#you can come out saying: I undertstand why this piece of writing is in such high regard and I under the skill that went into its making

[blorbosexterminator]

What do you think about the compulsory reading discourse: that students should be given easier to read books (ya books ) instead of classics? (the reasoning: because the students will find those classics boring and won't even read them)

I find it ridiculous, to be honest. It sounds exactly like should we only give kids Macdonalds because they won't like actual food? And it's obviously more ridiculous coming from literal adults ruminating on the horrible teachers that dared make them study classics. The idea that teenagers are too dumb to grasp any book slightly more complex than a ya love triangle with each character having one and a half trait with the groundbreaking theme of authority=bad is too demeaning and infantalizing.

Plus, what's a better time to read difficult texts other than when professional adults are literally being paid to help you grapple that text? When you're going to have to write about it (and thus understand it on much deeper level)? And discuss it with other people and get to hear more views into it, under the guidance of professional adults who nudge you in the right directions? I neither understand the insistence of literal adults that they were too stupid as teenagers to understand the Great Gatsby nor current teenagers who are currently crying publicly about it in the same breath as complaining that they should be "given" a voice and no one takes them seriously. I mean, if you can't understand a piece of somewhat complex fiction and insisting on your right to not even try, who would?

During the years of Middle and High school, I read a lot of YA fiction, most of what was popular at the time, John Green, the Dystopian YA genre, those fantasy novels, etc, you name it, I also read a lot of better, more established fiction, as well as, obviously, the compulsory readings I had in school, both established classics from my native country and British/American classics, Shakespeare, Shaw, Dickens, etc. I enjoyed both. I can barely remember anything of the YA fiction I read, honestly speaking, it was fun the moment of its consumption but that's it, there is no substance and at some point, the more better things you read, you'll be done with an author talking down to you, you'll aquire a taste for more refined things. YA fiction isn't the devil on Earth but humoring teenagers' institence that they are too bored by any complexity that requires their attention and curiosity and willngess to understand people that don't belong to their age group nor superficially share the same interests they do, and who are complex beings with complex thoughts and desires that don't easily fall in one group or the other and to dig for depth and profundity where they are sure to find it, then that's a sure way of raising a bunch of entitled empty-headed craps who take pride in their idiocity.