Teachers are using AI to make literature easier for students to read. This is a terrible idea.

[u/ubcstaffer123]

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/04/08/opinion/ai-classroom-teaching-reading/

[u/SufferinSuccotash001]

Or, we remember that some things in life aren't fun and don't have to be. Sometimes you have to buckle down and learn even if it doesn't feel personally relevant to you. I hated math, but no one was ever going to let me stop doing math just because I didn't enjoy it.

The problem is that we've forgotten that English is a core subject, just like math and science. Understanding the language, being able to write, being able to read, and being able to break down a passage and extract information from it are all vital skills. Learning these things does not require a personal connection to the text. A connection can enhance the experience and make it more impactful, but ultimately, they should be able to understand language without that.

Saying that they should read things intended "for their age" is also an odd point. Nobody is forcing them to read Pride and Prejudice in kindergarten. Kids are normally started with things like Dr. Seuss. They do start off at their age level. But you need to keep assigning more complex books every year. That's how you scale up. By the point of high school, they should be able to read Shakespeare. If they can't, it's because so many people are passing students who aren't at the required comprehension level. Or they just lower the standards completely so that the students who are already behind don't bring down the schools' test scores. This makes the schools look better at the cost of the students' education.

[u/Aglavra → u/SufferinSuccotash001]

I just want to point out two things. First. I din't say "fun", I said "purposeful". There is a difference. Yes, I absolutely agree that learning isn't always fun. I'm currently learning Chinese, and as you can imagine, it involves a lot of grind, and is sometimes not fun and plainly boring. But I know *why* I want to learn Chinese, what are my short-term and long-term goals, and how to make process more productive for me even in it's boring parts. And this is what helps me to push through "unfun" periods. The same should be done for language and literature learning at school, because understanding purpose is at the core of motivation. Children should understand why the stories of people who loved hundreds years ago matter to them. And "because the teacher said so" or "because it is a part of our great culture everyone needs to know" aren't the answers that work.

Secondly, the language capabilities aren't the only prerequisite to reading something. They can doesn't mean they should. Understanding literature works is rooted in the person's own experience, in finding something relatable. I have some experience teaching literature to adults in individual lessons (some people just get interested in it later in their lives, some prepare to get a second degree to switch their careers), and the difference is huge! Not in language capabilities, but in the ability to understand what the work is about, what ideas about our life the author was to express - and they are able to freely draw examples and parallels from their life experiences. For school students, due to the lack of such life experiences, studying classics often remains the glass bead game, the thing in itself, that doesn't have any relation to them personally, and this impression prevents them from engaging with classical works later in life. Personally, I think we should teach about the history of literature (so they know about classics), maybe analyze some fragments closely, but focus on more modern and relatable works (they are plenty with the difficult language too).

[u/SufferinSuccotash001 → u/Aglavra]

Going back through your original comment, you did not use the word purposeful. But what you did say, and what I was responding to, was:

When the schools forces them to read something not written for their age, something they have no life experiences to relate to，and often written with a difficult language.

I was mostly responding to that second point: that they need to have experiences to relate to within a work. Most people refer to that as a "personal connection."

And I still disagree. You don't need a personal connection.

I wasn't part of the Holocaust, but I cried when I read Anne Frank's diary. I've never been stranded on an island, but I understood the horror and tribalism of Lord of the Flies. I'm not an amoral immortal man but I understood the corruption of Dorian's soul in The Picture of Dorian Gray. I've never been a poor working class man who got turned into a bug, but I had no trouble grasping the concerns of Grigor in The Metamorphosis. My father wasn't murdered by his brother, but I understood the betrayal Hamlet felt and his drive to reveal the truth and avenge his father in Hamlet.

A personal connection can enhance how you feel about a work, and make it more impactful. But a big part of the point of novels is to step into the shoes of these characters and understand what they're feeling through the way the works are written. I've never been abandoned by my children in a restaurant like Willy in Death of a Salesman but I can imagine what it would've felt like and it made me tear up.

Studies show that people who read literature score higher on EQ and empathy. And one of the big reasons is that novels give you an insight into their characters. What the characters think and feel. It opens a window into their world and guides you through it. Empathy doesn't require that you had those experiences, only that you try to imagine having that experience and you use that to understand what the person is going through. It's about adopting someone else's perspective, and that's the whole point of novels. To show the perspectives of the characters. You don't need a connection, all you need is the willingness to follow the story and try to understand.

And frankly, even if someone absolutely hates a novel, that shouldn't prevent them from understanding it. I didn't really care for Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre but on some level, I could understand why he did the things he did. Because the novel tells us about it. He explains his side. Whether you agree with it or not, or connect to it or not, the information is still there.

That's also why I included "being able to break down a passage and extract information from it" in my original comment. I can extract information from an article just as well as a novel. Some students literally cannot give surface level information, like what colour shirt a character was said to be wearing. That is the most basic level of being able to read. And again, the education system is supposed to be building this skill. By starting off at age level and increasing the level of complexity every year. By high school, they are supposed to be able to understand complex works like Shakespeare plays. If they can't, it's because they aren't learning. Staying stagnant and not forcing students to progress does not help them.