I’m sure we can all remember being reading in school.
Later, in intermediate and high school, we’d have to read assigned books. This never bothered me—I was always a keen reader—but a lot of the books weren’t novels I’d have chosen to read myself. Yes, expanding our literary horizons was probably the point.
I think my favourite English reading assignment wasn’t a book at all, but a poem: The Man from Snowy River by Banjo Patterson.
I’m not a big poetry fan, but I loved the rhythm of the poem, the way I could almost feel the horse galloping along beside me as I read the words.
We read this in fifth form (our equivalent of sophomore year), in preparation for School Certificate. School C (as we called it) was the set of national examinations we sat at the end of the year. If we didn’t pass, we couldn’t progress to sixth form in that subject. It was a big deal.
One of the School Certificate questions was always to compare and contrast a piece of literature with the movie version. This meant we got to watch the movie version of The Man from Snowy River, starring Kirk Douglas and Tom Burlinson.
I remember reading The Great Gatsby, although I remember nothing about it. We read Tess of the D’Urbervilles. I loathed it because of the requirement to find theme and symbolism rather than simply reading and appreciating the story. And we read the compulsory Shakespeare: Macbeth and Othello.
Hi Iola – Interesting that your favourite was a poem, and an Aussie one at that. I love poetry, but they made us study Auden and Yeats and neither of them really grabbed me. Though I’d sift through our ‘Mainly Modern’ poetry text and find others I liked instead.
From memory, a lot of the novels they gave us in high school were a bit “Boy’s Own” – Warrior Scarlet (a coming of age story about a boy), Lord of the Flies (which I hated), The Guns of Navarone (which I didn’t mind), and Julius Caesar (bleah!). Though I loved To Kill a Mockingbird 🙂
I suspect the “Boy’s Own” feel to the books had the same history as Hary Potter: adults know girls will read “boy books” but the reverse doesn’t hold true. Most teenage boys I knew preferred Tintin and other graphic stories, so anything that was all text and no pictures was going to challenge them. Ah, stereotypes.
In Primary school we read from the Wide Range Reader which had lots of short stories but we were also encouraged to read other books. In grade 6 our teacher was reading some of Colin Thiele’s books to us. I know she read Sun on the Stubble and also February Dragon. Colin Thiele visited our school to speak to the grade 7’s but as we were actually reading his books he came and spoke to us as well. In High school we had to read Lord of the Flies which I really hated. We also had to read Brave New World which also was not a book I enjoyed. We got to read a couple more of Colin Thiele’s books. One book I loved was The Pigman. Of Mice and Men was not one I would have choosen but it was ok.
Colin Thiele … that rings a bell. We might have read Storm Boy. Maybe.
It does surprise me that I actually don’t remember too many of the books I read at school – and I mostly remember the ones I didn’t enjoy. I wonder what that says about me? (And all of you who hated Lord of the Flies!)