LS

    I think the school is trying to produce readers that are competent at over analyzing the texts and losing the message that the author intended. A certain high school teacher of mine (I will omit their name) forced us to count the number of words in each sentence and, when we were experts at counting words, made us also count number of syllables in each sentence. They asserted that every author planned out the number of syllables and contrasted sentences of varying lengths to convey an emotion or help illustrate a point in the book. This kind of over analysis was entirely detrimental to our understanding of the author’s intention and made us lose the point of the book. Although this is an extreme example, some English teachers believe that this is the way we should be taught and I believe that this ruins literature and makes kids not enjoy reading. I do think that there is a happy medium and that we can learn how to appreciate some writing techniques and styles- unfortunately, the only way I could appreciate the books we read with that former teacher was to ignore what they stressed and completely fabricate any analysis and ‘syllable numbers’. Sometimes, the only way to learn about devices that help further the author’s intention is to shove the techniques in the students’ faces but there is a fine line between stressing those that help further the plot and those that are completely and utterly irrelevant.