#reading well then writing a phenomenally good queer anti-nativist parallel novel of the Great Gatsby is the best revenge and Nghi Vo got it

[fshoulders]

Thought I didn't have anything to add here, but then I pondered. I do have something to add about "what I assume my teachers were trying to teach me with the classics".

I'm not a secondary school English teacher, but I've played one in the past: I used to substitute-teach English at the private high school where I myself matriculated around the time of Jurassic Park. I've taught classes on Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, Henry IV Part...mumble, the Iliad, the Ramayana, Their Eyes Were Watching God (if you didn't get taught that as a classic, go enjoy it now, oh my word).... Lots of stuff. And one time, I taught a class on why we take English class.

It was at the end of my first and longest stint as a substitute, when the head of the English department had broken her arm in twelventy places so I ended up teaching 3 or 4 sections of Junior English for several weeks. We'd started and finished Their Eyes Were Watching God, and moved on to something else, and by then I knew I loved these kids. Which was a shock: when I was their age, I was a misanthropic little paladin and did not like most of my peers. But high school juniors (16-17 years old) are whip-smart, but not yet cocky with it like seniors. They like to have fun, but they're easier to get to quiet down and think seriously than sophomores. However, after those weeks, I felt like even the kids who were best at English class -- who did the reading and raised their hands and weren't afraid to make wild, beautiful connections -- didn't really know why they were there.

So I asked their Regular Teacher if I could take one class period in each class and just do a group discusssion about what English class is for. Because the vibe I was getting off them was 'so I have English grades to use to get into college with'. I had 'em write down their answers anonymously to "What is English Class For?"

They handed their answers in, and I read 'em out. And we talked about their answers, and then we talked about my answers. They had some answers I hadn't thought of. And some of my own answers I didn't have to bring up, because that class already had! A lot of them knew they needed to learn to write well, for instance. We talked about the different kind of things they might want to write besides college essays and eventual job 'deliverables'. (I seem to recall telling them that even if they never wanted to try to write original fiction, that didn't mean cribbing techniques off the 'masters' couldn't make their fanfic better. I know I am a dork, but they laughed!) Some of them talked about a sort of cultural acquisition: getting to know exactly the sort of 'great books' and liberal arts touchstones that were getting beaten up in those screenshots at the top of the thread.

But I think maybe one kid in one of the classes, if that, wrote down the thing I really wanted them to take with 'em out of English class -- English class teaches you how to read more skillfully.

And some of the texts they practice reading on are texts they wouldn't have chosen, which makes them surly. (It sure made me surly in middle and high school.) Some of them are difficult to read. But reading is a skill, like any other. Even if they hadn't wanted to read Jane Eyre, or A River Runs Through It, or Elizabeth Bishop's poetry, or Toni Cade Bambara's short fiction, they could use those texts to improve their facility to read deeply, closely, and well. Then they could apply that facility to any text they wanted to read. For academic ambition, for pleasure or self-improvement or curiosity, or to keep up with a crush. And much of that skill is even transferable, out of the English language, out of the written word! They could read into and under horror movies, political ads, rap lyrics, art films, video games! They could notice and name the biases in the things they read, or read the context around a story the way this whole beautiful thread above did with Huckleberry Finn.

Reading deeply and critically is an underrated skill. We don't talk about it enough, we don't practice it enough, and maybe we don't even know when we're supposed to be learning it. Maybe the screenshotted people had terrible teachers who never made it clear that art isn't endorsement, that we can read against the past but still understand it, or indeed why they were sitting in that classroom at all. If you don't hand the student a scalpel, maybe this is what you get: a reader who stared at each book like the outside of a frog and took nothing away but the fact it reeked of formaldehyde. Maybe it's just a series of bad jokes!

But come, for Muses' sake let us sit upon the ground, and tell mad stories of why we hate Gatsby's guts. (With supporting evidence from the text.) Tell me whether you think the narrator of Wuthering Heights wants you to approve of Kathy and Heathcliff's relationship, and why you think that! Is he manipulating you to feel a certain way? What language feels manipulative, or engages you more with one character's emotions than another's? What do you think Jim thinks of Huck in this chapter, and why do you think that? Which racism do you think is the character's, and which is the author's? How do you tease that out?

English Class: You can bear that book a grudge for the rest of your life, but learning a lot from it today is the best revenge.