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Comment by DougN7 | Hacker News Reader

Wow. That’s a really important message. Unfortunately, I didn’t get that at all when I read it. I just read about some dude that wanted to party with the rich kids. And I was trying to pay attention and got good grades. The issue might be that I simply wasn’t emotionally intelligent at the time to understand, and I think that was the case for most of us. Or maybe just me…

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I feel a lot of "literature" reading may reflect experiences a high school student (generously) may not relate to, or (less generously) may not have the life experiences to understand, and may not necessarily gain by reading?

>may not have the life experiences to understand

That's one of the things about reading though, it lets you experience life experiences you might have been exposed to on your own. You still have to met things halfway by using your brain a bit, which a lot of students really push back against for some reason. I suspect part of it is that it's the first time they are really asked to read something critically and not just for straight forward instruction or for enjoyment.

I think schools are trying to teach critical reading skills earlier now, but it's hard because if it's not interesting kids won't read it and if it's interesting they might not learn the critical skills necessary to evaluate it under any other lens than it being interesting or enjoyable.

Same goes for “they never taught us how to pay taxes!” Often, the kids were directly taught just that, but the time gap between when they learned and when it was needed means they forgot, even if they at least pretended to pay attention.

I think this is it, though for certain works, we spent a lot of time in class discussing and acting out and this sort of engagement greatly increased my appreciation and comprehension of those works, thanks to my English teachers.

Reminds me of The Wire, when DeAngelo Barksdake discussing the meaning of the quote "there are no second acts in American lives".[1] It's a roomful of prisoners that only grasped that once their first act was over.

It's a whole show of people dying on the streets by 20.

[1]https://youtu.be/8DOy4hCih7w

You may also have already had experiences that formed the notion that being part of the in crowd wasn't worth it.

I also read it in high school and I recall spending about half the book muttering "oh my God, Gatsby, there are so many other women in the world get over yourself."

So many of the "high school" books would be much, much better read if the message was emblazoned on the cover.

I don't even care if people agree what the book says, I just needed something to look for, because most of them were completely ignorable or outright infuriating.

At least today's kids can have an AI or YouTube video explain what the teacher wants to hear so they can move on to doing something interesting.

Curricula assign these books to students so they can learn to interpret their meanings without needing it explicitly stated. Of course, the teacher will offer an interpretation after the students have tried their hand at it, but the whole point of the exercise would be defeated by printing the interpretation at the outset. We should not be further offloading critical thinking in service of entertainment value.

The kids already aren’t learning. Putting the intended message on the cover wouldn’t make things worse.

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