True confession: I really admire people who do literary analysis, but I simply wasn’t capable. It seems odd that someone who is such a fan of literature based curriculum should say that. I primarily used Sonlight, and later The Well Trained Mind. Sonlight was the easiest to use, but after a while we had read most of the books, so I switched to The Well Trained Mind reading lists and other “reading lists for the college bound” and tried to tie in the reading with the history. We didn’t do any “literature analysis” we just enjoyed the books. My kids loved it so much they both signed up for the great books and honors courses in college and did very well with it.
Blessings,
Lee
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The HomeScholar Helper » Hey, Someone Else Who Hates Literary Analysis! says:
[...] I Hate Literary Analysis – Part 1 I Hate Literary Analysis – Part 2 I Hate Literary Analysis – Part 3 I Hate Literary Analysis – Part 4 [...]
August 27th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Cynthia Morris says:
Wow Lee! Thanks for sharing this. It was so helpful to me to hear someone confirm what I’ve always thought and felt and was afraid to admit! This sets me free. We’ll enjoy studying literature and history more this year, than we did in the past I think! We read the books that are interesting and I won’t feel guilty about not requiring my son to read the books I think he would hate anyway!
June 27th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Wanda says:
Thank you, Lee, for providing needed affirmation of the direction I’ve decided to take our highschool literature studies. Its so good to hear confirmation from you of what I already knew to be true– that forcing a teenager to do a lot of literary analysis of great books can turn them off reading altogether, which was my own experience.
In the process of being forced to painstakingly dissect book after book in high school, I lost all interest in reading, though I’d been an avid reader in elementary grades. I want to prevent this from happening to my teenage son!
August 21st, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Kim Allen says:
Thanks, Lee.
My daughter has always been an avid reader and has scored in the 700s on her SATs for Critical Reading and Writing.
However, while she was a high school student in public school, and now a (homeschooled) student who is taking dual-enrollment English classes at the local community college, she began to loathe anything in the Literature field. She has been so turned off by the “dissection” of the written word that she is now pursuing a major in Biology!
There must be a better way to discuss literature than analyzing and over-analyzing and fabricating critiques for something that isn’t even in the text to begin with!
October 1st, 2010 at 6:18 am
Cori says:
Thanks for sharing this, Lee. Tell me, did you read everything your kids read on the Sonlight and WTMind reading lists so that you could discuss the books together? Personally, I think that a lively discussion is more enlightening and engaging than dry, technical literary analysis. But how do we discuss a book if only one of us has read it?
I am all for reading living books, but don’t have the time to read everything my dd reads so that we can discuss them.
Did you read aloud to your sons or did you let them read by themselves? My dd is 12 and often prefers to read books by herself because she understands them better. When I read aloud, she is greatly entertained, but I have noticed that,sometimes, her comprehension suffers. I’m perplexed about how to move forward with this and would love to hear what you think. Thanks a lot!
December 2nd, 2010 at 12:05 am
Colleen says:
As a former English major, I can attest to the fact that “required reading” is no fun! I got through several college classes — even Shakespeare without reading the books. Yet, I love to read and later read the assignments for “fun!” I guess just didn’t like the idea of somebody else dictating what I should read. I have taken that into account when I homeschool. We “analyze” one to two books per year together. The rest, we enjoy together or separately.
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January 23rd, 2011 at 4:39 pm