He's Such a Guy
One evening at dinner recently, my husband asked what our son was studying in English class these days. I chipped in that the class was studying poetry again.
Mr. Venger then asked him his impressions of the poetry unit. Our son replied disdainfully, "Poetry is all about feeeeel-ings---Which I have no use for."
I swear I did not raise him that way...
posted by Anna Venger @ 7:30 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Reminds me of my European History class at Salesianum. We studied art for a while as part of it, and finally one of my classmates asked the teacher, "Mrs. Burke, when are we going to get back to wars?"
I think the entire class felt the same way, he was the only brave enough to say it.
Intellectually, there has been nothing my son couldn't handle in school at any point...except feeeel-ings. When he was very young and I was still lookin over homework, his answers were always right on, indicating that he had mastery of the lesson, until he came to questions like: "How did you feeeeel about this?" Then he'd look at me with this blank expression, and I would have to really work with him on those to draw him out so he could put something down. It hardly seemed fair; it was as though he were being penalized for being male. Very upsetting.
Trust me, the distinction (between feelings and feeeel-ings) was all my son's which is why it struck me as so funny. I tried to reproduce his emphases (yes, plural) as accurately as I could, but to get the full comedic effect, one might have had to have been there. It was just a great family moment etched on my mind, emphasizing the difference between males and females, that I was trying to capture for everyone else.
I'm with your son; poetry is not my thing.
I thnk it's because most poems are written so vaguely. Often, I'll read a long poem and not have any idea what the author was trying to say. I'd prefer a more straight-forward piece of writing. Especially because my current teacher only gives us a good grade if we agree with her interpretation.
I still have bad memories of a project on "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" I had to do last year.
Kid,
I know what you mean, and I am no lover of poetry myself. I think if poetry must be taught to boys, the least that could be done is to focus on more manly poetry, epic battles and the like. That might be a better intro for our young men into that aspect of literature.
Honestly, poetry bores me. I can find the alliterations, rhyme schemes, rhythm, assonance, consonance, etc, but I'm left wondering why the heck the author didn't just say what he meant instead of leaving me scratching my head. Hmmm. Maybe it isn't just a guy thing after all...
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