Readicide

            I think that schools should stop teaching some of the traditional school books; for example Romeo and Juliet. True it is a classic, but what does that really have to do with the direction schools are heading. In my class we are currently reading it and instead of getting meaning out of it and understanding the significance we are struggling to even know the just of what they are saying. To read act 1 scene 1 took a whole week. In a week with a normal book, it could be finished and the class could have moved on to something else. Instead classes are wasting up to a month reading one play. Whatever the reason schools keep the play in the curriculum there is another book to take its place. If they want to get across forbidden or doomed love, teach The Hunger Games (which also poses as a great book for class discussion). If the schools want a love tragedy, teach The Vow. The poem is replicable and I think it’s time it is. I don’t think there should be more of one try of genre. I think at the beginning of each year the students should choose from a list of books what they what to read as a whole. One genre is not better then another for teaching. It depends on how the students want to learn a lesson from a book. I haven’t read Mice and Men or Macbeth and I’m perfectly fine with that. I do not feel as though I am missing out. I don’t think that if there was a specific genre taught that that would “shape” future generations. “classics” are taught now and there is still a very wide variation in students today. People are still going to have their own personality and changing the books read in a class room is not going to change who they will eventually turn out to be.