I suppose you'll probably disagree with my whole point.
The problem with the whole, "teaching me how to critically think," thing is, they were trying to do it with books that I found difficult to read and just didn't care about. Instead of learning how to critically think, I learned how to write papers about books I never read. I had it down to a system by my junior and senior years.
At the most I'd read about a quarter (sometimes a little as one chapter) of whatever book was assigned, keep in mind it's not because I was lazy, I tried to read each book, but they were all so hard for me to read, that I couldn't make it though much more than that. Then when there was a class discussion about the book I'd make sure and take really good notes about what people said regarding characters' actions, and themes etc. When anyone would offer a quote in class to support their statement I'd write down a paraphrased version of the quote and the page number it was on, so I could find it later to use. Then I'd write my paper from those notes. Basically each paper I wrote was an amalgamation of the ideas of four or five other students' ideas. I never got less than a B on any paper.
This didn't teach me how to think, it taught me how to ride off of other people's work. Also since I didn't like any of these books, it did not form any sort of collective literary basis for me to later draw on. I have no idea, except in a very very basic (almost useless) sense of what those books were about.
A Tale of Two Cities: I don't know, I remember someone got run over by a carriage at one point.
The Scarlet Letter: It was about a chick who committed adultery and had to wear a red A on her chest because of it. The only thing I remember from that was getting into an argument with my english teacher because he said that a rosebush outside of a jail in one scene symbolized hope, and got angry because, "Who the hell says it represents hope? Why doesn't it represent love, or hate, or blood, or pickles? What great authority decided the it represents hope?"
The Sound and the Fury: To this day I have no idea what that book is about, I don't even remember where it was set. I remember that there were people in it, and they may have even done stuff. That's about it.
The Great Gatsby: It was about a rich guy, and there was a billboard with a pair of eyes on it that was supposed to represent God.
The Fountainhead: It was about a guy who was an architect, that wanted to do his own non-conformity thing.
The Fountainhead is where I start to make my point. I didn't understand a single significant thing about The Fountainhead, or Ayn Rand until earlier this year, when the developers of a video I really want to play said there's a lot of Ayn Rand influence in their game. So I went to wikipedia and read a bit about her, and now I have a basic idea of what her beliefs are and what she wrote about in The Fountainhead and her other works. It is because of a video game that I learned this. Or more specifically it's because of something I am actually interested in that I learned this.
-Continued in next post because I'm too long winded for LJ's character limit.
Tony
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Which is to say that I know one of his poems is actually a curse the Witch of the Waste placed on --
Er, maybe not. <g>
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