Capitalism - Feudalism without the Kings
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Movie Monday

 

I'd like to talk about a book today and the movie which followed it, but mainly about a book. A book which is the summer reading assignment for the boy and a book which is a microcosm of the problem with how literature is taught to YA (young adults) and VYA (very young adults.)

 

First, in the interest of truth, my "prejudice": I am extremely in favor of the anthology approach to teaching literature and extremely opposed to the pot-shot approach of handling out of various YA paperback novels to read during the year. I am so much in favor of the anthology approach that I collect literature anthologies; newer ones in the Barnes and Noble sales annex (they are still used at the college level) and older ones at garage sales.

 

There's a wide spectrum of good world literature available and so much of it teaches us how to examine our world and ourselves. (For part of her summer reading assignment for honors English, the girl is examining Plato's allegory of the cave with study questions. Of course this is not as part of an anthology but as a copied hand-out.) In fact, there's just too much good world literature available out there so that the selections available in anthology form is the best way to present the widest cross section. 

 

In case some of you may not be as familiar with anthologies as I choose to be, a short definition: literature anthologies present parts of or all of literary selections. For example, one may contain a selection of the complete Hamlet or just the soliloquies. Some anthologies are all drama, poetry, etc., or chronologically separated: Book I, American Literature, 1600-1800. In the high school anthologies, selections are usually preceded by an introduction and followed by questions. Here's an example of a random question for Hedda Gabler, Act I from a 1963 anthology I collected: 1. Miss Tesman's character is not very complex. She is the spokesman for one human value only. What is this value, and how is it established? Does Miss Tesman's character help us understand Hedda Gabler when she enters? In college anthologies, you usually get introductions, seldom questions, and 2,000 plus pages of lit on very thin but heavy-weight paper which makes for a difficult book to prop up for bed reading and an accurate missile for a fast-moving spider.

 

If you were to trace the demise of middle school/high school anthology, you would probably find that they fell out of favor sometime in the latter half of the last century, probably when publishers realized anthologies = 1 book per  semester/year while paperbacks = many $$$$$$$$ all during the year.

 

Three years ago, the girl and I agonized through the slim book, So Be It during the school year and I fully got to realize the educational travesty in this type lit presentation. Now, I'm repeating the process with the boy with Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief which is his summer reading assignment. 

 

With So Be It, the girl had an excellent English teacher who was sending home very insightful essay questions for the book. But the book was lit-light. OK, probably it would have been fine on a very superficial level but no way could you gleam pearls of insight from this novelette. I could tell the teacher was trying; hell knows, we were trying ourselves to tears.

 

What I find equally disturbing is the fact that teachers, etc. spend so much time/are forced to spend so much time "elevating" banal works. They are really trying to get gems from stone but the dark side of this is that the subliminal message to kids is: Hey, this tripe has meaning. Who needs to read great lit? 

 

Case in point is Rick Riordan's (author of the Percy Jackson series) site for The Lightning Thief. It's an excellent site and the complete teacher's guide found there is one of the best I've seen. The boy and I are plowing through it. It's got all types of cognitive learning exercises plus a multitude of short essay questions. (Note: I found the guide for this book; the school never assigned one.)

I think The Lightning Thief is great summer reading; the boy really enjoyed it. I like the fact that the school is using a book with a male hero as the primary protagonist. and Percy's ADHD is a identifying factor for boy readers aged 11 and 12. . Plus as I just said, I'm impressed with Riordan's site for this book; whoever prepared it put a lot of thought into it.

PJ: TLT, is a fun summer read not a school assignment summer read. (And I'm not "picking" on Riordan; he's just the case in point.) But aside from the fact that I think it should only be summer/light reading, if you're using this book as a school summer assignment without a study guide, you're presenting a fantasy quest with the panoply of Greek gods cold turkey. If you think modern religious myths are tough to plod through, take a look at the Greek gods fairy tales. There's Zeus who banished his dad, Kronos, who castrated his dad, Uranus. And that's just for starters. (Plus, no way is the Annabeth from the novel the daughter of Athena; you may want to make Annabeth the brainy one but mythical Athena was virginal.) So there's a lot of interesting stuff in this book which the typical kid is skipping as he reads on his own.

 

I think you get my POV about the dearth of study-worthy YA lit being presented to kids today but you may be thinking: You can grouse but can you present an alternative? I think I can. Granted we will probably never get lit anthologies back for grades before college, how about this?

 

1. A book such as one from the Percy Jackson series, Harry Potter series, etc., as light summer reading. 

2. A handout of the first few chapters of Tom Sawyer including the famous white-washing the fence episode. This should be cheap since Tom Sawyer is in public domain. (I'm thinking boys here but there are other classic works to use.)

3.  A handout of various poems for younger readers. There are a lot of good ones out there and for many kids this would be an excellent intro to poetry.

 

Let me finish with a mini-review of The Lightning Thief movie. Once again, it's another movie which would never have grossed more than its budget on domestic sales. (Box Office MoJo: $95M+ budget; $130,000M+ gross; 60% of gross from non-US sources.) It's a movie you can sit through, not that it doesn't have its cringe-worthy moments. (Brosnan as Chiron?) By eliminating a lot of the mythical characters found in the book, I think kids understand the Olympian gods better. But in the over-the-top CGI movie world kids love to inhabit and which is fast becoming the only type of move available to adults, this movie didn't "shine." Apparently on this point, a lot of US movie goers agreed with me. (The End of the Independent Filmmaker of Non-CGI Films? might make an interesting topic for a Movie Monday.)

OK, stick a fork in me, I'm done. I'd love to hear from any of you who could recommend some anthology-type lit for the VYA crowd.