How “The Great Gatsby” took over high school
24 comments
·May 13, 2025bcoates
From the article: It was also a matter of method. Education scholars often narrate the development of high-school-English pedagogy as a clash between two competing schools of thought. On one side is the “student-centered” approach typified by the education professor Louise M. Rosenblatt and her 1938 book, “Literature as Exploration,” which emphasized the resonances between the work and each reader’s individual experience."
I sure hope this is dead and buried. I couldn't imagine anything more dire than literature being reduced to a mirror reflecting back the (presumably young and intellectually deprived) readers sad little life back at them.
I was privileged enough to grow up in what I'll call the LeVar Burton school of literary interpretation: books are a window into a world entirely unlike your own where you can be Zhuang Zhou dreaming he is a butterfly. What’s more interesting: every book being about being a dull little high schooler, or any book being about anything: Farm animals reproducing the Russian revolution, European nobles murdering each other over random points of honor, being totally psyched for war and finding out you’re a giant pussy, navigating the world of being a mentally unstable prep school girl in the 1960s... entire universes of totally inaccessible experiences made possible through the magic of the novel.
buyx
It sounds like a universal experience in high school is students not reading assigned literature.
In South Africa many of my now middle-aged HS friends, most of whom subsequently graduated university and have successful careers, used study guides for English literature (a handful would recycle essays from older siblings), and are proud that they have never read a fiction book. Having an English professor as a parent got me interested in reading, but that didn't apply to my friends.
English teachers and romantics like the author of this piece seem to place a lot of value in the teaching of literature, but the Common Core actually seems to be on the right track:
At the same time, in an effort to promote “college and career readiness,” the Common Core State Standards Initiative, launched in 2010 and currently implemented in forty-one states, recommends that students mainly read “informational texts” (nonfiction, journalism, speeches)
No point in pretending that the average student has the same hobbies/interests as their English-major teacher.
matheusmoreira
The purpose of school is to prepare students to pass whatever selection filter top colleges and universities employ. Schools dropping literature means higher education institutions aren't admitting students on the basis of literature knowledge. No point in wasting time studying something if it's not going to help students pass tests.
SoftTalker
I read the Great Gatsby in high school. Or tried to. I may have resorted to Cliffs Notes. I can't even remember. I can't remember one thing about that novel, other than the title. The words crossed my retinas but made no impression beyond that. Just could not engage with it at all. And I liked reading, just not the stuff they assigned in English class.
pinkmuffinere
That makes me very sad, it is one of my favorite books. I know an internet stranger is unlikely to convince you, but here’s my endorsement:
It’s the story of an outsider who gives up everything in order to join the “in crowd”, and at the end finds that it was all meaningless. I think this is impactful because it forces the reader (or at least, forced me) to deeply consider what _I_ wanted out of life, instead of what others want, or what seems conventional.
DougN7
Wow. That’s a really important message. Unfortunately, I didn’t get that at all when I read it. I just read about some dude that wanted to party with the rich kids. And I was trying to pay attention and got good grades. The issue might be that I simply wasn’t emotionally intelligent at the time to understand, and I think that was the case for most of us. Or maybe just me…
nyanpasu64
I feel a lot of "literature" reading may reflect experiences a high school student (generously) may not relate to, or (less generously) may not have the life experiences to understand, and may not necessarily gain by reading?
shadowgovt
You may also have already had experiences that formed the notion that being part of the in crowd wasn't worth it.
I also read it in high school and I recall spending about half the book muttering "oh my God, Gatsby, there are so many other women in the world get over yourself."
number6
My interpretation is, that he does not want to join the "in crowd" but to impress a girl and this is his undoing.
The crowd is only a way to impress her, old sports.
yieldcrv
Its also about selling bonds, which is still very overlooked in retail trader’s social climbing schemes. Specifically, issuing bonds
And also about the indifference that generational wealth has towards amusing interlopers that provide fleeting excitement to their women
I love it and want these privileges
johnnyanmac
2 Dudes. Girl. One dude becomes rich and throws parties, but is incomplete without Girl. Other dude (the main character, technically) works to make ends meet, but marries Girl. Rich dude connects with married dude to get close to Girl. That's the main motif at least.
A book about what happiness means and how and if you can ever shape and re-shape yourself to pursue it. Only the quote in the afterword really stood out to me, and I later learn that that's not even in the book; it's in the 50's movie adaptation:
>“There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you’ve never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start over again.”
The rest was more slice of life details about the roaring 20's. That quickly escalates when the Rich dude lends his car to someone else and he runs over someone. Rich dude takes the bullet in revenge when the husband of the run over person takes revenge.
stevenwoo
I read it a long time ago and like you have very little recollection of it. However in high school we also read Homer and several plays by Shakespeare and remember a lot of details - I think my English teachers did a great job of explaining the context and chairing our discussions about those other works. I was thinking it’s hard to relate to Tom and Daisy in high school but then the other works are separated from us by culture and centuries (though to be fair translations we read for Homer are each a work in themselves)
divbzero
> I was thinking it’s hard to relate to Tom and Daisy in high school…
Yes, it seems easier to relate to them after encountering more “careless people” as an adult.
Buttons840
My daughter was reading a trilogy when this school year started; she had finished the first book and was excited about it. Unfortunately, her teacher this year demanded a lot of reading, and only from books she approved of, so my daughter never had a chance to read the other books in the trilogy. It's been an endless deluge of assigned books, some she likes, some she dislikes. The teacher made no effort to facilitate students reading things they were personally interested in. Sad. At least now that the school year is ending she can finally read what she wants.
tmpz22
She wasn’t allowed to read other books in her free time?
dev_hugepages
You can only read so much before your time or stamina is exhausted.
coderatlarge
the good news is that the book is very short and an easy weekend read and also recently in the public domain. which may be prompting a bunch of online content about it.
johnnyanmac
I know this is kinda tone deaf to ask in a section about books, but: how was the Leonardo DiCaprio modern adaption? I read the book and was well out of college when it premiered, but I never had much interest in seeing it at the time. Does it do the book justice, or at least the much much older adaptation?
colechristensen
Many high school assigned kind of books are really difficult to experience well before you've had a little more life experience, Gatsby is one of them.
tisyirkop
If you repeat this same message to anyone from USA, you will be instantly diagnozed with ADHD with a year's supply of medication.
lmpdev
I deeply regret not getting diagnosed as a kid
I got diagnosed at 19
I went from having never read a fiction book cover to cover to finishing DFW’s Infinite Jest
I still did remarkably well in English in highschool, because luckily reading skills =/= writing skills
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