"Lord of the Flies" - in TENTH grade?

[Anonymous]

OP, give your kid a copy of AARP Magazine. It is recommended for ages 55 and up, so will be a stretch challenge for your genius child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I taught at a suburban high school where an AP Literature teacher taught The Help. (Can you imagine an AP exam essay in which a student uses "The Help" as their answer, OMG.) The average teacher in our department was enthusiastic and well-meaning, but they weren't all highly intelligent. We had some things we HAD to teach . . . a Shakespeare play, the research paper. Some teachers would show the movie instead of reading through the play, and they would assign a "group poster" instead of a research paper. They would brag about these "short cuts" in department meetings, like haha, they got one over on the curriculum requirements! Um . . .

It should be little surprise that I had a reputation for being a hard-a$$, lol. I taught a novel or play and required a major writing assignment every nine weeks.

I've been pleasantly surprised that my kids' middle school language arts classes in Richmond Public Schools are reading appropriately challenging works. To be fair, in order to mitigate learning losses, they've doubled the class time for English and math, so there's plenty of time to read. But in the district where I taught, it wouldn't have mattered because we had very few novels to choose from and someone was always using the novel you wanted. I honestly still have dreams about trying to find the books I need to teach and I've been retired for over ten years!

Please explain what's wrong with The Help as a target for literary analysis.

[Anonymous]

Books aren't more appropriate or intellectually stimulating just because the author has been dead longer.

You're beingna cargo cultist obsessing over name brands instead of content.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, give your kid a copy of AARP Magazine. It is recommended for ages 55 and up, so will be a stretch challenge for your genius child.

Funniest post ive read here in a while.

Very sad to see tiger parenting reach the level where one would brag about their elementary school child reading Lord of the Flies, Heart of Darkness, and other books with dark depressing themes. Oh but the books have big words! If your child is verbally gifted, let them do the NY Times crossword or read Anne of Green Gables.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We read it in 11th grade honors English Lit many decades ago. The prose isn't hard, but the themes are heavy.

+1
How difficult a book is to read is not a measure of how useful it is for teaching literary analysis, or how rewarding it is to study.

[Anonymous]

This book would be a good resource for kids to understand the lawless hellscape that we call public education.

[Anonymous]

I reread Lord of the Flies as an adult and got so much more out of it then when I read it the first time in 8th grade.
There's no wrong time to read quality literature about deep themes of the human experience.

[Anonymous]

My DD 9th grade honors English is reading it. I don't think the book itself matters so much, rather what the teacher's writing exceptions are following the reading. That is where the academic rigor comes from.

[Anonymous]

Who's the dumb one sending their kid to a public school?

[Anonymous]

It's a great book that will but America's piss poor education system in perspective for students. Assuming they can read and analyze at all.

[Anonymous]

Agree with most PP- office, a 5th grader could read the paragraphs, but that is not what is important with this book. It is the analysis, and that is better done with the more developed student.

[Anonymous]

It can be read as an anchor text (one that is revisited at different stages of emotional and economic development). Reading it when you are older than the boys should provoke different thoughts and questions than reading it at 10-13.

[Anonymous]

Weird post. Read it in honors 9th. Themes would be pretty complex to tackle earlier than that.

[Anonymous]

Lord of the Flies was assigned in 6th grade in PA. Also, 1984. And, City of Ember, etc. They all have dark themes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I read in in tenth grade as well. It's not hard to read, but there's still plenty to unpack there if you've got a good teacher. My 12th grade AP English Lit class read an actual children's picture book (The Little Prince, I think this is pretty common) and the teacher taught it really well. I've got a friend from high school who still talks about it.

Once a student can read a book, I don't see there being any kind of upper age where it stops making sense to teach it, if it's a good book. My husband wrote in college about the Wind in the Willows, a book we also read to our six year old. It's about what you do with it, not what age is "right."

I love Toad's antics in Wind in the Willows. The book has layers and there is plenty to discuss.