Readicide
In my opinion, exclusively teaching literary fiction in the curriculum during grade school shouldn’t be the standard. Even though books from our history that may be considered “great” are beneficial to students’ understanding of literature, who’s to say that books written in the present aren’t just as helpful? We need to realize as a society that kids these days don’t always enjoy reading the books they are assigned in school, and half the time use Spark Notes in place of reading the book at all. I agree with Gallagher’s idea to teach some literary fiction novels in class as well as some genre fiction ones. This way, students will want to read more of the books assigned to them in the classroom. They might also have an easier time breaking down the true meaning of the book if they are able to compare it to something much easier to understand. Comparing “Romeo and Juliet” to “Rebecca” would be hard because a high school student may not fully grasp one or both of the books. If you compared “Romeo and Juliet” to “Twilight” on the other hand, you would be comparing a rather easy to comprehend book to a more difficult read. In other words, it would be easier to digest the meaning of older, more difficult novels if they were to be put in terms of today’s literature. Schools should definitely not cut out literary fiction in its entirety. Students gain important knowledge from them that they wouldn’t get from today’s popular culture. The main goal of English class though, should be to gain student’s interest in reading, so that they will continue to read throughout their lives. I personally consider English as my least favorite subject because of all the critical thinking we do with each novel that we have to read. I’m positive I would enjoy the class much more if I could look forward to the novels in class, and say I get to read it, not I have to.
"half the time use Spark Notes in place of reading the book at all" You've hit a truth that no English department wants to admit. It is wise of you to realise that change must become the new century, but don't discredit the literary classics because they are, if nothing else, a piece of history etched in time just waiting to be repeated.
ReplyDeletei disagree with you about literary fiction. i dont really like literary fiction it makes me bored
ReplyDeleteI agree with you especially when you said that many students just go to spark notes and adding genre fiction in would help make reading during school more enjoyable
ReplyDeleteI agree that it would be easier to compare a literary novel with something more recent, like Romeo and Juliet and Twilight. But what if the literary and the modern novels we read in class weren't comparable like these two books? It would be hard to compare novels like The Great Gatsby and the Hunger Games. It wouldnt really work. Then, in my opinion, the modern novels would be useless.
ReplyDelete