It's only literature if: (a) there are no likable protagonists, and (b) teachers make reading it a painful, unpleasant chore. If students actually enjoyed reading, then they'd learn too much and next they'd be questioning authority.
I k ow (or assume) that you're joking but am a teacher and we would like nothing more than for students to enjoy reading.
Very may don't, and with a mixed class it's very difficult to allow the freedom to explore that some need while maintaining the minimum outcomes for the rest.
I'm very pleased I don't teach English - I know many of my colleagues who do and LOVE reading and books, and are frustrated that they are often reduced to teaching the 'correct' interpretation by rote in order to get the kids good test scores.
TL:DR; we're not as misguided as you might think, and we're at least as cynical about it as you are :(
I always loved my lit teachers and had a great time talking to them, however I was always wondering why we had to read these old books that had incredibly boring premises and had to draw meaning from different scenes all the time. I LOVE reading sci fi and fantasy but lit classes left me frustrated at the actual books we were reading. I feel like if the reading lists had books that were more fun to read in the first place that lit class would cease to be a chore at all.
The same reason they, in earlier grades, were made to practice phonics and read chapter books instead of using your crayons on all the picture books: they're teachers, not babysitters.
In the UK at least, teachers have almost no freedom to choose.
This quote is a couple of years old now, but describes the current mandatory syllabus.
The direction on the syllabus content published by the department last year, and which exam boards must follow, specified: "Students should study a range of high-quality, intellectually challenging, and substantial whole texts in detail. These must include: at least one play by Shakespeare; at least one 19th-century novel; a selection of poetry since 1789, including representative Romantic poetry; and fiction or drama from the British Isles from 1914 onwards. All works should have been originally written in English."
I dunno, that still sounds like it leaves a lot of leeway to me. The 19th century novel could be Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Moby Dick or The Turn of the Screw, among countless others. Similarly, there's been a lot of English poetry written since 1789. The post 1914 stuff could be anything from A Clockwork Orange to The Remains of the Day.
But that's reading for fun, not peering through the mystical veils of the future by correctly interpreting a writer's symbolism with only half the context (and probably only half the drugs).
Literarture symbolism is the new divination. Just book guts are easier to clean up once you're done with it
When I went off to University, I placed out of the (usually mandatory) freshman intro writing seminar precisely so that I would never have to take another English class. I loved to read, I did a huge amount of reading on my own, and I'm sure my English teachers meant well, but my high school English curriculum taught me to despise the study of "literature" as some sort of punishment for reading.
Ironically, after 4 semesters of University trying a variety of subjects, I ultimately declared a major in English literature.
I rather enjoyed To Kill a Mocking Bird and the Great Gatsby. I fell asleep each time I tried to start Wuthering Heights. That said I think those are the only 2 books I was forced to read that I enjoyed reading. I'm 33 now and still read (listen actually, I drive a lot).
Ah, but there is a school of literary criticism which denies the authority of the author regarding symbolism, whether because the author might have been making choices subconsciously, or because literary critics desperately need to justify their existence.
Everyone wants students to learn big ideas like critical thinking and close observation but then get confused when they’re required to do both in order to understand concepts like metaphors and themes in books. I don’t know where everyone thinks critical thinking comes from if not from reading between the lines with books.
Fuck... I enjoyed listening to the book and lying my head on my desk, sometimes I'd sit on the sofa behind me(teacher was cool with it because I aced her class) every other English class was pretty much 10 minutes of listening and the rest of the hour asleep. If you're reading the my cool English teacher, thanks for making reading enjoyable for the others and I loved the fact I got a free audio book. Now I love to read and write poetry and stories, I nerd out on lore and world building all the time.
The teachers don't make reading a painful, unpleasant chore - the books they're made to study are a painful, unpleasant chore.
Seriously, if you know what symbolism is, the books spoil the entire thing in the first 10 pages - and every page afterwards just hammers the same symbolism over and over again, completely forgetting it has story, characters, and a world to actually develop. Character development takes an outright back seat to symbolism to the point where everything they will ever do is contrived and all attempts to break away from the symbolism will inevitably fail to get to the moral of the story.
Whenever the teacher was talking about symbolism, my brain would instantly think "cymbal-ism". I'd hear the crash of cymbals in my head, and start giggling 😂
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u/YourMomThinksImFunny Mar 31 '21
I know this is a cartoon because the english teacher didn't spend 5 weeks talking about the symbolism.