To be... or not to be.... an English Major - or Why I Hate the Way We Teach English
I chose to major in English at BYU.  There were many times I regretted it - the major, not the college.  I'm not even sure now why I did, except I was young, had non-college type parents, no real counselor at high school to guide me, I was afraid to try anything that required math or chemistry ( I guess that left medical school out.).  So I fell back on what I loved the most.  Reading.

I love to read, although, unlike Scout Finch, I wasn't born reading.  My parents tell how I came home from the first day of first grade indignant that they hadn't taught me to read.  (that was back in the "old days" when kindergarten was for playing with blocks, painting on easels, dressing up, bringing milk money to school tied up in a handkerchief, eating graham crackers and taking naps.  There's a whole 'nother blog in me about state standards and placement tests for kindergarten.  Grrrr)

But from "My Little Red Storybook" I took off on my own.   The early years I probably only read what I was given at school.  My memories are dim.  They get very clear by the time I was about 9.

We'd moved from Orange, California (in 1965 it was a growing, well off, thriving, Republican enclave, still filled with orange groves and new housing tracts) to Bloomington, an unincorporated part of San Bernardino County where people were mostly blue collar, they owned horses that weren't exactly thoroughbreds, my best friend lived on a chicken ranch, we rode our bikes on trails  through dusty fields and grape vineyards, and there wasn't a whole lot of money.

As a child, I didn't know the word dysfunctional.  (well, I probably knew what it meant, just not that it applied to my family)  But I knew my parents didn't get along most of the time.  There was tension and fighting and lots of other crap.  My older brother and sister handled things in their own way.  My sister found friends and wasn't home a lot.  My brother found trouble... smoking and fighting and other things I won't go into.  Being only 9 or ten, I didn't have a lot of options.  So I turned to books.

Books were wonderful.  Books were my escape.  When home got too tense, I could solve a mystery with Nancy Drew, or Trixie Beldon, escape to the Mushroom Planet with Mr. Bass, learn about life and love with Meg and Charles Wallace and Mrs. Whatsit in "A Wrinkle in Time." Indulge my love of horses with Black Beauty and cry when Ginger dies.  As I got older, the books grew with me.  I discovered Dickens, and Conan Doyle.  (Oh, thank you, thank you for Sherlock.)  And I found Harper Lee.

"To Kill a Mockingbird" has been in the media quite a bit since last year was it's 50th anniversary.  I read it when I was about 12 or 13.  On my own.  I don't even remember where I found it.  Maybe my sister or brother had to read it in school and brought it home. I'm not sure.  I do remember knowing it was a little "adult" for a kid my age.  I kind of knew what rape was.  Probably about as much as Jem knew when he tried to explain it to Scout.  But that didn't stop me from reveling in the book.  Atticus, Jem, Scout, Dill, Tom Robinson, Mr. Ewell, and Boo Radley - they were all real people to me.  Not in the sense that I didn't know truth from fiction.  I knew they were fictional.  But they were real in the way that counts.  I felt I knew them all and could tell you everything about them.  Just from the marvelous words Harper Lee had put down on the page.

I have re-read that book at least once a year from them on.  (Anyone who can't figure out why you'd want to re-read a book, I'm sorry, you won't understand any of this blog.)  It is my all time favorite, I wish I could write like that book.  Which made it sad that my kids didn't feel the same way.

I have 4 kids - 2 of whom have had this book as an assignment in high school English.  They read it, they liked it, and that was that.  Of course, I made them watch the movie with me to try and get them into it more, but as much as I love the movie, and Gregory Peck is a wonderful Atticus, it's just not the same as the novel.

I had a talk once with my youngest son, Andrew, about it.  He told me how they'd analyzed the book to death.  How they'd beaten all the enjoyment out of it.  He wondered why they couldn't just read the book for what it was.  A great read.

That got me to thinking.  Nearly all the books I've really enjoyed have been books I've found on my own or were recommended by someone.  Not an English assignment.  Not something someone made me read for a grade.  Which is probably why most of the stuff I had to read in college was painful.  And I wonder why we think we still need to read everything that was ever written.  What is some of that stuff is really just crap?  But because it's always been studied in English classes, we still have to study it.

I remember being in a class early in my college career and the teacher asked everyone what their favorite book was.  One kid next to me raised his hand and said Anna Karenina.  Even being a wide eyed freshman in awe of college didn't keep me from rolling my eyes.  Tolstoy?  Really?  And by favorite, does that mean you've read it more than once?  Good grief.  I suddenly realized I was probably in the wrong major.  Oops.  Too late now.  I didn't know till years later I could have (and should have) changed majors.

After 4 painful years of studying, with only a couple of classes I really enjoyed, I graduated with a BA in English.  I also had a teaching certificate.  But I have never taught school.  Maybe I should have.  From the vantage of my fifties, I look back now on the decision I made in my early twenties and wonder.  Could I have made a difference in the way books are studied in public school?  Or at least in one school?  Probably not.  Bucking traditions in public education is not easy, and not for the faint hearted.  But hopefully there are some schools out there where kids are allowed to read books just to read them.  To get out of them what they will, whether it's the "right" answer or not.  We say we teach our kids to think and then we tell them they're wrong if their perspective on a classic novel isn't what the state curriculum says it should be.

For once can't a class study "To Kill a Mockingbird" and just enjoy reading about the people of Maycomb?  Or just talking about them?  Who decided that everything ever written had to symbolize something else?  I think they ought to be fired.

So there.