"but given what I have written on this blog about dark YA, I find parts of your reply incredibly condescending."
Crap. I'm sorry. I respect your opinion very much. I was trying to express disagreement without being offensive, spent a few minutes reviewing my response, and I still failed. Also, I was thinking 'older than twelve' in my choices although twelve is part of the YA demographic, so that's my bad. I'm sorry you were not giving a choice about reading Catcher when it disturbed you.
This seems to go back to your point about teachers thinking that because they read a certain book, everyone should read it. I agree that academics shouldn't have a stranglehold on what makes a book a 'classic', and also with your overall point that there is no one set of books that everyone must read. I voted for Catcher being 'essential' because I remember being told in class that it was a breakthrough novel for its time, doing things authors hadn't dared to do in a book with a teenage protagonist before then. That goes back to my question about fans of a genre reading early examples of that genre. But another book could fit that bill just as well.
Then I wonder, how can a teacher pick books to have the whole class read without triggering a student or running into other problems? One possible option off the top of my head would be to offer alternative books to meet the requirements and earn the grade, but then that eliminates the ability to discuss the book as a class (though maybe that's not a bad thing, I dunno). I'm not an educator, so I can't speak from experience. I'm not sure what a good solution would be.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2011-07-20 03:42 am (UTC)Crap. I'm sorry. I respect your opinion very much. I was trying to express disagreement without being offensive, spent a few minutes reviewing my response, and I still failed. Also, I was thinking 'older than twelve' in my choices although twelve is part of the YA demographic, so that's my bad. I'm sorry you were not giving a choice about reading Catcher when it disturbed you.
This seems to go back to your point about teachers thinking that because they read a certain book, everyone should read it. I agree that academics shouldn't have a stranglehold on what makes a book a 'classic', and also with your overall point that there is no one set of books that everyone must read. I voted for Catcher being 'essential' because I remember being told in class that it was a breakthrough novel for its time, doing things authors hadn't dared to do in a book with a teenage protagonist before then. That goes back to my question about fans of a genre reading early examples of that genre. But another book could fit that bill just as well.
Then I wonder, how can a teacher pick books to have the whole class read without triggering a student or running into other problems? One possible option off the top of my head would be to offer alternative books to meet the requirements and earn the grade, but then that eliminates the ability to discuss the book as a class (though maybe that's not a bad thing, I dunno). I'm not an educator, so I can't speak from experience. I'm not sure what a good solution would be.