The White Council

Re: Advantages/Disadvantages of Tolkien Being Taught...

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: I was reading The messages posted on when/how/why Tolkien's : works should/should not be put into the Literary Canon, and as : I was reading these numerous posts a few things came to mind.

: Is it really beneficial to have work put into a Canon so that : it is taught all over the world in Schools and tertiary : institutions? It may not be, because it takes the "love" out of : reading a work, and forces people to read it for the grades. : I've seen hundreds of people (and some here, apparantly) who : hate the works of such authors as Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, : Chaucer etc. because they were forced into reading them at : school/university and so, as a consequence, never got the full : meaning/potential out of their great works.

I think it could justifiably be said that those same institutions instill a love of these authors in as many people. The most popular book people have purchased from Amazon.Com through Xenite.Org since January 1 is Plato's REPUBLIC. Go figure.

I liked some of the old authors, but they don't appeal to me for reasons having to do mostly with language, sophistication of technique, and subject matter. I don't feel they are necessarily bad authors. My objections to Shakespeare, for example, couldn't begin to approach Tolkien's. He knew Shakespeare's works far better than me, and also the language Shakespeare used.

: Sure, a work being put into a Canon will ensure that it : survives and is taught years (and even centuries) down the : line, but is it worth it? I dread the day when I hear a school : kid saying: "I hate Tolkien; It's so boring, and that teacher : that teaches it...she's such a retard!"

: That's about it from me, any thoughts?

Literature classes are important for several reasons. They don't just reinforce our reading skills (which are vital to the survival and continued development of our way of life), they also expose people to ideas and scenarios they hadn't imagined before. Those ideas may produce some interesting results if they take root and grow in the minds of the readers. But even if the students come away totally unappreciative of the experience they have had, they have still had the experience.

I'm a high school dropout, so I missed a great deal of secondary school literature, but in college I minored in English Lit. I guess you could say I tried to make up for lost time. And yet the one piece of literature that has stayed with me all my life, more than anything Tolkien ever wrote, was a poem I read in a third-grade English book about a little boy playing with blocks and imagining kings and soldiers and horses and a whole world unfolding before him.

I don't remember the name of the poem, who wrote it, or even how it goes. But the images it left with me (I must have read it a hundred times before I had to turn in that book) are as clear and profound today as when I first read that poem more than 30 years ago.