Okay so given that I’ve only just started student teaching, and have not a lot of in school hours clocked as a teacher, I can’t help but to notice certain trends. I find myself irked by some of them…a lot. One such trend is this near-constant breakdown of literature to its simplest and most drab form. Essentially we are castrating literature: sterilizing it if you will, and really threatening the future of the literature species.
There seems to be a rather large disconnect on behalf of the administration who can’t seem to grasp that literature should be enjoyed, even to a small extent. Instead schools spend years (critical years, mind you) teaching students how to reduce and dissect something they don’t even understand or enjoy. Surprisingly linguistic, phallic measuring contests between dead white men who live in 18-something may not be the best place to start. Just the idea that we teach Shakespeare to 8th graders with the hope that they can cut it into tiny “chewable” pieces and vomit it back up on test months later, is ridiculous. What ever happened to reading for enjoyment? Or better, what ever happened to teaching that reading is something that you don’t have to suffer through? These things called book s exist and sometimes characters have sex and say “Fuck.” It happens.
Good point! We need to find ways to make students enjoy reading and allow them to interpret texts in their own ways while at the same time helping them to see perspectives that they might not have seen without us.
ReplyDeleteI remember that my 10th grade teacher made Shakespeare enjoyable because he played up the gruesome aspects of it. It sounds cheesy but it worked.
ReplyDelete