system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I believe forcing high schoolers to read the "great works" of literature is a waste (and only turns them off from reading in general) because they lack the life experience to appreciate them. CMV.

Hey CMVers. I think the "great works" of literature are meant for adults. Stories require the reader to feel empathy with the characters--for the reader to identify with what they are going through, and recall their own experiences of love, loss, pain, confusion, family strife, death, etc., alongside the characters in order to get drawn into the story. If you do not identify with and experience feelings alongside the characters, your experience of the novel will be shallow. 


I think this lack of connection is why so many high school students don't care for their assigned readings and 90% will just default to Sparknotes--and many will never read for pleasure because of the negative association with being force-fed boring material. It made me resentful and thought "You can't force me to care" while Sparknoting most of my literature assignments.


Even though I was otherwise a good student in high school, I would get really frustrated at reading the huge novels that grappled with adult themes that I, personally, had never experienced and couldn't get into. As a teenager, I lacked the will and the perspective to identify with the characters and their struggles. Examples:


* **Grapes of Wrath:** as a suburban 15 year old, I never understood the feeling of being down on your luck, starting over with a new life, the burden of taking care of a family, the challenges of finding work in a bad economy. It was just really long and I didn't particularly care what happened. This was one of my least favorite books ever.


* **Ivanhoe:** This was a summer reading assignment. I read the first few boooring pages, said "lol nope" and Sparknoted it.


* **Catcher in the Rye:** Psyche! I actually loved this book in American Lit class. You know why? Because it was a story *about a teenager*, dealing with *problems that teenagers actually understand*: struggling to find your identity, fitting in with your peers, relationships with parents and siblings, adolescent sexuality, etc.


Now that I'm older, I watch TV dramas and get really into them because I can identify with the characters' struggles. In Orange Is the New Black (spoilers) when Jason Biggs essentially breaks up with Piper, I really felt a shared pain with his character, because I have had to break up with people myself. Life experience. Makes me care about a character. 


**TL,DR:** Literature requires readers to bring their own life experiences to identify with and care about the characters. Most "great works" require life experience that is alien to that of a typical 15 year old.

**Edit:** Glad this inspired a lot of discussion, I enjoyed reading the feedback. I'll award some deltas on the posts that made me think of things in a different way. Also, I assure you my username is a mere coincidence. ಠ_ಠ
gpt
I think the way the books are taught is often the problem, more than the material covered. Drain every last ounce of enjoyment from the reading trying to squeeze every drop of what the author might have mean by the car being pale blue instead of just blue. Dammit, Gatsby.