School Daze! What Did Your Teachers Ruin For You And/Or More Positive Reflections On Required Reading

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Those bastards! I'll never read Macbeth again! Actually, that's not true. I enjoyed reading Shakespeare aloud in class. But it did take me many years to realize that The Red Badge Of Courage was actually an amazing and excellent book thanks to a dull wrong-headed line by line dissection by one of my high school english teachers.What else do I remember from those days? Where The Red Fern Grows, The Catcher In The Rye, The Grapes Of Wrath, An Occurence At Owl Creek Bridge. I was in something called the great books program from 4th to 7th grade and it was my first taste of elitism in that a handful of kids were picked to read short stories from a book (i remember The Rocking Horse Winner and To Build A Fire) and every couple weeks we got to leave class and sit in a room and talk about them. We were the chosen few. I remember a teacher who made us memorize the poem Invictus and when she saw you in the hall she would point at you and shriek, "INVICTUS", in front of everybody and if you didn't know it right then and there you got a failing grade. I remember my English professor from my one and only year at college-his name was Dr. Herbert Guggenheim-throwing a chair against the wall to wake us up(that semester, so long ago now, he taught Delillo's The Names, Tama Janowitz's The Slaves Of New York, and Goodnight Moon! He was pretty cool).I remember "Under a spreading chestnut tree, the village smithy stands/The smith a mighty man is he/with large and sinewy hands." But that's all i remember of that.

What about you? What do you remember? loves/hates/bad teachers/good teachers/Does the name John Steinbeck make you shiver?(i'm especially interested in what non-u.s. students had to read.Who was your Willa Cather? It wasn't Willa Cather, was it?)

― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 22 December 2003 16:20 (twenty-one years ago)

It was some time back, but I think we did Macbeth, Pride & Prejudice, Under Milkwood, poems of Wilfred Owen, 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice & Men and maybe Slaughterhouse 5. I'm not sure about the last one.

My English teacher wore a CND badge and large hooped earrings. This was unusual in Essex.

― MikeyG (MikeyG), Monday, 22 December 2003 17:18 (twenty-one years ago)

The Great Gatsby!

― jed (jed_e_3), Monday, 22 December 2003 23:09 (twenty-one years ago)

I went to university and I couldn't read any of the books we were prescribed because they were prescribed. So I just got by on memories of the ones I'd already read and skimreading a couple of pages in the others if I absolutely had to read another book for an exam. I read some of the books since. But now I think this was stupid. I mean university is a great social institution. Or is it?

― darling, Tuesday, 23 December 2003 06:58 (twenty-one years ago)

I will never touch Marsilius of Padua again after being put through him at University. If you have never heard of this bugger, you are lucky.

― Roderick the Visigoth. (Jake Proudlock), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 03:49 (twenty-one years ago)

I disliked most all the stuff I had to read in secondary school. But most especially I hated, in grade seven, having to read Death Be Not Proud, by John Gunther, about his son's slow death from a brain tumor. Fuuuuuuuck.

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 17:21 (twenty-one years ago)

In the ninth grade (1979) we had to read the hobbit- which might have been great, but we had to read it in these prescribed chunks. Sometimes I would be ahead of the class waiting for them to catch up, or i would be behind and have to skip pages to be ready for the next chunk of pages. Of course a test never helps to create fondness for a book. My impression of Tolkein is dark, dull and joyless. I look at the Lord of the Rings series wistfully, I'm envious of others who embrace Tolkein so passionately but hey, there are lots of good books out there. I was never assigned Steinbeck and I really love his stuff. For a light Steinbeck read, try "Travels with Charlie".

― flacajax (Speedy Gonzalas), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 20:49 (twenty-one years ago)

I give a lot more credit than blame to my assorted teachers. There's a lot of stuff I probably wouldn't have read otherwise. Especially The Jungle, Upton Sinclair, which I expected to be really tedious (the book that led to the founding of the Food and Drug Administration, oh baby turn me on!), but was actually a pretty gripping immigrants-struggling-in-America story. Most of my classmates didn't even bother reading it, and I kept saying, "No, it's really good!" I have a feeling it would seem overdetermined to me now, which means it's good I read it when I was 17. Like I said, credit to the teacher.

― spittle (spittle), Thursday, 25 December 2003 08:19 (twenty-one years ago)

three years pass...

I think my high school had the worst English department in the state. As I remember, we were only required to read TWO BOOKS. To Kill a Mockingbird, and Walkabout.

Here is Amazon's information on Walkabout:

Reading level: Ages 9-12
Paperback: 128 pages
Publisher: Puffin Books; New Ed edition (October 25, 1979)
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #363,408 in Books

― Z S, Sunday, 8 July 2007 02:49 (eighteen years ago)

oh man, i am still scarred to this day cuz i had to read one of the sue grafton alphabet mystery things and treat it as important literature.

― johnny crunch, Sunday, 8 July 2007 05:11 (eighteen years ago)

What does that mean?

― Casuistry, Sunday, 8 July 2007 18:06 (eighteen years ago)

I guess that it doesn't technically fit the thread title...it means that my tenth grade english teacher had us read 'A is for Alibi'(or one of them, I don't specifically recall). just majorly RONG imo to put something like that in a high school ciriculuum...

who knows though, teachers probably teach the harry potter books nowadays.

― johnny crunch, Sunday, 8 July 2007 19:43 (eighteen years ago)

I guess what I was asking was, what did you do to treat it as "important literature"?

― Casuistry, Sunday, 8 July 2007 20:54 (eighteen years ago)

i barely remember any of the books we did in high school. i think we did 'lord of the flies' and 'the bone people' (nz writer keri hulme) in my last two years, and also macbeth and othello. but my english teacher was rubbish so i skipped a lot of those classes.

