Literature Teeters on the Edge of a 'Gr8 Fall'

aicrules writes "Yahoo news is reporting that the great works of literature often read and discussed by the brighter of our up-and-comers could be the latest victim of reaching the lowest common denominator at the potential expense of everyone. The article describes the efforts of Dot Mobile to make such literary masterpieces as Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet more accessible. From the article, 'We are confident that our version of 'text' books will genuinely help thousands of students remember key plots and quotes, and raise up educational standards rather than decrease levels of literacy,'"

Comments

Re:How is "memorizing" plots helpful?

[Threni]

> It's not like the allegory for communism was hidden or anything

Well, it's never explicitly stated. I'd imagine someone reading it in school now, and not knowing what communism was, and not knowing when the book was written or it's context etc not having the first idea what it's about.

But that's why we have teachers...

Re:Worshiping Literature

[bomb_number_20]

I don't know about everyone else, but I really don't see most of these great works of literature as something to put on a pedelstal.

pedelstal => pedestal

I mean there were developed as entertainment and phillosophical points of view, but they don't really have much to teach us other than the authors point of view and perhaps a perspective of the world they lived in.

there => they
phillosophical => philosophical
authors => author's

Take Shakespear from example... I mean his works were specifically devolped to entertain an live audience of his era with comeday and tragedy and frankly the only reason we study him because he was most likely the only one to do it at his time.

Shakespear => Shakespeare
from => for
devolped => developed
an => a
comeday => comedy
him because => him is because

Unless of course there were other play writers that just wrote heaping mounds of dog poo and English Parliment locked them up in the tower and burned their plays that we don't know about...

Parliment => Parliament

As far as works that people should read as something they should get value of... I'd recommend Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, Dante, Friedrich Nietzsche, or some other off the wall phillosopher rather than these people who wrote for entertainment value.

phillosopher => philosopher

And those are only the spelling errors.

Literature has nothing to teach us? Yeah, right.