Dr. Frank's What's-it

I loathed Billy Budd by Melville - to such a degree that to this day I can't pick it up. Even though I think the guy is a major feckin' genius, and Moby Dick is one of my favorite books. I was FORCED to read Billy Budd when I was 15, and it was torture.

I actually did like a lot of the books I had to read for high school - Tale of 2 Cities stands out as an example. I loved that book.

But Billy Budd was cruel and unusual punishment.

Lord of the Flies, man...Fuckin' Lord of the Flies...Ugh.

One way that might attract high school kids to Shakespeare:

Establish severe rules to forbid use of his work. None of his plays, poems, anything. Use of any quotation from his work in a student's paper is restricted until senior year and then only with the explicit permission in a letter to the school board signed by both parents.

Any Shakespeare found in the possession of a student on the school grounds must be confiscated to be returned only after graduation. Second offense leads to further disciplinary action, even suspension or expulsion.

These rules must be read at every year's opening assembly and warning signs posted prominently in corridors and in the rooms where English is taught.

Right after my last post, I remembered an incident from when I was taking night classes several years ago. I had to take some general education classes, and the teacher was quite taken with Emily Dickenson. During the part of class where we were supposed to gush about what we'd been forced to read, I declared to the class that I considered Emily Dickenson to be a no-talent hack.
The teacher didn't dig it. They're really not used to that kind of thing, I guess!

How are you going to teach kids about literature if you don't give them any? You're not going to leave it up to their parents, are you? Or have them learn about it on the streets, from Stephen King and John Grisham? (Insert sex education analogy here.)

I can't remember being *forced* to read very many books in school, but we did read Romeo and Juliet in 9th grade and Julius Caesar in 10th. They softened the Shakespeare blow by showing us the most recently-produced movie (with Olivia Hussey) first. The sex part kept the boys awake, though even at the time I wondered about the wisdom of showing us *this* version.

I loved the plays. We read them out loud in class, and I got the funeral speech from JC ("I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him"), and counted it as an enormous coup. But I rarely touch the Shakespeare on my desk, unless I want to look something up (and now there easier, on-line ways to do that) because reading the plays to yourself is nothing at all like having them acted out, even in the most rudimentary way (e.g. by having them read to you by people prepared to at least attempt the roles).

Is it the *forcing* that bothers you, or the English teacher's drive to pick at every bit of "meaning" in the work (as with the Gatsby example in the article)? Because our poor rural high school couldn't afford teachers that hadn't been educated in hick colleges. So they stuck to enlarging our vocabulary and asking us to identify major themes and characters' motivations and stuff like that.

My cousin, on the other hand, who lived in the Big City (Indianapolis), was taught that the "squat" cans in a general store in a Hemingway story meant that his father was "squat". How they knew that cans=father, I couldn't get her to tell me.

I love a lot of the books I was supposed to read in highschool. Of course I didn't read them in highschool. My English teachers always hated me because I usually plowed through a book a day, yet somehow never had time to read what they assigned. I guess I just don't like being told what to read?

I also didn't like being told to do math or write lab reports in biology, but what're ya gonna do?

i used to always get in trouble because i never liked reading fiction. i had to read really horrible books because my high school fancied itself as progressive and cutting edge. junior and senior year were the worst- to this day i think "a handmaid's tale" is one of the worst pieces of fiction ever, and it made me feel bad about having a vagina.

Wow, kendra. That might be the least appealing book title I've ever come across.

I honestly don't remember having to read any of those famous books or any books,could be the school system was different could be I just don't remember. I mean we read in class of course,but as for full books it was a matter of choice. I remember enjoying Mrs Bixby and the Rats Of Nimh (yes I have the movie too)and also A Wrinkle In Time. Quality stuff, you know.

"Some people would rather tape open an eye and pour salt in it than re-read A Separate Peace."

Amen, brotha. I think the assinine projects relating to the book throughout the entire >>month<< it takes to read it are even worse, and quite possibly the reason for the "visceral, irrational loathing."wow, can you say run on sentence? anyway, i completly agree. But i do think its even worse when a teacher knows its a bad book, with a cliche moral and bad diction STILL teaches it.

-Amanda

I am certainly not sorry I was "forced" to read stuff - even though I hated Billy Budd with a passion. I remember having to read Tale of Two Cities on my school vacation and being surprised (a couple chapters in) that not only did I HAVE to keep reading in order to finish it, but that I WANTED to. I loved that book. I read Moby Dick when I was 15, which seems rather ridiculous in retrospect - I wasn't ready to really understand that book and get it (not just get the plot, but get the universal truths expressed in it) until my early 30s. Then when I read it, it positively blew me away.

But am I sorry I was made to slog my way through every page in high school? No.

I do think that some of the by-rote teaching techniques leave quite a bit to be desired. I had a fantastic teacher in 10th grade, and it was under his tutelage that I read Great Gatsby and I am so grateful for that. It wasn't a dry book, full of paint-by-numbers symbolism - He made it seem like a living text. I still remember some of his lectures on that book word for word.

So much of success is in the teaching. How it's taught, and the enthusiasm of the teacher is catching ... I certainly picked up on my teacher's enthusiasm for Great Gatsby. It made a huge difference. My sister who is a reading teacher to middle schoolers says it's the same way for her. The kids LOVE it when she expresses that she loves something ... then they're all over it.

But in my view, not even the best teacher in the world could have made me love Billy Budd.

