11-06-2023, 08:07 PM
(11-05-2023, 11:47 PM)Dill Wrote: NO!! Not with you there. I think maybe you had a boring teacher.
Anyway, one reason for reading books of times past, which force us to expand our vocabularies, expose us to complex narrative strategies, and look into lives lived generations ago, is to expand our understanding of our own culture and past.
There used to be quite a fuss over Huck Finn. I wonder how that's going now. Is it possible to teach that at all in HS now?
Some interesting questions raised by censorship about classics and class power--I get that--but I'm also worried that something else is
lost when books have to conform to contemporary tastes. Those tastes may seem universal or simply normal, when really they are just
contemporary. I'm thankful that I was forced to read things in high school and college that I'd never have picked on my own, because I didn't
know what I needed to know. I'm for books which "speak" to this or that group's experience, but the goal of literary/historical education should not be just
to mirror this or that group's experiences for that group. That limits and contracts understanding rather than expanding it.
nope it was definitely Melville himself that was boring. "Call me Ishmael" was the best line in the book and it was downhill after that.
There is a place for classics in modern Literature classes. They simply need a teacher who is willing to put a new spin on them to make them relevant...even Moby Dick as boring as it is
Fueled by the pursuit of greatness.
