to be a reader of novels

I was reading part of an essay, well more like skimming it because I was bored, but as I skim read this essay I realized its argument was very true. So I stopped and then I reread the essay word for word. The essay was called “I know why the cage bird can’t read” by Francine Prose points out that in the English classes of today we spend more time teaching values of books then the beauty of the word a book says or how the authors word choice communicates feelings and emotions.  

In the classroom you should find students in English classes learning about how novels and essays use word choice and grammar, to communicate the story they want to tell. On refection of my own education in the school over the years I feel I have been cheated that, at least from my school education.  The books I have read in the pass for school I can remember looking at how the author of to kill a mocking bird was for civil rights buts I can’t prove from the writing of the book how. This is because in class I spent my time discussing views of equal rights and acceptance. That did not lead me to enjoy a novel that may have been very good had I been able to read it for the books face value and not the political stuff that most teachers feel the need to bring into my learning environment.

To say that having a values discussion in class is bad, it’s just how we discuss it for the class. That is where the language class has been misled.  What we discuss is something that philosophy classes may discuss after reading the book, like how would you react in the main characters place? What should be asked are vocabulary questions and how the styles of writing create emotion in these great novels. Today now when we are left to our own discussions we often get stuck on the subject of values, not how great a novel has written a metaphor or how the tone threw out the book changes.

The older I get I feel that in my language class I’m losing my grip on how to be a good student. I have been taught a style of learning to read a book for its values and not for the writing it presents. Now going off to college I must find the way to learn look at books in the style of college level reading and that is for the books words not its values. I hope that in the future teachers find a way to balance out this problem by maybe taking out the philosophy, and putting in more of the writing part.