Tolkien in school?

[Elanor]

I certainly don't mean to insult my students (mine are extremely intelligent [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] ). However, to read LotR (and enjoy it) you do need a certain level of intelligence and reading ability. All of us here possess that, clearly, but sadly there are lots of people in schools who don't. My personal reason not to want to teach Tolkien though, is that I would hate to force kids to read it, and hate to have to be critical of the books and the author. (You can't study a book in detail without being critical.) I think the long length, however, is the major reason why Tolkien is not taught in schools.