In my last semester of high school, I was assigned to read The Great Gatsby for my honors english class. About a few chapters into the book my english teacher, Ms. Russell, decided that she wanted to have our class participate in a special school project: "Character Counts." This involved breaking into groups and making short movies about the pillars of character. Honesty, integrity, etc. Of course we had to use class time to write our scripts, practice our parts, and then film our character counts documentaries.
Ms. Rusell felt strongly that the character counts project was more important that finishing The Great Gatsby as a class, so she cancelled that part of the grading requirement, replacing it with character counts. I remember being thrilled that instead of reading a required book and writing some essay I could instead make some lame movie with limited brain power involved from me. (Maybe the whole character counts concept didn't quite sink in with me-come on I was a senior going to Penn State, I was so done with high school!)
In class Ms. Russell said to us "But, you will still read The Great Gatsby on your own at home, right? Even though you wont be tested or graded on it, you'll still read it, right?" Are you kidding me? Of course we all agreed heartily that we would read the book on our own. In my mind I remember thinking, 'wow I cant believe you think we will actually read this on our own.'
I am an avid lover of reading. For whatever reason, I strongly dislike required reading for school. I don't think there was a single book I read throughout my entire education that I enjoyed. Mainly because I was forced to read it and then graded on my interpretation of the book.
As a result I never finished The Great Gatsby, and to be fair I don't think I ever started it in the first place.
I can now proudly say: "Ms. Russell, 12 years later I finished The Great Gatsby, and it was wonderful. Since we're not being graded on it, I hope you wont mind the delay in finishing"
Jim and I just finished reading this great American novel together, and I must say I was shocked at how much I enjoyed the book. It always surprises me when older fiction has strong plot lines with twists and turns (like Jan Eyre, have you read that book? Crazy!)
To Ms. Russell: Thank you for believing in your delinquent senior class of 1998 that we might some day understand that character does count and that good literature, even 12 years late, is still good literature.
Last week was too busy to be knitting anyway. Stay tune for our Halloween/Birthday round up.
