Encouraging the reading of good literature.

[Paulclem]

How would you do this? Does it need to be done, or is reading evolving in a way that will change literature?

[LitNetIsGreat]

Three big questions which I would like to answer, though I am a little tired at present and my brain demands sleep. Interesting subject though.

I will skip the first one for now, and lightly say yes to the second one, in some respects. Reading is evolving, or more that the modern media is affecting the way people read, but I don't think this will necessarily change literature.

[Mathor]

But what really defines good literature?

I think people should be encouraged to read literature, yes. And let them decide what's good and what's not.

[The Comedian]

Depends a lot on the age the reader you're trying to encourage. If we're talkin' about younger kids (non adults), then I think you first need to create an environment where reading is fun and seen as a great reward.

Here's a little educational/psychological game that we play with our kid (age 4): when she misbehaves repeatedly, we take a way "a privilege." And what's the first privilege we always take away? Books. Not TV, not the computer, not treats. . .Books.

What this has done is that it's made books the prize of all privileges, instead of the broccoli of the dinner plate. It also make her love books more than any other diversion.

In older readers, I think you need to ease them in with texts that are entertaining but also respond to some questions that they have about their own lives. They need to see books and the characters and events in those books as kindred souls. For all readers of literature need to enjoy it on a personal and spiritual level first. Later, some may be interested in the critical scholarship. And that's fine. But if we want a more literary culture, then new readers of literature need to read classic texts with a smile and a tear.

[Drkshadow03]

Depends a lot on the age the reader you're trying to encourage. If we're talkin' about younger kids (non adults), then I think you first need to create an environment where reading is fun and seen as a great reward.

Here's a little educational/psychological game that we play with our kid (age 4): when she misbehaves repeatedly, we take a way "a privilege." And what's the first privilege we always take away? Books. Not TV, not the computer, not treats. . .Books.

What this has done is that it's made books the prize of all privileges, instead of the broccoli of the dinner plate. It also make her love books more than any other diversion.

In older readers, I think you need to ease them in with texts that are entertaining but also respond to some questions that they have about their own lives. They need to see books and the characters and events in those books as kindred souls. For all readers of literature need to enjoy it on a personal and spiritual level first. Later, some may be interested in the critical scholarship. And that's fine. But if we want a more literary culture, then new readers of literature need to read classic texts with a smile and a tear.

Wow, did that really work?

[JBI]

Cut the dated rubbish from high schools, and put in something worth reading there for starts. Out with to Kill a Mockingbird and The Chrysalids, and Cat's Cradle, and Death of a Salesman, and The Glass Menagerie, and in with good stuff - that surely will help a bit - not saying all those works are rubbish, but they shouldn't be taught at the high school level, and they all suffer from time.

[Drkshadow03]

Cut the dated rubbish from high schools, and put in something worth reading there for starts. Out with to Kill a Mockingbird and The Chrysalids, and Cat's Cradle, and Death of a Salesman, and The Glass Menagerie, and in with good stuff - that surely will help a bit - not saying all those works are rubbish, but they shouldn't be taught at the high school level, and they all suffer from time.

Actually JBI provides a good jumping off point. I only read Death of a Salesman and To Kill a Mockingbird out of the titles JBI listed. It would be nice if we had one nationalized education across states so we were all entering college with the same background knowledge rather than different standards and different books and such taught in different states and in different school districts.

[islandclimber]

Cut the dated rubbish from high schools, and put in something worth reading there for starts. Out with to Kill a Mockingbird and The Chrysalids, and Cat's Cradle, and Death of a Salesman, and The Glass Menagerie, and in with good stuff - that surely will help a bit - not saying all those works are rubbish, but they shouldn't be taught at the high school level, and they all suffer from time.

out with Lord of the Flies too..

[JBI]

out with Lord of the Flies too..

I got Wyndham instead, though many of us here got those - I hear in some places though, they have begun to start teaching Two Solitudes again, which is a significant text - I would just like to see something like Joy Kogawa's Obasan taking Harper Lee's place - not only is the book better written, it also has something to do with Canada, and the people who live here. Though, they could, for instance, stick Whylah Falls in there instead, and put in Prochain Episode instead of Cat's Cradle or whatever - but will that ever happen? I guess the NCL may be able to manage to print off copies of the book (not profitably either, they aren't even functioning as a real press anymore, but as a sort of side project for the U of T presses) but the teacher's additions and spark-notes will not be found anywhere. That would lower the literacy rate by how much?


I can't see why though, we can be made to read American modernist theatre, but not good Canadian theatre, like works by Thompson Highway, or Michel Tremblay (even though the latter would require translation), or even something like Walsh by Sharon Pollock.

Certainly the poetry section, and the essay section can be improved as well, but those are really all up to the teacher.

