Books school has ruined (1 Viewer)

[keladry]

me and my friend were talking today about the stuff we did for english in school. he pointed out that most texts that we study for school are ruined even if they were good. but i reckon that the really good ones will never be wrecked. so which ones were ruined for you? or were the absolute worst/boring to study? i know harry potter is being studied in school now; wonder if that will wreck it?

 

[seremify007]

I thought school was better at ruining good films because instead of watching a film and appreciating it, you end up looking for techniques which don't really add anything...

 

[Lundy]

If I hadn't been forced to study To Kill a Mockingbird in year 10 I probably would have discovered it when I was a bit older and more disposed to appreciate it. But as it is now I consider the novel tainted by the demons of 10th grade english.

Pretty much all my other texts sucked to begin with. Except Wuthering Heights, which I secretly enjoyed.

 

[walrusbear]

why does studying a book ruin it?

 

[malkin86]

It's like, you've got no time to just plain enjoy it for what it is, you've got to get on and 'dissect the vision of the author with inexpert tools'...

For me, Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" was wrecked by studying it, no less than 3 times in different years and coming to the same conclusions/visions.

Also, My Place was wrecked for me, not by having to study it as a journey as much as the attitude of the teacher and everyone else towards it - that it was 'no good' and that we were only studying it to be 'PC'... Couldn't enjoy it for what it was, again, we had to load on another slather of politics onto it. I actually really enjoyed it, I felt like it had something of value to me, although I'm not sure I'll read it again... So, wrecked.

Most of the actual books I've read in high school I wouldn't have read otherwise, just because I have gained a healthy suspicion of 'literature' from school - Robert Cormier's works, for instance, and something called "Wrack" by James Bradley... very postmodern and depressing.

 

[walrusbear]

books can be more rewarding if you analyse them

 

[malkin86]

Most things were analysed to the point of exhaustion, though... For me, that's how most things that were wrecked, were wrecked by English.

 

[LeftrightOut]

I don't even read books since leaving high school that's how traumatised it made me.

Ok I lie, I read a lot of business and IT books but only a few chapters at time then they suually get shelved. I don't think i've ever read every page of a book unless it was a picturebook.

 

[^CoSMic DoRiS^^]

i dont mind analysing books, i find that afterwards if i read them again i actually find them more interesting. poetry, however, and films...ugh. i have been permanently turned against all Robert Frost poems until the end of time because of English. Also, although it hasnt happened yet, i can tell that Ext 1 is going to suck all the fun out of Lord of the Rings (film version) as well. i dont know why it doesnt happen with novels. probably because by the time we get to the end i've forgotten most of the analysis that went before so i can pursue it again later in ignorant bliss. i remember in year 9 we had to analyse a simpsons episode, the one where lisa gets a malibu stacy doll and it spouts all this sexist drivel. i liked that episode until then...now if it happens to be on i just cannot watch it. it holds no entertainment at all.

 

[LeftrightOut]

i remember in year 9 we had to analyse a simpsons episode, the one where lisa gets a malibu stacy doll and it spouts all this sexist drivel. i liked that episode until then...now if it happens to be on i just cannot watch it. it holds no entertainment at all.

I enjoy the analsyis and hidden meanings of cartoons more than the actual cartoons I watch southpark and I like to think of where they are ripping stuff from and what message they are trying to tell. Same with the Simpsons, which is a shame because a lot of future generations won't "get" the jokes and references so the entertainment is reduced.

 

[RanyofuKenyan?]

Basically every book was ruined, except George Orwell - 1984, and books like Jane Austen's Emma and Pride and Prejudice had no hope of me liking them to begin with.

 

[seremify007]

books can be more rewarding if you analyse them

Board of Studies propoganda!!

Btw LeftrightOut- I agree with you on that. I didn't really appreciate South Park's discussion of contraversial issues and interweaving of them with classical literature until about yr10- and South Park is also full of many jokes which would appeal to more cultured individuals. Talk about polysemic =]

 

[walrusbear]

south park has slipped in standards recently
i think the political satire has become slightly my trite in recent episodes
they'll typically just polarise an issue and make fun of stereotypes from both sides, and settle with either a cop-out message or a mildly right-wing stance
i think i'm just getting sick of it...

that said south park has had its moments

 

[Katie123]

I dont think english killed To kill a mockingbird or catcher in the rye...they are the best books i have ever read.
It did kill shakespeare, emma, the movie clueless , jesse martin (he was killed anyway)

 

[Logain]

So basically, the conclusion we can gain from this thread is that English doesn't kill texts you like, it just makes ones you wouldn't like anyway even worse.

 

[Lundy]

the movie clueless)

If I have to watch that godforsaken movie ONE more time, I will scream.

 

[Logain]

I had the fortune of loving a lot of my English texts. The Tempest was awesome, just bleh in relation to Imag. Journey, I picked awesome alternate texts for Journeys that I like (The Beatles and The Shawshank Redemption), Brave New World and dystopias like it are well up my list of favourite books, and Blade Runner is just the best Scifi flick ever made, ever ever ever. Frontline is kickass, and my alternate texts for that module (The Importance of Being Earnest and Catch Me if you Can) are also very awesome. So I got away scott-free, really, with the worst I could say being I probably won't actively go reading the complete works of Gwen Harwood.

 

[Diddimz]

i dont mind analysing texts actually i enjoy it (i dont understand it either), just when we over analyse them to the point of exhaustion is what annoys me

 

[Ellie-Bee]

Thanks to the HSC I can now over analyse every movie I watch. I HATE IT! Its so annoying sitting down to watch a movie and constantly looking at colour palette and the use of music.
I also made the mistake of using a song by my favourite band for an English text. Sigh.

 

[xeuyrawp]

Analysing books isn't bad, it's over-analysis that can really kill it

Since year 12 English (any HSC subject, for that matter) has to have things so explicit, you tend to find things over-simplified and over-analysed... I think that students having to make such exlicit statements about certain ideas makes them break the ideas down in such a way that they become really contrived.