Where English Class Failed

I was an avid reader as a kid, but I hated English class. I have done quite a bit of pondering, trying to figure out why. The obvious answer is that I was interested in different subject matter from what my teachers presented. I was reading Asimov, Heinlein, Tolkien, Card, and LeGuin, while in class it was Shakespeare and a parade of other fiction that lacked the adventure elements I craved. But even on the rare occasions when a teacher had us read science fiction, such as Childhood’s End, it was still a struggle to embrace the book against the stifling current of busywork that came along with it: journal-keeping, quizzes, discussion (being a quiet soul, this was painful for me), and the need to slow down my reading so as not to get ahead of the rest of the class.

But looking back now, I can also see that part of the problem was my inability to grok any sort of deeper meaning in literature. Despite my teacher’s best efforts, I wasn’t merely indifferent to sub-surface points being made in stories: I found the idea to be offensive! I wanted the stories I read to be as obvious as what was on the surface, and nothing more. I was not the “great reader” that I thought myself.

And I had one other tremendous flaw that my teachers were unable to rid me of: I assumed that the ideas in all books were correct.

Looking back now, I am relieved that I never picked up an Ayn Rand for fun. (I did have to read Anthem in one of my classes, and I could easily have taken to her longer works after that first taste.) It was bad enough that I read Heinlein’s dirty-old-man’s wish-fulfillment with nothing but a dumb nod of agreement at each turn of the page. I was naive. It had not yet occurred to me that I could disagree with an author’s politics. I swallowed up notions that were racist, sexist, and otherwise detrimental to humanity, and it was years before I began to question and reject those learnings.

I don’t know if my teachers neglected to teach that books could be wrong, or if their teaching came too late. Certainly I recall an endless stream of picture books in my early years which were never contradicted by adults. What they read to us was either just for fun (to encourage us to read) or openly didactic; but I can never recall a book being read to us that caused the adult reader to pause, and scowl, and then tell us that he or she disagreed with the author. I wonder if that is where the problem lay: the controversial books were left on the shelf when it came time for an adult to read to me.

But I do remember a time when, in the tenth grade, one of my classmates was scolded by the teacher for “being judgmental” about the life a particular character was leading. I wonder if, inadvertently, our teachers were teaching us not to think critically.

By the time I was reaching for novels, which was quite early, I had absolute free range in the library. But I lacked the tools to differentiate between a nourishing read and garbage.