According to a front-page story in the Outlook section of today's Washington Post, the guilty parties in our generation's aversion to reading for pleasure are ... their high school English teachers.
It's an interesting premise, especially coming from a high school English teacher. Her idea is that teachers are turning beautiful literature into a rote science by making students clinically dissect novels that are works of art and then write essays about books they couldn't care less about.
I'm not sure whether I entirely buy into it, but I think she's got a good point. Reading fiction was something to be dreaded for most people in my high school English classes--Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry was particularly dreaded. No one liked that book. Being a bona fide word nerd, I was bound to be reading for pleasure anyway, but I wouldn't be surprised if having to plow through some of those books killed the idea for some of my classmates.
What about you? Did you like the books you read in high school? How about the way they were taught? Did they make you want to read more or less?
A couple more stray observations:
--Catcher in the Rye for eighth- and ninth-graders? Are you serious? Not is it (in my apparently prudish mind) completely in appropriate for that age in terms of language, but it's essentially a psychological portrait of a 17-year-old that's far too nuanced and complex for 13- and 14-year-olds to understand.
--Read the student's summer email to the teacher about halfway through. Ho-ly cow. I don't think I've ever met a high schooler who would right something like that to his teacher over the summer, and this teacher at The McLean School gets this from a student who's not even an interested participant in class. That's got to be one of the best signs I've seen in a while that suburban D.C. and Grand Island aren't even on the same planet.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
It's all Sir Denis Eton-Hogg's fault.
So I was all ready to go with this sweet List of the Fortnight on substantive songs by Christian artists (let's ignore for the moment the fact that it's been a month since the last list--blame it on the Olympics), and Muxtape decides to be unavailable.
Why? Stupid RIAA. Seems the suits aren't too keen on letting you listen--not download, mind you, just listen--to the songs I own. So now I'm limited to the songs I can find on Mixwit, which is to say, the songs that are already pretty easy to find. That means no Indelible Grace, that's for dang sure.
So I'll figure out something else. And if you got the headline--without Google--you are officially awesome in my book.
Why? Stupid RIAA. Seems the suits aren't too keen on letting you listen--not download, mind you, just listen--to the songs I own. So now I'm limited to the songs I can find on Mixwit, which is to say, the songs that are already pretty easy to find. That means no Indelible Grace, that's for dang sure.
So I'll figure out something else. And if you got the headline--without Google--you are officially awesome in my book.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
I'm pretty sure that the last time I was that unproductive, I was wearing diapers.
As you may (or--let's not kid ourselves--may not) have noticed, it's been a long time since I posted. I'm blaming it on Brett Favre. According to ESPN, everything in the world that's happened in the last three weeks has revolved around Brett Favre, so I'm assuming my failure to update my blog must be part of that.
No, really, I was actually on vacation last week in a rental home in southwest Missouri with my wife, my parents, two sisters and brother-in-law and nephew. Here's what you don't need to know, but are going to find out anyway:
--As the title more than implies, very, very little was accomplished by anyone. I did almost finish a book ... but it was the baseball book I wanted to read, while the dense theology book I had to read never left my backpack.
--A ridiculous number of Ticket To Ride games were played, and way too many of them were won by my brother-in-law. On an unrelated note, two cities I never want to visit ... ever: Stockholm and Petrograd. Thanks, Kyle.
--We stayed less than 5 miles from Branson, yet we managed to not see a single show. That's right--we ventured into the land of Yakov, Shoji and the Baldknobbers and missed all of them. Make no mistake: I am very proud of this.
--I'm pretty sure I drove my family nuts with my incessant checking of Brewers (and Cardinals, and Cubs) scores. But the Brewers did not lose the entire time we were on vacation. Yes, the second sentence of this paragraph has rendered the first completely irrelevant.
--On Monday, my first day back, I worked almost 13 hours straight, with no lunch or supper breaks. Welcome back to the real world.
No, really, I was actually on vacation last week in a rental home in southwest Missouri with my wife, my parents, two sisters and brother-in-law and nephew. Here's what you don't need to know, but are going to find out anyway:
--As the title more than implies, very, very little was accomplished by anyone. I did almost finish a book ... but it was the baseball book I wanted to read, while the dense theology book I had to read never left my backpack.
--A ridiculous number of Ticket To Ride games were played, and way too many of them were won by my brother-in-law. On an unrelated note, two cities I never want to visit ... ever: Stockholm and Petrograd. Thanks, Kyle.
--We stayed less than 5 miles from Branson, yet we managed to not see a single show. That's right--we ventured into the land of Yakov, Shoji and the Baldknobbers and missed all of them. Make no mistake: I am very proud of this.
--I'm pretty sure I drove my family nuts with my incessant checking of Brewers (and Cardinals, and Cubs) scores. But the Brewers did not lose the entire time we were on vacation. Yes, the second sentence of this paragraph has rendered the first completely irrelevant.
--On Monday, my first day back, I worked almost 13 hours straight, with no lunch or supper breaks. Welcome back to the real world.
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