I’m having a hard time trying to remember when I last posted on SuperForest. Ah, I found it, it was on the last day of the previous year, 2009. I hope every reader, every co-SuperForester and every co-human has had a tremendous start of this year, of this decade. My start was okay, I had a few tests about calculus and dynamics right in the beginning. I’m still waiting for the results to come in but I hope I made them well.
My last post was sort of an oversight, it wasn’t a regular post. A lot of stuff happened since I made a regular post. Recently I started reading much more than I was used to do. Chris’ one-book-a-week action was one of the reasons, but the death of Catcher In The Rye author J.D. Salinger was one too. I read this book back in highschool (seems centuries ago, but as a matter of fact it’s not more than a year). Back then I despised it, yes I despised it.
The first page of The Catcher In The Rye
A highschool friend told me about Salinger’s death. “Julius, our favorite author has died!” he – heavily sarcastically – messaged me. (We all considered Salinger’s little red book a major pain in the ass). So I heard about his death, I read a big story in the paper and it started to interest me again. How could such an acclaimed part of English literature not be according to my taste? I read The Catcher again, only to find that it interested me for a great deal! From that moment on Holden’s affairs seemed very genuine, even funny in a way. It amazed me how Salinger weaved his themes through the story and gave them an identity with characters. I spent all my free moments reading – taking plops, cooking – and thus finished it within one week (YES!! Chris, can I join your programme?)
The question I want to ask here is not why Salinger wrote a book that is still popular fifty years after publication (I wonder if Harry Potter is going to live up to that). That’s slightly irrelevant because every newspaper and every magazine has already explained it. The question to be asked here is how the hell is it possible that I disliked the book when I read it in literature class but in reading it three quarters of a year later, found that it truly fascinates me. The answer to this question is the solution to the problem of schools, because why aren’t kids motivated enough to do all their homework and to come to every class? I’m still surprised pretty often when I find co-students unmotivated as heck.
Lets extrapolate my experience with The Catcher in the Rye to macro-scale. The essential problem with me was that I totally didn’t want to read it which led to me disliking the novel, the story, the characters and the main themes. All because I didn’t want to read it in the first place. Now you might wonder why, the best reasons I can come up with is that I had already read enough books to do and pass my exam, the print of the book was really small, the pages were thin and my teacher wasn’t the best motivator as well. I was this really lazy and easily disturbed class who didn’t want to do anything for the subject, so my teacher probably felt like: “Guys, I’m not going to invest any effort in you.” She told me once or twice that she was really sorry about the bad work-environment and that she would step up to the disturbing students but nothing really happened. It’s okay, I read The Catcher at last.
That’s probably the A-side of the problem, an unmotivating work-environment. Quite logical of course, what’s the point of working if no one does so? The other side, the B-side, is the one of the intraperson, within my person. At the time I was a little furious at my own generation, mainly because my co-students valued school in a different way. A clash of values, you could say. So then Salinger comes along, with a novel featuring a main character that is hates everything except himself. I totally couldn’t understand, causing me to put the book down after reading the first few incomprehensible chapters.
With the knowledge I have gained by now, how would I say the school system should be fixed? Of course this is a pretty big dilemma – too large to be covered here – but it’s a theme I like so by any chance I might weave on it in the near future. But in short then; clearly there’s a problem with the motivation of students – that ain’t rocket science, the fixing of it comes close though. The gun has two sides, the teacher and the student. Teachers have a tremendous but limited influence, I recall an art teacher I once had, he seriously evoked my entire interest in art. Teachers can do that sort of near-magic stuff only, and only if, the student is open for it. “This is stupid, this I don’t like”, it went through my head all the time, no teacher in the world that can change that; I simply wasn’t opening up for Holden’s adventures.
Getting the right teachers is a question of good teacher-schools and finding the right people to enroll. Opening up students is more difficult though. I find that opening up happens when good stories are told. If my teacher would’ve told me about the life of Salinger after the publication of his acclaimed novel I would’ve been much more open to it. If a mathematics teacher would tell his students the story of Newton’s Principia they would never think about differential calculus the way they used to.
I guess that all I’m saying is that we shouldn’t leave the humanity out of seemingly cold scientific subjects. Same goes for technology, it seems very inhuman and complicated at first, but if you investigate the systems and the patterns that lie at it’s source you might find a wholly new approach to it.
Okay, lets leave it here for today. I would love to hear everyone’s reactions and feelings in regard to this subject. Thank you for reading.
Recent Comments