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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (45933)	7/17/1999 9:06:00 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Shakespeare is not written for children. It is written for adults. You get out of it what you bring to it- the more experience, the more education, the more fun it is- but it can be fun even to people who don't get all the jokes. Further, Shakespeare is not meant to be read aloud. That is just silly. Some of the soliloquies are decent reading- but for goodness sake THE PLAYS THE THING!

To: Grainne who wrote (45933)	7/18/1999 8:37:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

Christine, I really can't agree with you that "the love of books should be taught with mostly modern works for children." Let me state my reasons for thinking so. 1) There is no reason to think that bad teachers would not make contemporary books every bit as deadly as the classics. Ideally, at least, teachers should be trying not just to teach techniques of literary analysis (some of this is all to the good), but also showing how literature can be enjoyed. 2) I do not consider teenagers "children" in one important respect: they can be -- or at least should be -- quite ready to handle "grown-up" books. As a teenager, I much preferred the "classics" to "contemporary" literature. I may not have been typical, but I was not a freak. And I think it better to try to expand teenagers' horizons than to cater to them, in line with a (mis)perceived notion that they will be more "comfortable" with something that is supposedly closer to their own experience. There is the additional danger that teachers might select "trendy" works, without much literary value. Starting with recognized classics helps shape taste and discrimination, IMO. 3) Now comes what, to my mind, is the most important part. I believe in survey courses. Yes -- those often dull survey courses. Why? Because they give even bored students a road map that they can consult if they ever develop a real interest in literature later. At least they will know where to go, where the major landmarks are, etc. Now that most colleges have stopped requiring students to take an English Lit Survey course (Freshman Comp is just not the same thing), the high schools need to shoulder the burden, IMO. Otherwise students can (and do) go all the way through college and even graduate school, without any idea of what great literature is about (let alone of those who wrote it). There are worse things than being bored. Being ignorant is one of them. (In my opinion, of course.) Joan