Furthermore when families ,who are often not proud of their own accomplishments, have oodles of children….do they know how to raise them in an environment that rewards positive steps in the right direction or tackling something difficult such as literature.

I see children all over the country and I am apprehensive about the future. Either children who have no drive or those who are overindulged and do not know how to work or think for themselves.

Those that do not have anything expect those that DO to pass it down and take care of them. How can we get the multitude to want something bad enough that they will work hard and get it themselves?

One thing we could do is stop allowing the people you mention to play the ‘victim’. Since when is it respectable to have several children and then not take care of them or to think teen pregnancy should be lauded?

The other side is maybe you should prove you have a GED or HS Diploma to be able to vote!

The only other way is if you can find a summarized version of the play, where the plot is pretty much rewritten as a short story. I have a book that did that with a lot of Shakespeare’s plays, that I found in my great-granddad’s house when my parents and I cleaned it out back in the Summer of 1997. I kept it, knowing that we’d be studying Shakespeare, and that it might come in handy in other ways. I loaned it to my English teacher, who used it to make copies of the short story version of “Much Ado”, and gave me extra credit for letting her borrow it.

We have had many discussions about healthcare in our family. I am all for helping the less fortunate IF THEY CANNOT HELP THEMSELVES. Does anyone think many of those with generations on welfare are sitting around reading ( with all of their spare time) or are they watching their big screens? HOW do we get these folks to want to read?

I am livid over what my son has shared with us about uninsured individuals filling acne medication for FREE since the government is paying for it. Is this a life or death situation? If Rogaine were a prescription, would it be necessary? There are many insured folks who cannot afford to go to the dermatologist and get a $500 prescription WITH a $70 co pay.

I cannot figure out the craziness of this mess…..

People need to read to be educated. You will not be educated in school–ok you will be given the basics, but they do NOT encourage you to think. Heck, the current school system doesn’t even encourage teachers to think…just to do and of course get those National Scores! A person has to take responsibility for their own learning. Educated/Learned masses are the best resources we can get for our country. Uneducated masses, are great for pulling levers at the polls and doing what they are told.

I agree with those who said a mix of the two would work well. Classics like Little Women, Fahrenheit 451, Wuthering Heights, and Tom Sawyer are a must. Newer books like Animal Farm, The Lord of the Rings, Anne Frank, Jurassic Park, and Gone With the Wind.

The problem is there are SO many works that are great, that a child (or adult) will have to venture out to discover most of them on their own. Little House, Harry Potter, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Last Battle….these should not be shove aside just because we need to expose the child to Old Man and the Sea, The Odyssey, To Kill a Mockingbird, or Dante’s Inferno.

Some reading like Shakespeare will ALWAYS be dry…because Shakespeare didn’t write it for people to read. Let them see the movie…even the DiCaprio or Gibson ones, and save them the reading time for another good book. Then have them compare and contrast it to any other book (Twilight comes to mind with Romeo and Juliet) of their choosing that interests them and can be compared.

On the other hand their are classics I had to force myself through: The Great Gatsby, Watership Down, Of Mice and Men, Grapes of Wrath, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice. Am I better person for having read them–who knows!–the best I have found is that I know what the speaker is referring to when they are referenced–but who cares! There are tons of things that are referenced in conversation I later have to look up…it would be impossible for me to know everything.

The best that any teacher (or parent) can hope for is to spark a life long love affair with books. By allowing a mixture we can best hope to achieve that goal.

My only problem with letting children get away with reading solely what they feel like reading is that often what they choose to read may not be challenging or even enduring. Kids being kids, they often take the past of least resistence, in the face of all the other demands on their time and attention. I do think that a person cannot make a claim to being well-educated if they don’t have some passing acquaintance with the classics and to be able to recognize references, themes and allusions to those classic works.

My daughter and I were talking about something the other day, and suddenly, she exclaimed, “Dorothy didn’t have RUBY slippers — they were SILVER — umm, weren’t they?” I assured her that yes, indeed, in the original books, Dorothy’s shoes were silver, but they made them ruby to make ‘em “pop” more in the new Technicolor process. This led to a long discussion of the differences between literature and the motion picture adaptations (including my distain for the Keira Knightly version of “Pride & Prejudice” . . . don’t get me started!) And while I don’t equate Nicholas Sparks with “literature”, my daughter finally understood why I loathed the movie adaptation — AFTER she read the book! When she had to read a book for English, I never let her see the movie until she had read the book. I have a miniseries of Jane Eyre that she actually found helpful to understanding some of the undertones she had missed. And, of course, we had a good laugh at Olivia Hussey not being allowed to go to the premier of “Romeo and Juliet” because she was too young for the “R” rating that her nudity earned the movie . . . in other words, she was too young to look at her own breasts!:-D

@Denise — LMAO at the “horror” of “The Color Purple.” My mother was equally horrified when I was discovered, at age 8, hiding in the attic eagerly devouring “Rosemary’s Baby”! I have to admit, at 8, I was so innocent that I never really quite grasped exactly how Rosemary got pregnant, despite the fairly explicit description of her impregnation. :-)

One thing I do remember having to do one year was my English teacher asked us write a letter to her as a character in one of the books we read. We were to describe what happened to us throughout the book, without directly quoting the book. We were to say what we did, where we did it, who we did it with (or to), why we did it, how we did it, and when it was done. We could choose to be the main character, or any character that had a significant role in the story. For example, if one of us had read “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, we could have written the letter as Tom, Huck, (which would have been odd, since neither one could really read or write very well), Aunt Polly, Becky Thatcher, or anyone else that had a significant role in the book.

It’s hard to have a non-reader in a reading family. Maybe one day…