#Your district decreed 'no controversial books' and is making you hand white-out every instance of the n-word in To Kill A Mockingbird!

[mitochondriaandbunnies]

I do genuinely wonder how much of this is related to students not actually reading (or not finishing) books that were assigned in school, too. Like, if you only read the first five chapters of Gatsby and then get behind on your reading because you have a history project or the big game or an after school job or you just don't want to read, yeah, the major themes of the book are going to fall really flat to you. Even if you learn what the ending is, not experiencing the build up to it and seeing how unhappy all those characters are really dampens its impact. As a former English teacher teaching literature in schools often feels like a damned-if-you-do damned-if-you-don't situation, because you literally don't have enough school hours to read most books out loud in class together (which I think is necessary for many students) but in assigning reading for homework (which you need to do in order to not, as a colleague of mine used to do, spend from November to April the same book until every child loathed it with the entirity of their souls) you're going to lose any kid who struggles with reading on their own (or who struggles with comprehension when reading without check-ins/discussion.)

I don't know what the solution is (only read short novels? Do more early reading intervention with all children so by the time they get to high school they actually know how to not just decode but fully understand the text the read? Make English class longer??-- I quit teaching largely because of the institutional refusal to ever make changes that benefit children, don't ask me) but, as with many things, it's hard not to place some of the blame on the continued defunding of education and all its knock-on effects.