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Gwydden t1_iu04kvj wrote

Reply to comment by McGilla_Gorilla in The Great Gatsby: I don't know why this book is so popular with English teachers by knerled

Hot take: all books are literature. Bad books are literature just as much as good books. By the same token, bad art is art just as much as good art. Whether something is "literature" or "art" has absolutely nothing to do with its quality. That doesn't even get into how it is literally impossible to create an objective standard of what "good" and "bad" mean in this context.

Or into how all reading that isn't forced on you is ultimately for pleasure. Reading is a luxury some people get to enjoy in their free time. I love reading, but hate the hyperbolic sacralization of it: no book is going to unlock Nirvana for you or summon a heavenly host to bear you straight to St. Peter's pearly gates.

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jefrye t1_iu0dnp8 wrote

This is more or less what Lewis argues in An Experiment in Criticism. He basically says that we should spend less time arguing about whether a book is good or bad and more time considering what it means to read well, because if a person reads a book well and loves it then that book is good art to that person. The only truly bad book, he argues, is one that cannot be read well, which is a judgement that is almost impossible to make.

What Lewis means by "reading well" took him multiple fairly dense essays to get through, but I suppose it could be summarized as fully receiving, understanding, and appreciating the book as art—it certainly goes beyond mere enjoyment (though, for Lewis, so-called "mere" enjoyment is a crucial part of good literature).

That's what I think schools should be trying to teach: reading well. As you point out, this sub loves to act as if reading is by default superior to other hobbies, when that's clearly not the case. Reading well, though, is something special—not superior to any other form of art appreciation, but arguably "better for you" then other forms of art consumption. (And if people want to simply consume art, that's still fine. But we're specifically talking about education here, and I believe that teachers should be attempting to instill the higher form into their students.)

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Gwydden t1_iu0mh66 wrote

Well put. I agree that the primary purpose of literature classes should be to teach students to engage with texts—any texts—and language at more than a surface level, a useful skill not just when reading fiction but in their personal and professional lives.

Familiarizing them with culturally influential landmark works is still valuable but secondary to that. And there is no reason to make this process more onerous than it needs to be. Engaged students are better students. I read about an English teacher that had students read Shakespeare in comic book form; that sounds grand.

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McGilla_Gorilla t1_iu0dnj6 wrote

I don’t necessarily agree. Just going off a basic wiki definition: > Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.

There are plenty of books that don’t hit this standard of “art”. And even if it’s true, that any written work is “literature” then yes there is a distinction between art from which it benefits to have a formal education to understand / appreciate / learn and “art” which can be easily digested at face value. Like there’s no way anyone actually believes that The Great Gatsby is just as easy to understand as Star Wars: The Novel #23 or whatever. > no book is going to unlock Nirvana for you or summon a heavenly host to bear you straight to St. Peter's pearly gates.

I don’t really understand this weird straw man or how it’s relevant to the discussion. Learning the periodic table or WW1 history isn’t going to cause you to transcend either, but no one goes around arguing that those aren’t appropriate for a highschool student to learn. There is value in learning to understand literature regardless of whether you end up personally enjoying reading as a hobby, and that’s why it’s taught in school.

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Gwydden t1_iu0kdla wrote

The production of every book involves "creative or imaginative talent." Whether that talent is "expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas" is entirely subjective.

>I don’t really understand this weird straw man or how it’s relevant to the discussion.

And I don't understand how a distinction between "pleasure reading" and "literature," even if it isn't arbitrary as I firmly believe, is relevant to the post to which you were responding, which simply argued that literature classes should at least try to "instill a love of literature."

I teach history. Certainly, I think learning history is valuable even if you don't care for it, and I stress that to my students. But getting them to enjoy the class and, hopefully, instilling a passion for the subject among at least some of them, is definitely one of my educational goals and, when I achieve it, most cherished accomplishments.

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