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So if we're talking about classics and whether you can make kids love them?
I've been doing this for fifteen years and I don't think I've ever MADE a kid love a book.
But I DO think kids have left my class loving certain books
I've been doing this for fifteen years and I don't think I've ever MADE a kid love a book.
But I DO think kids have left my class loving certain books
You CAN put the right book in the right kid's hands at the right time and help illuminate their understanding in a way that leads to loving it.
I KNOW kids have left my classroom loving Dante, Conrad (I don't teach him anymore), Rostand, Remarque, and some of the war poets.
I have DEFINITELY never made a kid love Joyce or Beckett
And those are probably the writers I teach whose work I know the most about!
Joyce, in particular, seems to fall flatter and flatter ever year, to the point where the previously unthinkable has crossed my mind; taking Dubliners off my syllabus
Joyce, in particular, seems to fall flatter and flatter ever year, to the point where the previously unthinkable has crossed my mind; taking Dubliners off my syllabus
Also if you're going to talk about diversifying reading lists, fine, but do not come at me with it unless you have spent time in a classroom and have understanding of the kind of reading standardized tests and colleges ASSUME students will have done.
Humanity has gone through a great deal of history to produce a little literature, to borrow from Henry James, and we absolutely should not throw over everything from Gilgamesh to Li Po to Dante to Hemingway just because some loud people on twitter hated one of them
I was typing a fairly mean tweet but let's just say this; I am absolutely uninterested in the reading list reform ideas of people who are not, and have never been, teachers.
