THEME DAY: Required Reading that Shouldn't be Required
First time poster here -
but in honour of today's theme I'd like to dedicate a post to almost every.single.book that I had to read for school during my last 2 years of high school.
First of all, the four covers above are just random examples of books I had to read for school and hated. I've thrown my own copies of the books in the trash and I left high school almost 5 years ago, so I must have banned quite a couple of books from my memory because I had a hard time remembering any titles (it's all coming back now though, ugh!). I think during the last 2 years of high school I had to read about 10 books for Dutch (and a couple for English and French but this post isn't about them).
The system that was used in my school was that a publisher selected five books each year and the school bought those books and the students had to read them. For the last 2 years they always selected adult novels, because they wanted to introduce us to 'real literature'. Being now a university student of Dutch literature, I do recognize that a lot of the books we had to read in high school were written by renowned Dutch authors. I just feel like, at the age of 16-17 years old, I wasn't ready for them at all.
Most of these books don't have a lot of action going on - it's all self-reflection and thinking back and memories and whatnot. That wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that I, as a 17-year old girl, had literally nothing in common with any of the characters in these books. I could not relate at all to a middle-aged Jewish boss of a large store who had to follow therapy because he lost touch with his faith (Supertex), a sixty-year old writer who occasionally suffered from memory-loss (Een Liefde in Parijs), a man slowly dying on a deserted island (Verloren zoon) or a 58-year old man sitting alone on a boat that got stuck on a frozen lake (Dooi).
Sure, reading about people who are not like yourself should be interesting - but the inability to relate to any character made it so that I literally had to drag myself through these books. And once I had gotten through one book, I hated the thought of having to start on another.
I'm sure the reluctance I felt when reading these books made me miss a lot of things - and I'm not saying that these books are bad an sich. I just think it would've been better for me to discover these authors a bit later, when I was more ready for this kind of serious 'grown up' literature. Now the memories of high school required reading make me shy away from trying to pick up books by other renowned Dutch authors, the whole high school experience really put me off.
I used to read a lot as a child. I went to the library at least once a week, chose books I liked and read one after another. That totally stopped in high school. I was forced to read books I disliked, and having a required reading list made me stop going to the library as often. The result of this was that, once I had left high school, I hardly ever went to the library at all and didn't really read anymore (I study literature but even now I mostly stick to required reading). Required reading is meant to make children read more, but for me it totally extinguished the love I used to have for recreational reading. I'm trying to get back in the habit of reading more recreationally, but I guess it won't happen as long as I'm still haunted by required reading ...
And finally, two more little things I've always hated about our required reading list:
but in honour of today's theme I'd like to dedicate a post to almost every.single.book that I had to read for school during my last 2 years of high school.
First of all, the four covers above are just random examples of books I had to read for school and hated. I've thrown my own copies of the books in the trash and I left high school almost 5 years ago, so I must have banned quite a couple of books from my memory because I had a hard time remembering any titles (it's all coming back now though, ugh!). I think during the last 2 years of high school I had to read about 10 books for Dutch (and a couple for English and French but this post isn't about them).
The system that was used in my school was that a publisher selected five books each year and the school bought those books and the students had to read them. For the last 2 years they always selected adult novels, because they wanted to introduce us to 'real literature'. Being now a university student of Dutch literature, I do recognize that a lot of the books we had to read in high school were written by renowned Dutch authors. I just feel like, at the age of 16-17 years old, I wasn't ready for them at all.
Most of these books don't have a lot of action going on - it's all self-reflection and thinking back and memories and whatnot. That wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that I, as a 17-year old girl, had literally nothing in common with any of the characters in these books. I could not relate at all to a middle-aged Jewish boss of a large store who had to follow therapy because he lost touch with his faith (Supertex), a sixty-year old writer who occasionally suffered from memory-loss (Een Liefde in Parijs), a man slowly dying on a deserted island (Verloren zoon) or a 58-year old man sitting alone on a boat that got stuck on a frozen lake (Dooi).
Sure, reading about people who are not like yourself should be interesting - but the inability to relate to any character made it so that I literally had to drag myself through these books. And once I had gotten through one book, I hated the thought of having to start on another.
I'm sure the reluctance I felt when reading these books made me miss a lot of things - and I'm not saying that these books are bad an sich. I just think it would've been better for me to discover these authors a bit later, when I was more ready for this kind of serious 'grown up' literature. Now the memories of high school required reading make me shy away from trying to pick up books by other renowned Dutch authors, the whole high school experience really put me off.
I used to read a lot as a child. I went to the library at least once a week, chose books I liked and read one after another. That totally stopped in high school. I was forced to read books I disliked, and having a required reading list made me stop going to the library as often. The result of this was that, once I had left high school, I hardly ever went to the library at all and didn't really read anymore (I study literature but even now I mostly stick to required reading). Required reading is meant to make children read more, but for me it totally extinguished the love I used to have for recreational reading. I'm trying to get back in the habit of reading more recreationally, but I guess it won't happen as long as I'm still haunted by required reading ...
And finally, two more little things I've always hated about our required reading list:
- They never included translated literature. It had to be originally written in Dutch. But for some reason they only ever included writers from The Netherlands, never from Belgium. I never understood this. I'm Belgian, so you don't want me reading foreign authors when they're American or British, but you do force me to read authors from The Netherlands. They have the same language, but they're still foreign to me. Why refuse to include Belgian authors? They write good books as well.
- Who the hell designed those ugly-ass covers? If the school was going to force me to buy a bunch of books I didn't like, at least they could've had nice covers so they looked good on my bookshelf. The main reason I threw them away wasn't because I didn't like the books, it was because they're so terribly ugly.