This is what we did as well, in AP English. We also did Beowulf. We also had to read the first fucking Harry Potter book because the teacher liked Harry Potter. Imagine a group of the highest achieving 17 and 18 year olds out of 600 students their age writing papers about a book written for 10 year olds.
Such a waste of time. We got college credit for this bullshit. I’m still mad about it.
I feel like there’s a way to do it that doesn’t suck - an examination of the book WRT the hero’s journey, picking out elements borrowed from English literary tradition to see how they’re deployed v. original texts, etc.
Real talk though, I feel it comes from a place of not knowing how to appeal to young people. I ran into the very same thing once when asked about course ideas for first year students coming directly from high school. I had no idea (still don’t) what would appeal to kids, so I thought a course that used Harry Potter as a keystone text (everybody being familiar, using it as a bridge to more traditional lit) could work. But as I said the words I knew 18 year old me would’ve hated that, sooo…
My 10th grade English class studied a small section of it, like one self contained story.
This is what we did as well, in AP English. We also did Beowulf. We also had to read the first fucking Harry Potter book because the teacher liked Harry Potter. Imagine a group of the highest achieving 17 and 18 year olds out of 600 students their age writing papers about a book written for 10 year olds.
Such a waste of time. We got college credit for this bullshit. I’m still mad about it.
I feel like there’s a way to do it that doesn’t suck - an examination of the book WRT the hero’s journey, picking out elements borrowed from English literary tradition to see how they’re deployed v. original texts, etc.
Real talk though, I feel it comes from a place of not knowing how to appeal to young people. I ran into the very same thing once when asked about course ideas for first year students coming directly from high school. I had no idea (still don’t) what would appeal to kids, so I thought a course that used Harry Potter as a keystone text (everybody being familiar, using it as a bridge to more traditional lit) could work. But as I said the words I knew 18 year old me would’ve hated that, sooo…