What is the point of reading class (literature and language)?

Question

I'm in 8th grade middle school. reading class is extremely pointless for me. all it does is take things you already subconsciously know, make you memorize the official terms for it, disect a book apart, and basically give you notes on things you already know.

maybe it's just my reading class? but literary devices, and taking apart the climax, rising actions, resolutions, theme...etc etc etc....it just doesn't have nay point.

and please, don't say you need to know it for high school. becuase otherwise you could just take it out of school all together, and in know way would it take away knowledge from yoru life.

Answer 1

Literature classes do have their purpose, but every teacher I ever had assumed either you already knew what that purpose was or they themselves had no clue.

In the case of math and physics so many other courses are just specialized physics courses and all of them use math like algebra. If you want to go to college and take a technical major then you need a large math background.

In the case of literature the reasoning is a bit more obscure.
1. The study of literature gives us a common background and knowledge base. For example if I start talking about Adam and Eve you have already made the mental leap to nude, an apple, and a snake in the grass. Almost every American knows this and will make the same mental leaps.
2. Understanding how to analyze literature gives you a basic course in how to analyze anything and everything. Analyzing fiction isn’t all that helpful unless you are looking to become a writer, but we analyze so many things in life to understand them and we learn the basics of this when you start to tease apart famous literature.
3. You may think that you know it all already, but a lot of people don’t understand about plot, theme, plot devices, climax, heroes and antiheroes. These concepts are new for a good number of your fellow students; of course they won’t admit that because admitting that would be a sign of weakness.
4. Because of these reasons you are not going to escape literature, it will be lying in wait for you in high school and prepared to ambush you in college; no matter what your major is. The courses don’t just teach you how to analyze a story, but how to analyze something that isn’t math based.

Look at dynamics in the office; you are the hero, the boss and some others could be the antiheroes or villains. The plot is ‘how to get your job done,’ and you are trying to find the way to reach a climax in performance so you will be eligible for a raise. You don’t look at it or think of it that way; but you have worked out how to analyze a situation in your literature classes. No two people analyze the same situation the same way, for example the office plot could be complicated by a potential romance or gossip and a chance to get more of either one.

Analysis teaches you critical thinking, the way to tease the situation apart take out the stuff that doesn’t matter, categorize the stuff that does and so understand it all. I like to use the motto take care of the molehills and after a while the mountains will take care of themselves. For example trying to lose 40 lbs in one year is a huge goal, but if you realize it that’s on 3.3 lbs per month and that is a reasonable goal. Sure I used math to analyze that situation (duh; 40/12 months), but to make the answer make sense I had to analyze what I wanted to say, come up with an opening line, my points an example and finally a conclusion, without having to use that dreaded phrase “and in conclusion….” So (in conclusion) there is a reason for all the courses you take and that reason becomes cumulative in that you need it to go through the higher levels of school and to be able to perform more complex tasks. They don’t try to explain this to you or why you need to do this maybe because teenagers are so obstinate that they will come up with reasons to NOT have to do or why the DON’T need the classes. You are on the road to this and after reading my answer you will probably come up with a dozen jobs where you wouldn’t need literature and knowledge on how to do a critical analyses, except doing that is its own critical analysis.