I had a lot of good stuff that I liked in High School. My senior year we had a great English teacher that has us read tons of poetry and Dorothy Parker which was fantastic. We of course had Billy Budd which of course we all hated. The other stuff I can remember that I liked was Fahrenheit 451, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Great Gatsby, Brave New World, 12 Angy Men (not a novel but oh well), A Sound of Thunder (again not a novel), Heart of Darkness, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Maybe I'm just easy to please.

I only read the shortest books that were assigned in high school because I was obsessed with 19th-century literature. I preferred the sentence structure over the modern stuff the school was presenting. I still prefer it.

"Death Comes for the Archbishop" was pretty good.

well i read the catcher in the rye and it was my life/favorite book and then we had to read it in school and actually i enjoyed it because the teacher pointed out a lot of things i missed. actually i enjoy a lot of things i read in class, it just when they assign us shit, then i hate it. i just really don't like having to read to chapter six by wensday, that's really weak.

I think if enough time has passed, it is possible to enjoy a book foisted upon you in the past, provided the book is something you'd enjoy stumbling upon on your own. I relate to the instant, irrational loathing, and to put it crassly - I think being forced to read a book, even a good one, is like being told to take a crap. If you're not ready, all the compliance in the world isn't going to help you out.

It goes both ways. I was forced to read several of Mark Twain's books and loved them, read Urula LeGuin and loved her, read Aasimov and loved it, but on the other hand hated the Bard, Thorough, Hemmingway and ESPECIALLY Dickinson.

We read the Ballad of the Sad Café by Carson McCullers in school and everyone hated it because we were made to read it. Now 5 years later I find myself thinking about it with fond memories and wanting to read it again. I'll dig it out, tipp-ex out the willies on every single page and give it another bash.

I didn't mind some of the assigned reading in school and actually enjoyed most of it. There is one exception though, The Scarlet Letter. Oh how I loathed that piece of shit and to make it worse the teacher was totally bonkers over it. We read that one in 10th grade and I can still remember him blabbing about the "light and dark imagery."

Scarlett Letter? I rather enjoy Sir Aurthur Conan Doyle.

I like A Seperate Peace, one of the few books I read in highschool.

i think one of the problems with assigned reading in high school is that they try to appeal to everybody. the books i read for class that i enjoyed were from the pulitzer prize list, from which we were required to read one book a month. that was where my love affair with john updike began. it didn't last long.
i also remember reading "a farewell to arms," and deciding that hemingway wasn't as bad as people made him out to be. of course my teacher loathed him, be she hated anything thing with a penis.

My brother, who graduated high school last year, was reading some amazing stuff. The Things That They Carried, by Tim Obrien was one of the books that was not "required reading," but one that his English teacher recommended. An amazing book.

I regret not getting stuff by Faulkner in High School. I'm also sorry that the HS teachers didn't promote Mark Twain beyond his works Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or that damn frog story. So many more amazing things to read by him.

A book that I'm revisiting now is "On The Road." Tiring. I didn't like it when I was young, and for some reason I don't particularly like it now that I'm 36.

The reverse-psychology thing might work for beat-era writers, but Shakespeare?
...and I never bought the classical music as gangsta couture in clockwork orange either.
Beethoven as violent youth hero? Maybe Wagner.
And only in the "kill the wabbit" sense.

I like a lot of stuff we have to read for school. And even though I can hardly drag myself through Shakespeare's language, I LOVED Hamlet. I think a big problem at our school is that we read so many short works that reading a novel makes everyone want to take a nap. I think that's a pretty common problem that should be remedied: no one really learns the patience it takes sometimes to get through a story that's more than ten pages long, because after freshman year we don't have to.

I hated A Separate Peace, yeah. It is a book about growing up, that we are forced to read while we are growing up, and we either notice that it hits too close to home, or think it's the most inaccurate, ridiculous garbage ever. Either way, it's more a book of reflection - I don't see how adolescents could appreciate it.

I didn't really want to read any of the books I had to, though now I even love some of them. The Great Gatsby, in particular, I consider a much more convincing look at human nature than Lord of the Flies. I couldn't see this in high school, of course, because class-directed discussions tended to miss the point, and I wasn't about to read between any lines on my own will.

Which is why I think we really hate school assignments. To gather any meaning from a book, we have to invest something personally into the pages, not just speed through the daily assignment. Something I think makes books more interesting is the reader's power to put them down if he doesn't want to continue. This gives both he and the author roles to fulfill, a dialogue to carry out. Take the power away from the reader and you lose something valuable.

I actually feel thankful for the piss-poor curriculum at my high school now. Books we did not read: Animal Farm, Heart of Darkness, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Catcher in the Rye, the list goes on. And it's a lot of stuff i enjoy today. In fact, apart from Bored of the Flies, i can't think of anything we DID read. So i don't hate any of the usual stuff. I guess I did read Dracula both in high school and college (in a class on 19th century decadent lit). I still don't love it to death, but the depth of the college class kicked the cat crap outta what we did in HS. I mean, maybe it's the inability of most people to comprehend the plot of a novel that makes those HS classes such a pain in the ass.

Having gone to school in Scotland I had the added joy of "Scottish" literature. I hate Neil Gunn with a passion all he wrote about were the fishing villages in the highlands of Scotland though there were good references like the story of the salmon of knowledge I guess that was ok. I know for a fact I was the only person in my class who actually enjoyed the Inheritors by William Golding.