― Rubyred, Monday, 9 July 2007 01:25 (eighteen years ago)

Raised in the Caribbean and loved almost ever book I was assigned in class, going so far as to borrow books from younger and older students if the syllabus changed and they got assigned different books. (British-style education.) The only book I despised was "A Brighter Sun" by Samuel Selvon, a Trinidadian author, considered one of the premier authors from the region. People probably know him better for "Londoners". Anyway that Sun book bored me to fucking tears -- not even domestic violence could more than momentarily raise my eyebrows. "Jumbie Bird" by Ismith Khan, another Trinidadian author -- was way better (for me, at the time).

In 6th form (grade 12 & 13 a sort of...I dunno college prep kind of course if I want to translate it into Americanese) a lazy teacher rushed through "Waiting for Godot" so even now the thought of even picking up something by Beckett makes me shudder, literally.

We did a lot of British novelists but also Jamaican playwrights and lots of Caribbean poets like Lorna Goodison (Jamaica), Edward Brathwaite (Barbados) and Derek Walcott (St. Lucia). One African novelist managed to slip into the syllabus, represented by "The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born" by Ayi Kwei Armah.

― Arethusa, Monday, 9 July 2007 01:47 (eighteen years ago)

No teacher I ever had in elementary or secondary school seems to have made the slightest impression on me in terms of literature, good or bad. They inspired neither hate nor love. My most vivid reading memories center entirely upon those books I read from my own volition.

― Aimless, Monday, 9 July 2007 05:28 (eighteen years ago)

This is mostly true for me too, but I'm ok with having had all that Shakespeare dangled in front of me. I can't really remember anything else we read, though.

― Casuistry, Thursday, 12 July 2007 14:01 (eighteen years ago)

I think my high school had the worst English department in the state. As I remember, we were only required to read TWO BOOKS. To Kill a Mockingbird, and Walkabout.

That might have been all they had available. When I taught secondary English the only complete set of novels we had at our school was Where the Red Fern Grows. When I asked for more to be bought my principal got me a set of 100 books, two per title of a mix of fiction/non-fiction. I later learned it was a free sample from a publisher.

― Ms Misery, Thursday, 12 July 2007 14:38 (eighteen years ago)

Aimless and Chris otm.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Thursday, 12 July 2007 15:32 (eighteen years ago)

In Ontario, apparently, schools do not supply the novels. Kids are required to buy them or get them from local libraries. I learned this working in a big chain bookstore. I don't know how accurate it is, but it's what several parents told me.

― franny glass, Thursday, 12 July 2007 18:00 (eighteen years ago)

Kids are required to buy them or get them from local libraries

We did this in my high school English honors class. My kids were poor though and I couldn't have asked them to buy books. I usually supplied folders, notebooks and pencils for them.

― Ms Misery, Thursday, 12 July 2007 18:02 (eighteen years ago)

I remember that a lot of what passed for the teaching of literature at my high school was trying to fool kids into thinking we were actually doing something fun--like watching a primitive form of television or using the texts as jumping off points for our own creativity-- Turn a Poe story into a radio play! Rewrite Hamlet in Valley Girl-speak! And this was the AP class.

The only times I felt I got anything out of it was when we were reading something I'd already read on my own--but that was only a sense of superiority over the kids struggling with understanding basic plot elements or those who talked about abortion in every class discussion.

― mulla atari, Saturday, 14 July 2007 17:06 (eighteen years ago)

I hated, in grade seven, having to read Death Be Not Proud, by John Gunther, about his son's slow death from a brain tumor.

yeah me too, same age. perverse, even torturous. it bummed me out for weeks. WHY? I wondered. Eventually I chalked it up to the fatalistic side of catholic education, reminding the kids WERE ALL GONNA DIE.

― m coleman, Sunday, 15 July 2007 13:20 (eighteen years ago)

Ha. When I read it in public school I thought "am I really the right audience for this book?" Looking back I think the teacher thought it would sober up us silly kids when we learned, yeah, WERE ALL GONNA DIE, ESPECIALLY THIS SENSITIVE KID WHO GIVES NO EVIDENCE OF EVER HAVING SASSED HIS TEACHER DURING HIS TIME ON THIS EARTH. Its companion piece in popular morbidity was the TV movie Brian's Song. Bang The Drum Slowly was a more M*A*S*H-like black humor take on the same subject.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Monday, 16 July 2007 04:20 (eighteen years ago)

ESPECIALLY=EVEN

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Monday, 16 July 2007 04:21 (eighteen years ago)

It took me a long time to get into Steinbeck, having not enjoyed 'Of Mice and Men' at school. But, really, I was a huge reader in my own time and I think I just resented being told what to read by other people.

― James Morrison, Tuesday, 17 July 2007 00:00 (eighteen years ago)

Brain tumour books? That's harsh. Back home all students had to buy or borrow their own books, but the public schools had a book rental system so if the school had it in stock you had a chance at it. Most of us bought though, or got second hand copies from older siblings/relatives.

― Arethusa, Wednesday, 18 July 2007 23:18 (eighteen years ago)

My English teacher ruined Catch-22 by over-explaining every single off-color joke in the book- "Dori Duz-'cause she did. You know, she did it! With men! And her name was Duz!" Etc.
We had a tiny closet with the books in it and just picked the books out of it when it was time. I'm still mildly shocked to see kids having to pay for stuff :(

― Morley Timmons, Thursday, 26 July 2007 02:52 (eighteen years ago)

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