Fea: any time you feel the need for a change of school, feel free to transfer to where I teach and you can be in any of my classes! What a neat paper you've written.
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Originally Posted by Lalaith
I don’t think you’re being entirely fair to your class by being shocked and horrified at their attitude. Would you experience equal shock and horror if a class of teenage/young adult males made a fuss if they had to read a girls’ school story with absolutely no male figures in it whatsoever? Perhaps you could meet your female students at least part way by acknowledging they do have a point. As tar-ancalime says, women are generally expected to appreciate "boys own" literature while men do not reciprocate the favour.
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Hey, I've taught
Mrs Dalloway and
Pride and Prejudice to young men and I'm more than familiar with their dismal and depressing (lack of) response to it. But to reiterate again, the women in this class did not simply say that TI and TH were boring, or that they didn't get into them, or that they did not have much to offer them -- the students were very clear: they are
bad books. Not just books that they don't like, but books that they stopped reading half way through; books that they say are "silly and ridiculous" and "prove" that boys and men are silly. Now, I admit, not all of the women in this class were this vehement but a lot were and
none of the other students felt the need to rise to the defense of the book.
By way of comparison, when (inevitably) some men begin to hammer away at
Pride and Prejudice there is always a response to that -- including by some of the other men. I have been teaching for some years now and have never seen so dismissive a response as the one I was treated to last week. This is what has intrigued me so.
And to give further clarification in response to
Shelob's questions: TI was presented to the students as a Boy's Adventure in a Children's Literature class. The Hobbit (which we won't be getting to for a while) is in the Fantasy unit of the course. So the class went in to TI with an idea of it as a "Boy's story" which I'm sure prejudiced some of them....but I wonder if their prejudice would have been so great if it had been labelled Travel Adventure??
Oh, and the classes are mixed, obviously. There were a few men in the class and they absolutely loved
TI.
But to get back to what is most interesting to me: I really would like to hear from you all (the women) what it is that you love about
The Hobbit. I'm interested in seeing if perhaps there are things there that I don't appreciate it as I've been reading it all my life as a Boy...