My sophomore year in English was the most ridiculous in some senses. I liked the teacher from the first day; she was funny, energetic, and very outspoken. I admired that.
This was also the class that I had the most issues with, which also started from day one.
With my Honors classes, we weren't just stuck reading whatever sadistic book the teacher unleashed upon our fragile minds, we were also expected to do some extracurricular reading. Easy enough for me since I was going to do that anyway. She wanted us to read 600 pages per quarter. Also easy. Then she dropped the bombshell: only classics and other books judged worthy of her received full credit. Others would receive half-credit.
Let me explain with the fair example: say I read a 300-page book of poetry (where you'd find one of those these days, I couldn't tell you), the teacher only gives me credit for 150 pages and I still have to read 450 pages by the end of that quarter. I call this the fair example because I can see the logic. I can read through poetry much quicker than I can read prose; I think the same rule applied with plays, which was also fair enough. Dialogue is easy to zip through, even more so than poetry.
Then she said, "I want you to challenge yourselves. That means the classics. If you read any Stephen King, Tom Clancy, John Grisham, or anybody like that, half-credit. And all sci-fi and fantasy receives half-credit."
And thus began my hatred towards English classes.
Despite what I wrote in my last post, I didn't mind my English class at all freshman year. I just didn't think the question for why we read the books we did was ever answered satisfactorily. But what our teacher did from day one soured me ever since towards the English curriculum from high school to college. While most teachers have not been as blunt as her, it doesn't take much scratching on the surface to see that they have the same opinions. And it's just not fair to the authors or readers.
You know what's funny about classics? Some of the authors like Charles Dickens and Mark Twain were hugely popular in their day. Their works weren't "classics" until the next generation grew up and continued to support their stories. So what gives any teacher the right to say which of today's popular or unpopular books are as "classic" as anything that Austen or Hugo ever wrote?
Just with her examples: I didn't start reading Stephen King until the next year but I am convinced that years from now, teachers are going to force students to plow through the unabridged version of The Stand. I haven't enjoyed everything that John Grisham wrote but I can't deny that this is a very skilled author who has crafted intelligent plots and gripping characters time and time again from his first novel. As for Tom Clancy, I've only read two of his books and they were two of the most challenging stories to get through. Incredible stories but challenging. How many writers can claim to have put so much depth and research into a story as him?
One of the great benefits to a good English class are to have students that enjoy reading. When they find books they like, they will likely go on to find other books that they'll enjoy and encourage their friends to do the same. But this half-credit nonsense was a form of punishment for liking the wrong type of books. It's not the only punishment that exists but it was one symptom of what's wrong with American education. If a student enjoys something but their teacher tells them that what they're doing is bad, that student is likely going to hate reading (and I have a story for that next time.)
I'm not even going to start on the hatred towards sci-fi/fantasy. That would take a dozen posts and some things you just learn to shrug off. Besides, it didn't affect me overmuch. I was halfway through the Wheel of Time series by that point and one of those books easily got me all the required page points, even with half-credit.
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