<p>Having kids analyze literature is a pedagogical tool more than anything else, is how it seems to me. And being one, it has certain limitations in terms of how meaningful a metric it can be (this, the meaningfulness, being in terms of its ability to gauge students’ capacity for higher-order thinking, the type of thinking that gets the books written the kids read, etc.) </p>
<p>It functions to standardize what would otherwise be something difficult to evaluate by making the kids all read and analyze the same text (and not write on whatever they would want, which, arguably, might be better in some ways). But the books have to be open ended, they have to allow for multiple interpretations; but they also have to be constrained to some extent - they have to allow for concrete interpretations; they can’t be too confusing or ambiguous. Of course then the problem is finding such a book, which is really kind of a hard task (a lot of books write themselves - the author has no obvious or intended message). </p>
<p>uh, noimaginations’ points (which truthseeker endorses) I also agree with. Like truthseeker, the system (of having kids analyze literature) hasn’t worked very well for me. I failed my most recent english class (which is very sad) and didn’t graduate because of it; yet in the one before that I did very well. Teachers’ equivocal weighting of different aspects of writing (i.e the ones who appreciate kids who show careful thinking vs. the ones who are very strict with regards to format) - the subjectivity involved - has made it quite hard for me.</p>
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