Is this a cultural war or a political war?

The reaction of the assembled was embarrassed laughter and the matter went no further.

What some misapprehend as lecturing others realize is conversation amongst friends, except when it is a pompous, unnecessary attempt to lecture, diminishing others while pumping his own, apparently self-rated, superior comprehension. I always like the writer until he gets into that state then I become aware that he is a waste of my time.

See yah.

Joe(Forget I said anything, you probably already have.)Nation

Nonsense Joe, i don't consider you a waste of my time, you often have something worth-while to contribute--just not always.

Set(would that i were able to forget how pompous you so predictably are)anta

I was planning to come on this thread and say it had to be a cultural war because I wouldn't be feeling this badly about the world if it were just politics.


As long as I'm here... My feeling is that the book was a stupid thing for them to be reading in the first place. I hate that the minimal time spent on reading in today's public schools is spent on books of questionable literary merit when there are so many classics that get left unread.

I also hate that the principal felt duty-bound to round up & lock up the books.

I think parents shouldn't have to ask the teachers to teach literature in literature classes instead of real-life tidbits from an author who will never be heard from again. (Though I admit I haven't read this book... it has no appeal to me.)

I also think that the student had a perfect right to not want to read about distasteful stuff going on in juvenile detention... what was the point? Was it written well? Has that class read any A-list literature lately? I doubt it... surely not enough. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

The pandering to a normal high-schooler's (and, you have to wonder, high school teacher's) interests in juvenile detention, scare tactics, modern life and "today's kids" real life stuff just irks me. Has that class read anything by DeTocqueville or Hesse or Hemingway?

Is this book really so good that it need to be the one of four or five books that entire class reads this semester? I can't believe that there aren't a hundred books we could name right here and now that would be more edifying to students and that they haven't read even once but need to if they're to get what I'd consider a good education. (IMO, they're not getting it at schools anymore.)

Quote, "Is this book really so good that it need to be the one of four or five books that entire class reads this semester?"

Piffka, Excellent question. However, there are other problems with the textbooks used by schools that are purchased without much quality control. It seems there should be a better method in selecting textbooks used in our schools that really has "educational value."

Why, I wanted to know, are eleventh graders reading "Young Adult" fiction? What is it? I found this definition which answers the second and implies the first. To me, this is the essence of pandering to their adolescent tastes rather than getting real about offering something of substance for their education.



And here's an Amazon.com list that contains what I'd consider a better selection of Modern English books for required reading. What really bothers me is that students will likely never read these because they'll be too busy wasting their time and blunting their interests reading a social modification book.:

1. 'A Clockwork Orange (Norton Paperback Fiction)' (Burgess)
1. 'The Sound and the Fury (Vintage International)' (Faulkner)
1. 'The Great Gatsby' (Fitzgerald)
1. 'Ulysses (Vintage International)' (Joyce)
1. 'On the Road' (Kerouac)
1. 'Lolita (Vintage International)' (Nabakov)
1. '1984' (Orwell)
1. 'The Catcher in the Rye' (Salinger)
1. 'Grapes of Wrath, The (20th Century Classics)' (Steinbeck)
1. 'To the Lighthouse' (Woolf)

2. 'Things Fall Apart: A Novel' (Achebe)
2. 'Lord Jim' (Conrad)
2. 'Invisible Man' (Ellison)
2. 'Catch 22' (Heller)
2. 'Sun Also Rises' (Hemmingway)
2. 'Brave New World' (Huxley)
2. 'A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man (Penguin Classics)' (Joyce)
2. 'Sons and Lovers (Dover Thrift Editions)' (Lawrence)
2. 'Beloved' (Morrison)
2. 'Native Son' (Wright)

3. 'Heart of Darkness' (Conrad)
3. 'Absalom, Absalom! (Vintage International)' (Faulkner)
3. 'A Passage to India' (Forster)
3. 'Farewell To Arms' (Hemmingway)
3. 'Portrait of a Lady, The (Penguin Classics)' (James)
3. 'The Golden Notebook : Perennial Classics edition (Perennial Classics)' (Lessing)
3. 'Tropic of Cancer' (Miller)
3. 'Animal Farm' (Orwell)
3. 'Atlas Shrugged' (Rand)
3. 'Slaughterhouse-Five' (Vonnegut)

