Natasha Vargas-Cooper on “Why We Should Stop Teaching Novels to High School Students“. On the Bookforum blog, yet! Her argument, such as it is—an argument that aspires to elevate personal limitations to educational policy—would clearly ban poetry from being taught as well. After all, the poor student might be confronted with a “metaphor to untangle.” Oh, Jaysus and all th’ saints save us from such a fate!
That said, her implication that literature, especially novels and poetry, are often badly taught is worth pondering. As a journalist, she might even want to follow up on it and see what facts she can find to support that notion….
Agree with Joel re: CNF can be taught badly as well. And I can't imagine. e. .g., teaching the ponderous In Cold Blood in high school only because of its size!<br />Personal comments: I read Sun Also Rises in high school (on my own) and asked my mother what she read in high school in the '20s. It was Dickens! So I figured there was an automatic generational gap in education (my high
Wow! The irony is that those same teachers could very well have ruined nonfiction if they taught it as poorly. I agree that classic literature is better at thirty, but the reasoning in this article is ridiculous… Don't do something because it's too hard to figure out. I would be bored crazy reading only nonfiction. The muses must be rolling over in their supposed grave.