Tolkien taught in school

[Firefoot]

This is something I thought might interest people on this thread. In my English class today we were getting reading lists, along the lines of "A Well-Read Highschool student should have read...", and LotR was in fact on the list. This list is also the list from which we must pick books to read for class. So while it isn't required reading, it is in fact considered to have "literary value".

In some ways, I am glad that LotR is not required reading. As Lalwendë said:

My only reservation, and it is quite a big one, is that frequently students grow to hate any literature studied at school, and as a Tolkien fan, I would hate this to happen.

How many times has this happened to me? While I don't believe I could ever grow to hate LotR ( ) I wouldn't want it to happen to other people too.

[Mad Baggins]

My only reservation, and it is quite a big one, is that frequently students grow to hate any literature studied at school, and as a Tolkien fan, I would hate this to happen.

Well, if you're forced to read a piece of literature five days of the week instead of whenever you wanted to read it, it would become tedious. I know that last year we read A Midsummer Night's Dream and at the start I was rather excited. But when we were done the play and we set it down for the last time, all I could do was heave a sigh of relief. It would probably have been quite a different story if I was allowed to read the play by myself at whatever time I chose to read it, but I was forced to read for about half an hour every school day. It kind of sucks the fun out of reading. I'm actually glad we didn't read any Tolkien books in school, because that could have happened and I may have been turned away from his works. So maybe it's a good thing that many schools don't use Tolkien for compulsory reading.

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

We read the hobbit in 7th grade reading class. I'll never get the sound of the teacher shrieking out the words "Thief! Thief Baggins, we hates it forever!" and scaring us out of our wits. Another point I have is that, were LotR required reading, it would lessen individual imaginings because the entire class would no doubt end up discussing their thoughts, visuals, and opinions, and lessening the artistic license that the imagination takes, when left to its own devices. When we discuss things, we don't have the annoyance of peer-pressure, or the teacher saying "this is what happened". We've already read the books and formed our own conclusions and images, and even if they change, they are still ours, and not simply visuals created as a class and generally accepted as the easy way of getting out of imagining your own... I'll just stop now. I think I'm leaping headfirst into run-on sentences. I'm sorry if none of this made any sense.

Fea

[Laitoste]

I, for one, am glad I didn't have to read LotR in school. Whether or not people like it is not my concern here, but that we would not be able to spend enough time on it to truly learn from it. At my school, we usually spend a month to a month and a half reading books a third the size of LotR. To speed through it (1) doesn't give most people enough time to read and understand it and (2) doesn't do it justice.

[Encaitare]

Plus, it's always nicer to discover a great book on your own!