Linda Price5 said:And if you haven't felt like reading since you were a kid, then frankly, nobody gives a damn about your opinion.
Look, urbantinker8, someone who has been a reader since childhood will likely end up well-educated regardless of whether they ever step foot in a classroom. In my view, the true purpose of school should be to serve those who didn't grow up with a book in their hands—to act as a bridge that introduces them to literature and helps them develop a genuine love for reading.
A parent simply cannot be held entirely responsible for everything that goes wrong. It’s an impossible standard to meet, and frankly, it's an unfair one. To suggest that a child's every failure or stumble is a direct reflection of parental inadequacy is to ignore the sheer complexity of human development. Think of it like trying to steer a ship through a massive storm in the middle of the Atlantic. A captain can have the best training, the most reliable vessel, and the clearest charts from the Coast Guard, but they still can't control the gale winds or the rogue waves. They can manage the rudder, sure, but once those elements hit, the outcome is no longer solely in their hands. Children are individuals with their own temperaments, peer influences, and increasingly, their own agency. You can provide the best foundation possible—steady guidance, a stable home, and solid values—but you aren't building a robot programmed to follow instructions. You are raising a person. Once they step out into the world, there are a thousand variables at play that no amount of parenting can account for. Blaming a parent for every deviation from the expected path isn't just reductive; it's logically flawed.
If that's the case, what is even the point of sending kids to school? What purpose does it actually serve if there's absolutely no support or recourse once a parent has either failed them or done their job poorly in the first place?
I’m still reading today, too. My Kindle has become such an indispensable companion that I honestly feel naked without it—it’s practically a daily essential, right up there with my wallet.
I’ll admit it: there were times when required reading actually managed to sour my entire relationship with books.
There’s a mountain of classics sitting on my shelf that I probably would have actually enjoyed, but I haven't touched a single one. If a book makes the mandatory reading list for high school, it’s clearly garbage.
I am referring back to my own previous post from a little while ago.
Linda Price5 As specified by:
If the entire point of education is to drill children into becoming compliant adults—people who will clock in and perform mindless, tedious tasks they find utterly pointless just so they can scrape together enough to pay their electric bills—then I fail to see why we bother them with mandatory literature and a bloated curriculum. Instead, we should just have them sewing garments or sanding down table legs for seven or ten bucks an hour. That would teach them the exact same lesson: how to sit still and mind their own business. At least then, there would be a controlled environment where they’re kept under lock and key while their parents are at work, preventing them from forming street gangs and terrorizing neighborhoods. At any rate, it would actually be productive.
Seven bucks times five hours times one hundred seventy-five school days a year adds up to $2042, and over eight years, we're looking at $49,000.
If we let them listen to audiobooks or podcasts while they're sanding or sewing, they might actually finish those eight years without being completely brainless and uneducated.
The only real headache is figuring out where to lock the teachers up during work hours so they don't start forming gangs and terrorizing local neighborhoods, though I suppose even that could probably be solved.
It is actually because it isn't true that "nobody cares" about reading that schools curate such valuable literature in the first place.
That is exactly why you get something like Pinocchio instead of just some random list of famous titles.
Yeah, yeah, I get it—you’ve already decided that Dostoevsky is garbage, and we’ve all heard that song before.
It’s like if your grandmother cooked a terrible meal once and you decided you hated that food forever. You hold onto that grudge so proudly that you refuse to ever try it again, and you act like that decision hasn't cost you anything. But maybe, just maybe, you could have actually enjoyed it if you hadn't let that one bad experience define your entire palate.
You know what? It feels incredibly childish to act like every teacher and Dostoevsky himself should be personally offended just because you branded Dostoevsky's work as trash simply because it was on a required reading list.
And yet, everyone seems to jump to defend literature in a way they would never dream of defending math.
Why deal with those grueling algebra problems, those messy fractions, or complex equations, when there are "easier" tasks that kids actually enjoy and wouldn't mind solving, which might prevent them from hating math altogether?
Instead of reconsidering your stance—that the classics are junk just because an inexperienced kid decided they were—you keep doubling down as if that opinion is some universal truth.
And what about the fact that not every kid can finish Pinocchio? (And I’m not talking to you specifically here. 😁 )
Not every kid can ace every single math problem, not everyone can sing a song perfectly in tune, and not everyone can jump rope without tripping. Does that mean we shouldn't offer those skills to the rest of the children?
Look at this blunt academic truth: not every student is an honors student, regardless of what their grades might suggest.
