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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes I think high school English courses are designed to make kids hate reading.

Gatsby was one of the books we had to read and I didn't like any of the characters and couldn't care less about anything they wanted or did.

When I was around 30 I decided to read the book again to see if it landed differently and nope. Still thought it was awful.

I did enjoy a few of the assigned books. Canticle for Leibowitz, Brave New World, Lost Horizon, Frankenstein, and Day of the Triffids are a few I remember positively.

Teachers know kids will use AI to write essays and I bet more than a few teachers use them to grade, so there's probably no point in assigning a single book for everybody anymore. IMHO, the best chance to get a kid to read and write about a novel is to let them pick something of interest.

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I read it close to 20 years ago now, but my recollection was that all of the characters being unlikable and everything they wanted and did (basically, worrying about status) being uncompelling was kind of the point.

Emerson tells you not to care about what other people think. Fitzgerald gives you an extended opportunity to experience not caring about what other people (particularly "high status" people) think.

OK, but it's hard to read fiction where you don't care about any of the characters.

Depends on why you read fiction. If you read it mostly for narrative, sure. If you read it mostly to explore ideas and to enjoy the artistry, probably not.

It's not that the characters were unlikable. Unlikable characters can be great.

My hate for Gatsby was more about the paper thin plot, the shallow characters, and the purple prose. Why should I spend any time thinking about what these characters do or say when, as far as I can tell, they basically have no internal life. They are simple, one dimensional beings who just do things with about as much spirit as a typical video game NPC.

Most of the books I was assigned in high school I actually enjoyed or at least didn't hate.

>Sometimes I think high school English courses are designed to make kids hate reading.

That's because most kids are too dumb at that point to understand that reading has multiple purposes, and being entertained and liking the characters isn't what they are trying to teach you in higher level English classes. Teachers often make that point clearly, but students are often half asleep or just in disbelief that reading might have other purposes than to instruct or entertain.

You have to meet the kids where they are.

Prescribing dull books and hoping that by some miracle whatever it is you are trying to teach with them is getting through is educator malpractice IMHO.

This mindset is why literacy rate is so low in America. I enjoyed reading so much when I grew up abroad and got to pick the books i have to read and write a book report about. Though it has to be approved. After moving back to the US, being forced to read many of these boring classics just taught me to avoid reading in my free time

> Teachers know kids will use AI to write essays...

What kind of parent lets their kids use an llm to write an essay? It defeats the entire exercise and growth potential for the student.

Busy parents or parents with kids who don't want to talk about what they are doing at school.

> so there's probably no point in assigning a single book for everybody anymore

You could if you have an exam.

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