4. 'John Dos Passos : U.S.A. : The 42nd Parallel / 1919 / The Big Money (Library of America)' (Dos Passos)
4. 'An American Tragedy (Signet Classics (Paperback))' (Dreiser)
4. 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' (Kesey)
4. 'Kim (Penguin Classics)' (Kipling)
4. 'Women in Love (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)' (Lawrence)
4. 'To Kill a Mockingbird' (Lee)
4. 'Under the Volcano : A Novel (Perennial Classics)' (Lowry)
4. 'Gone With the Wind' (Mitchell)
4. 'Wide Sargasso Sea (Norton Paperback Fiction)' (Rhys)
4. 'The Lord of the Rings' (Tolkien)

Poetry 'W.H. Auden: Selected Poems' (Auden)
Poetry 'The Waste Land (Norton Critical Editions)' (Eliot)
Poetry 'Howl and Other Poems (Pocket Poets)' (Ginsberg)
Poetry 'Selected Poems 1934-1952, New Revised Edition' (Thomas)
Poetry 'W. B. Yeats: Poems (Highbridge Classics)' (Yeats)

Drama 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' (Albee)
Drama 'Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts' (Beckett)
Drama 'Long Day's Journey into Night, Second edition' (O'Neill)
Drama 'Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts (Penguin Classics)' (Shaw)
Drama 'Our Town: A Play in Three Acts (Perennial Classics)' (Wilder)

I've been poking around and, actually, this book is highly recommended and sounds like it deals with some topics well worth discussing (thought probably not leading to discussions of erections as one mom thought).

Personally, I think putting contemporary literature into the hands of students goes a lot further to foster enjoyment of reading than to give them something they may have a hard time relating to.

That said, I suppose there should be some kind of "opt out" when people object and parents are certainly the one that should be the final judge on that. Honestly though, I can't think of one book I've ever read that doesn't have something that someone would object to and I think this is especially true of books directed at teens.

It really could devolve to the point where no books are taught.

Miss Flyer does indeed bring up a very good point about the quality of the literature which is taught in schools. For one example which she provided, The Sound and the Fury, one can readily state that this is literature of the highest quality, a point of view concurred in by the Nobel committee. It would introduce students to a very complex and innovative form of literature, and bring up a discussion of developmental disabilities. It refers to a passage from one of Shakespeare's greatests plays, MacBeth, in which the protagonists says:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

. . . and so a discussion of that theme would be appropriate to such a reading.

In the "culture wars" on college campuses in the late 1960's and early 1970's, feminists objected loudly and often to the dominance of "DWEM's" in the "western cannon," and denounced the use of said canon. Apart from the redundancy of referring to dead european males as white (there is a strong suggestion of racism inherent in so pointedly mentioning the obvious), it suggests that death invalidates the wisdom which others have in the past contended is to be found in the canon. I wonder if the deaths of Jane Austen and George Eliot (the pen-name of Marianne Evans) means that any wisdom one might have found in these dead, white, european females is now invalid.

I earlier referred to Thomas Bowdler, who "sanitized" Shakespeare for early 19th century families. I do not by any means suggest that it is the placed of educational institutions to go to that extreme to present an inoffensive curriculum. I do suggest that it is quite possible to go the other way, and impose too much "reality" on students in the name of a dubious teaching agenda. In the process, as Miss Flyer has so cogent pointed out, the baby of good literature has been thrown out with the bathwater of Anglo-Saxon Protestant ascendancy.

Or "victorianism" as we often labeled it in our younger days.

Some people might even object to the bible for its prurient content.

Interesting, C.I. Just got off a thread posted by Angelique asking about book bannings.

There are mandatory reading lists in public schools, and many were banned because of content. As I told the Angel, if the book were available, and there is some question about the content, the parent should be in on the decision making. Some of the books banned were totally ridiculous, however:

Huck Finn
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Songs of Solomon

Letty, That's the problem with censorship; everybody has a different perspective of what is considered good/bad literature.

Which is precisely why there is that paragon of participatory democracy--the Parent-Teacher Association.

I realize that, C.I. but there are some things that school districts take heat for, and others that are really politically based because of pressure. As for public libraries, that's another story.

Setanta, you would be stunned by what some parents deem unfit for their kids to read. PTA meeting were replaced at my school with Parents Day, but, of course, I taught in secondary schools, so the level of maturity makes a difference.

Here's an interesting item I found on the web:

The Drag of Illiteracy
Eileen Johnston - Salt Lake City

Thank you! Illiteracy is a catastrophe for those mired in its snare. Thank you for quoting Ray Bradbury's comments about an education system that not only produces nonreaders of books but also nonreaders of anything else, and that also includes the pages of The Wall Street Journal. Illiteracy is an economic drag on the individual and nation, but worse, it cripples the soul. Sadly, the malady is growing among young adults with each new graduating class from the government mandated, forced attendance, indoctrination centers that are misnamed "schools."





