I was thinking about this from the last post. In my junior year of high school I was allowed to take classes at UCLA, and I read a bunch of books through that - I read everything that was assigned - and loved just about all of it. Why? First among all those things was All the King's Men.
I've often wondered at myself what the difference was. I don't really think it was the books. I suspect if Bovary had been assigned I've have read it. And it's not that the discussion was amazing. I didn't feel that same pressure of everything I wasn't allowed to talk about. It may be a fairly impossible task to teach literature in high school, where every teacher is some mix of a god and a jailor. This is not presented as an argument for teaching Malcolm Gladwell.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2012-12-14 12:57 am (UTC)I've often wondered at myself what the difference was. I don't really think it was the books. I suspect if Bovary had been assigned I've have read it. And it's not that the discussion was amazing. I didn't feel that same pressure of everything I wasn't allowed to talk about. It may be a fairly impossible task to teach literature in high school, where every teacher is some mix of a god and a jailor. This is not presented as an argument for teaching Malcolm Gladwell.