Newsletter sign-up: 
Get Breaking News on your cellClassics too hard for today's kids?
10:49 AM Mon, Feb 04, 2008 | Permalink
E-mail News tips
 |
 |
 
|
|
February 2008
Recent Posts
Excerpt: "Names on a Map," by Benjamin Alire Sáenz: Writers Garret goodies (including discount tickets) Sneak peek at Sunday book reviews "A Date Night With Crime" in Arlington A book award an editor can really get behind Categories
dallasnews.com
Entertainment Blogs |
Here's a Deep Monday Morning Thought from the pages of Sunday's Points section: Would students be better off if we stopped teaching classic literature and focused instead on "relevant" works? On the one hand, I respect the opinions of a teacher who has been in the trenches and knows what works. On the other hand, I'm not sure how much literature I would have deemed "relevant" at age 14 or 15 ... but I am quite glad that I had educators who pushed me through. |
 | |
|
Spotlight
|
|
Comments
Posted by Bill M. @ 12:12 PM Mon, Feb 04, 2008
Why is this always framed as an either-or issue? I guess because if you edit something called Points, both-and just isn't very sexy.
Those who demand that every text taught in the classroom be "relevant" inevitably turn out to have a very narrow -- and, yes, often racist -- notion of just what is relevant and to whom. They are the mirror image of the narrow classicists who insist that only books enshrined in the canon will do.
The best teachers I encountered moved comfortably across the entire range of literature and drew no distinctions between classics and contemporaries. The only distinction worth making was "Is this good? Worth reading? Memorable?"
Obviously -- as he himself admitted -- that Chicago teacher wasn't very good at teaching the classics, and probably had little interest in reading them. There's no evidence in his column that he relishes reading of any kind. This is the attitude that produces mediocre classroom instruction and kills forever the desire to read with pleasure. Some students never recover.