#we expect teens to be able to emotionally understand and relate to adult literature and i think that's unfair to them | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

celepeace · 2 years

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Constantly irritated by tumblr's insistence that people's unwillingness to genuinely engage with classic literature and take the time to understand things like themes, symbolism, the messages a story is trying to convey, etc. is the fault of the students/public

Like, if this a consistent problem that a large percentage of students have, then perhaps it's a failing of how schools try to teach this material and not that somehow 80% of high schoolers are morally opposed to/incapable of understanding literature

Like it's really the "Am I out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong" meme

#like maybe schools just teach this badly. maybe that's a possibility #personally i think at least part of the problem is that we try to teach adult literature to teenagers #i don't mean adult like ''adult content'' i mean adult like lots of literary classics are meant to be processed by a mature adult brain #someone who is more experienced on this earth and more mentally developed #like imo the reason the symbolism in say. the great gatsby. falls flat on a lot of teens is because IT WASN'T WRITTEN FOR TEENAGERS #it was written for the american reading public at the time. which is generally accepted to mean mostly adults #i think if we tried to teach books with themes more personally relatable to teenagers then more would click with the concept #most teens don't have any personal connection to the american dream beyond knowing it as an intellectual concept #they don't emotionally relate to it the same way an adult american would. which is who it was written for #i don't think that's the whole problem but i think it's at least a piece of the puzzle #we expect teens to be able to emotionally understand and relate to adult literature and i think that's unfair to them

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