And is that all y’all have to say about the entry? My taste in literature? Maybe I should start up a literary blog and you can all defend the books I define as good for you, but not necessarily good reading!

I fear that someday they will just stop teaching kids to read altogether, and instead thre will be lessons in working the DVD player.

Julie, I think that is wonderful that you do that for your daughter. It is important to help strengthen weaknesses, too, but not every child needs to love all of English and American literature. But a familiarity with it promotes a variety of good cultural values.

Cato, thank you for directing my attention to your post. I must have missed it while skimming headlines last night. I shall go back and read it tonight.

I have always wondered about the tracking. I was in honor’s classes throughout Jr. and Sr. High. The Academic classes read the same things we did. Sophomore year, I had a scheduling conflict between a special history course and honors English so I chose to take a semester of academic English.

That was the most boring semester of English I have ever suffered through. Worse even than Jane Eyre. Now, maybe it is because of skill differences between honors and academic classes, and maybe it cannot be helped. But up to that point, I had always enjoyed the class discussions and the essays we wrote. Suddenly “all” I was expected to do was pull out discrete details, summarize story lines and be prepared to answer multiple choice questions on tests. No ideas were discussed or elaborated. I felt sorry for the other kids. The curriculum was dry and completely uninspiring.

Dana, I confess… *sigh* …. I HATED “Jane Eyre,” too. But I loved the movie with Joan Fontaine!

Anyway, I have often pondered the quality and choices of reading material often doled out to the students. I wonder how much freedom teachers are given in assignig them. The most depressed and negative teachers always assigned the most depressing and negative books. Or maybe the cause was the other way around…

At any rate, kids should read more non-fiction, IMHO. There is EXCELLENT non-fiction out there. I loved Mark Twain’s books, there is also Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography– a knee-slapping bag of tales if there ever was, and educational and true (well, true with embellishments) if ever there was. C.S. Lewis Narnia books- pure fiction but uplifting and deep, are stunning. Like I said in my blog, “Death of a Saleman” is a very poor choice for kids.

I think schools want to depress the kids on purpose– so they won’t read, and– God forbid– get any moral lessons to any story.

Marissa has an auditory processing problem. She hates, hates, hates getting information strictly orally. I read to her every day. Not long enough for her to feel like she is getting tortured, just long enough for her to practice staying focused on what she is receiving verbally and to practice her imagination skills.

I liked Wuthering Heights, though. Both the movie and the book.

And now I see I even accidentally referred to the author as Jane Austen, and misspelled it at that.

Didn’t I say that I at least thought it might have been good for me to suffer through it?

I could say it is a product of growing up in public school, but I think that has little to do with it. I do not like much of any literary work that can be labeled “romantic.” Except some of Goethe’s stuff.

I have always preferred nonfiction.