We should also step back and ask for a moment whether many of today’s students who are disengaged are because of the substance of the material, the quality of the teaching, or because they haven’t been taught to read so encountering challenging literature is frustrating for them? Good stories have timeless appeal and as the Eduwife – a former high school literature teacher herself — likes to point out, if you can’t make many of the classics, with their sex, violence, and foul deeds exciting for students then you’re in the wrong line of work.
When I was fourteen, I read Lady Chatterly's Lover and was bored to tears. I retain a burning hatred of D.H. Lawrence. Anybody who can make sex boring to a fourteen year-old boy has got to be the single worst writer in the history of the English language.
Fourteen year-old boys are visual learners in that area. Fourteen year-old girls know that. In my son's middle school, many of the girls look 18 while the boys look 12.
i only recently looked at lawrence. got an essay collection: turns out he was a raving loony... a quality i admire a great deal (cf dostoyevsky for example). anyhow, that led me to _chatterly_... feh. doesn't age well i imagine what with the sex revolution and all...
but "classics" is homer, virgil, that lot. the sex and violence boys. shakespeare sneaks in too of course.
When I was fourteen, I read Lady Chatterly's Lover and was bored to tears. I retain a burning hatred of D.H. Lawrence. Anybody who can make sex boring to a fourteen year-old boy has got to be the single worst writer in the history of the English language.
ReplyDeleteFourteen year-old boys are visual learners in that area. Fourteen year-old girls know that. In my son's middle school, many of the girls look 18 while the boys look 12.
ReplyDeletehahahahahaaaaaaa
ReplyDeleteBelieve it or not, I read several D.H. Lawrence books as a teen. (Teen or early 20s.)
ReplyDeletei only recently looked at lawrence.
ReplyDeletegot an essay collection: turns out
he was a raving loony... a quality
i admire a great deal (cf dostoyevsky
for example). anyhow, that led me
to _chatterly_... feh. doesn't age well
i imagine what with the sex revolution
and all...
but "classics" is homer, virgil, that lot.
the sex and violence boys.
shakespeare sneaks in too of course.