[islandclimber]

I would have loved to be reading Michel Tremblay, there are a couple plays of his around that have been translated, I think... or maybe George F. Walker or Brad Fraser.. I don't really know Thompson Highway or Sharon Pollock though...

I would have been interested in reading anything Canadian in high school.. we have all these Canadian content laws, and yet in high school pretty much everything we read in English class is american... seems strange to me.. I don't know Obasan... is it good?

I'd think with all the great or at least well known Canadian writers we have, some could filter down from first year university english classes to high school curriculum.. Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, Mordecai Richler (though I haven't seen him in a university english class), Alistair Macleod, Timothy Findley, Rohinton Mistry (although I guess his stories take place outside canada), George e Clarke, Jacques Poulin, Sinclair Ross... oh well...

[Drkshadow03]

out with Lord of the Flies too..

What you don't like Lord of the Flies?!?

Although, I did hate it in high school.

[islandclimber]

i think it is much more appropriate for elementary school... and not just because it is about boys...

[JBI]

Obasan is, I would say, one of the top 20 essentially books of Canadian literature - the book itself too has had a huge political career, significantly helping the fight leading to the apology to Japanese Canadians for internment, with the book being read in large sections in Parliament, but I think beyond that, Kogawa's main functionality as a poet rather than a novelist has helped the poem develop a more metaphorical writing style - perhaps Kerri Sakamoto's newer work, The Electrical Field, dealing with similar subject matter is a better text though, for that age bracket. My real problem is that we can read about racial history and mistreatment in the US, but why can't we read about it from a Canadian perspective - why is there this need to engage a foreign history, when, quite simply, we can examine our own cultural history, and learn about something which is far closer - even something like Prochain Episode by Hubert Aquin would be more relevant, as the issues and intellectual atmosphere the book is formed out of have not disappeared.

It seems fine to read short stories by O Henry, or whomever, but lets be honest - if there is a particularly strong form in English Canadian literature, especially written by women, it is the short story - I see no reason why we cannot read those works.

I think if people connected their literature at that age with themsleves they probably would react better - the goal is to get the books to connect on a personal level, and thereby encourage the pursuit of more texts, opening up the reader's frame. All these mistaught imports don't do much - Shakespeare cannot, and will not move, but really, everything else can be chosen better.

[JBI]

What you don't like Lord of the Flies?!?

Although, I did hate it in high school.

The fact that it is so damn obviously written by a teacher, so the book hits you over the head with "This is a symbol here guys, take note, I am using this to symbolize whatever." The book seems designed to be a teaching tool, rather than a book, and, in all honesty, I didn't particularly think it was that great a book - it had a few good gags, but I wouldn't call it particularly memorable.

[Drkshadow03]

i think it is much more appropriate for elementary school... and not just because it is about boys...

Heh. I hated reading the book in high school, let alone how I would've felt about it in elementary school. Liked it a lot more when I re-read it at 22.

[islandclimber]

I think I would have loved that story when I was 10-12 as I would have felt some affinity for the boys... and again we could be getting into the argument about what is age appropriate... I won't say Lord of the Flies is a mediocre work, but I will say for myself it seemed a bit childish for high school, but maybe that was partly due to the childish analysis and questions we were made to discuss with regards to it in high school english class... maybe they made it seem aimed at a younger crowd than it really was.. for I haven't read it since...

[Paulclem]

Lord of the Flies was written in reaction to an earlier work, (which I can't recall), where the castaway children were organising themselves like a band of young Robinson Crusoes - all logical and civilsed, not at all like the children Golding had encountered. I don't think it was written to be a textbook case on classic literature.

[Evaril]

The problem with making high school students read great literature is that they wouldn't know how to appreciate them. A friend of mine read David Copperfield when she was 14 and hated it. I don't know if she'd like it if she reads it now, 6 years later, but I think at 14, one wouldn't have enough life experience to appreciate a book like that. I tried read David Copperfield seven years ago in middle school, and I stopped at chapter 5 and hated it. I just read it again recently and it's now my favorite book.

[Paulclem]

I know what you mean. It is a difficult call to make.I know that in my case I disliked ceertain books when I was studying them - late teens - but i also discovered that I liked certain poetry that was beyond me. I read The Wasteland - liked it- couldn't understand it to the degree I wanted to - but then came back to it years later and appreciated it more. In the case of Eliot I hung in there with The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock - which I understood to a greater degree, and used to go back to regularly. Then later I developd more confidence to look at The Wasteland again. It's hard to tell what is going to resonate with an individual.

[The Comedian]

Here's a little educational/psychological game that we play with our kid (age 4): when she misbehaves repeatedly, we take a way "a privilege." And what's the first privilege we always take away? Books. Not TV, not the computer, not treats. . .Books.



Wow, did that really work?

Yeah, for the most part. She loves to read and be read to. And the threat, "if you taunt your sister one more time, you're going to lose your books tonight, usually puts the kibosh on the bad behavior right quick." :lol: