Flying Blind

A thought that was brought up this week in my American Literature II class was the fact that literature is often presented to students without the proper background knowledge necessary to make the literature make sense and cause students to understand its importance. For example, in that class we were reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Someone in class mentioned how they had read this novel previously in high school and didn't care much for it, but when reading it this second time around, appreciated it much more. This was due to the extensive introductions to the time period as well as to Mark Twain we read prior to reading the novel. We also had spoken in the previous class about the climate of literature in America up to this point in time. This placed the novel in specific time, made us understand the author's life as well as his style of writing, and, ultimately, make Huck Finn more important than simply a story of a boy on a raft.
This is the kind of thing that needs to be done at the high school level. Too often books are just passed out to students, and then they read them that night without any context. This could be the reason why so many kids, even those who are already interested in reading and literature, are so turned off by classic literature. They just don't understand what is going on the book and why its important to be reading. If we take the small amount of time to give that sort of background knowledge to kids before the dive into the book with blinders on, the literature can actually make sense and resonate with them. Classic literature won't have to be so scary if we don't lead kids in blind.