The Writing Is Clear. High School Analysis Isn't.
E.P. Krieg - Mount Prospect, Ill.

When I read "Fahrenheit 451" in high school, we analyzed it via "literary criticism." You know, where you totally read into every passage, and get a meaning out of the book completely different than the straightforward one the author meant. For example , Holden Caulfield in "Catcher in the Rye" is named so because he "holds in" his feelings. I kid you not.

I don't remember what my hack English teacher said the book was really about, but it wasn't censorship. It was completely different, so off the wall that I remember thinking how full of it she was.

Piffka, that's a great list. But I read most, if not all, of it in high school or shortly thereafter.

Do you know of any more recently-written books that high schoolers would enjoy and benefit from reading? (I've been out of high school for, lessee, thirty-seven years...)

BM

That isn't my list, btw, it is one that someone put together for Amazon which I thought did an OK job of noting books that seemed to be worth reading in a high school classroom setting.

Wy, there are long lists by the American Library Association (Notable Books) whose main criteria are that they are "notable" and have been written in the previous year. They go back at least to 1993. The problem, as I see it, is that if a student is never assigned to read and acquire an in-depth background in common literature, then how can they possibly look at current literature with an educated eye?

Why does a literature teacher give students assignments so they enjoy it? We don't do that in any other subject -- they don't get to choose only the fun parts of Biology or Math or sing just their favorite rock songs in Choir. I believe they're in school to be educated -- not entertained. The students can read for enjoyment on their own time.

Setanta is right that most of those on the list were written by DWEM. If it were my list I'd add, for example, Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather and The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. LeGuin. Doris Lessing is covered... I think there is already something by Annie Tyler and, of course, I'd put in some Millay. Obviously, there are gaps... but to ignore outstanding literature in favor of "Young Adult" novels so that the-kids-will-be-interested is close to heresy for me.

That happened to my kids in high school and I was livid. They never had to read any Shakespeare in their literature courses, but oh... they were assigned to read YA. I was never more pleased when they left high school early to take community college classes and finally received the remnants of a decent education.

A question that we're missing here is why read literary fiction? Some people feel that it's just to improve reading skills; others feel the purpose is to expose children to the "Great Works" (whatever that means), which seems to be the argument of some here. I would argue that the purpose of teaching literary fiction is to expose students to the diversity and wonder of universal human experience. Shakespeare is still read today not because his use of iambic pentameter or figurative language was particularly good, but because his works transcend any age and speak directly to the experiences of us all. We still read the Odyssey not because we have an intellectual curiosity about ancient Greek civilization, but because Odysseus is a model by which the clay of literary heroes has been molded ever since. Huck Finn would have passed from our collective memory long ago if it hadn't grappled so well with the meaning and quest for freedom which we still struggle with today. This is why we read literature--it plugs us into the whole wide universe of human experience.

Now here's the problem: many, if not most, of our high school students aren't prepared to challenge many of the "great works" of literature. Now, we might react with a gasp and fond remembrances of our own high school experiences, but let's face the truth--when we covered the classics, most of the students didn't actually read them then, either; between the teacher's lectures, skimming the reading, Cliff's Notes, or maybe sitting next to one of the few kids who actually read them, most students learned enough to get through the test and have a general gist of the classics, but didn't actually read the classics.

What teachers today are attempting to do is provide students access to that universal human experience beyond their own narrow social worlds while helping them develop the tools to move on to the "great works." Young adult fiction helps them accomplish this. What differentiates YA literature from other lit. isn't just that the protagonists tend to be young adults themselves. The prose is usually more digestible than what's found in the traditional classics. Some have made comparisons between the prose of YA lit. and the works of King, Rice, etc. It's important to note that these authors write for a mass market and the average American reads at something like a 10th grade level--whereas YA lit. is geared specifically to young people, popular fiction is geared to people with a 10th grade reading level (give or take). One shouldn't, however, assume that themes and stories are sanitized in YA lit.; they're not.

The question of whether or not parents should be able to control the literary curricula of schools is a tough one. I agree with Sentana that there's a need for oversight and a PTA or PAC is good for this. However, I disagree that individual parents should be able to dictate curricula. Just as science textbooks provide knowledge necessary to understanding the functions of the natural world, carefully and well chosen literature provide insights necessary to understanding humanity. Allowing individual parents to dictate what literature their children are permitted to learn is no different from letting them dictate what scientific knowledge their children are taught.