> Most of the stories and themes were outdated and didn't have enough context to make them understandable. Some books even used outdated words and phrases.
I should've used "archaic" instead of "outdated". As in, "incomprehensible to someone speaking proper modern $language". Without a dictionary, a normal student couldn't understand what was being said in many sentences throughout the book. Some books actually had a dictionary in the end, but not for all the archaic words and phrases.
I was intrigued by the idea that it might be unreasonable for a book to include a glossary or dictionary to explain usages for made up or unfamiliar terms. I like that this list [1] exists because I was struggling to think of such a book. But then I thought about The Lord of the Rings, and it even includes an index of terms among its appendices, which is something I remember using to revisit parts of the story when I first read it. Another book with a glossary of terms is Dune, which I found fun and reasonable to avoid trying to explain hierarchy where doing so would break the narrative flow. But maybe that just means it's not as cleverly constructed or organized as it could have been--but the trade-off has to be how to engage a wide selection of readers...
Is the complaint about the dictionary at the end because it wasn't comprehensive? I'm unreasonably curious about the book and which phrases were included and which were not.
I think all written works occur in a context that should be taken into account when thinking critically about them. That context is temporal and linguistic and is more apparent when you consider something like Beowulf in Old English or The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. Understanding it requires either a modern reinterpretation or consideration given to the sociolinguistic context in which it was written.
I think you are missing the broader point: why should one read things occurring in an alien context to begin with? It's not as if there is a dearth of more modern works. It seems like the main function of selecting older works is to make it artificially harder for students to read.
> why should one read things occurring in an alien context to begin with?
I think there's a trivial answer which is that all things you encounter are fundamentally from an alien context. The degree of alien and intention of the action are the things to consider before proceeding.
For example, why would one choose to read the account of a survivor of tragedy? To develop some amount of (emotional or cognitive) empathy? To learn a broader way of thinking that could apply to a future situation? Most simply: to learn from the past.
If the goal is entertainment, evaluate your participation such that you maximize your utility. If the goal is learning, one should be wary of premature rejection without sufficient context to avoid missing the lesson. And there is an annoying reality in which most situations can teach something.
I'm using "context" in the sense of GP as to why it is hard to read e.g. Beowulf. Certainly one could find a modern account of a survivor of tragedy that would be more approachable? But in any case, accounts of tragedies of survivors are not the sort of material one finds in an English class, which is what's being criticized here (and indeed reading such accounts would probably be an improvement for the reasons you give).
God forbid we learn new words or learn words form the past... Why even bother with history right? It's just old stuff anyways let's focus on new stuff, what could these old things teach us anyways
Meanwhile my grandma still knew how to speak Latin at 70+, which she learned in school as a teenager
I sometimes take pleasure at reading old language ... and still think that giving it to kids as introduction to reading is absurd.
If they read 10 interesting books a year adding one like that to the mix or offer them the option is great. If they did not encountered interesting bool after agw of 7 when parents stopped reading them, no.
And interesting books for kids are there. Plenty of them of all kind, including pure action/adventure stuff. Including those related to movies or games they play. It is not lack of resources.
> But that is not what is happening. Introduction to reading happens pre-school to class two, historic books come from say class 6 onwards.
That is exactly what is happening. The pre-schooler do not really read books, that is an absurd claim. They puzzle out words and sentences. It takes so much effort, they loose attention one paragraph in and dont really recall what happened on the last page.
Giving historic books to grade 6 is exactly the absurd thing that will convince them books cant be fun. It will become totality of their reading and the idea that reading books could be fun will be lost on them entirely.
And unless the parents really went out of their way to introduce them to interesting books, to try again and again with different books, you are loosing them with that entirely. Because this will be the only book they read last 4 months which is "forever" at that age.
> The pre-schooler do not really read books, that is an absurd claim.
And a claim I haven't made.
> They puzzle out words and sentences.
Exactly, which is introduction to reading. They essentially perceive whole words as glyph until some adult points them to the concept of letters (or if they are very smart, they figure it out themselves). When they enter school they start to learn that systematically. After half a year they can typically read short stories. (Here school starts in August/September, and at my family, reading the Christmas story was always the responsibility of the first-grader. Later that year there had been reading competitions and book talks in class.) By the end of class two, you have read tons of books. (Likely still below 100, but still quite some.)
> 4 months which is "forever" at that age.
Exactly and think of what they learn in 6 years. They doubled their age in that time.
> Giving historic books to grade 6 is exactly the absurd thing that will convince them books cant be fun.
I think that really depends on what you mean by historic books. Colloquial books from a century ago are indistinguishable from contemporary books, 200 years ago, they start to have some older words, but are still readable by a young child. 500 years ago is still intelligible, but for a child becomes more something to laugh at, rather then something they read, do to all those words, which are now considered to be improper. Your child likely won't read that on its own motivation, although it can be fun for a few minutes. 1000 years ago, the book will be in Latin, so your child won't even try.
The issue with books in the "native language" classes is much less their raw age, but that they are mostly plays or the new literature genre from that time. To me the play from 50 years ago, was really boring, but the fairy tales from 200 years ago was what I read at night below the blanket, when my parents wanted me to sleep. Yes school lead to me loosing interest in books, but that was not because the book was boring per se, but because we dissected the books until it was like a dead corpse.
> And unless the parents really went out of their way to introduce them to interesting books, to try again and again with different books, you are loosing them with that entirely.
Not really. The issue at that age is more the book supply then the demand. Reading is maybe 35-45% [0] of their wake time at that age. Try reading that much as an adult. At some point I needed to resort to reading the bible (the boring parts), because there was no book in my bookcase I haven't read, after I have already read all the history books in my parents bookcase, that sounded fun.
[0] To do the math:
A child sleeps >10h at night and has 1-1.5h after-lunch nap. So say 14 wake hours, Of this they spend 6 hours in school, which is mostly math or english, so say 40% reading. They take the school bus to and from school, which is mostly talking and reading. After school they also read, so maybe 2h. Then they likely stay on the playground for 3 hours or something, so no reading during that time. Before or after they do homework, most of which involves reading. English anyway and in math you also need to read the exercise descriptions. Then in the late afternoon and before going to bed they still read a bit of their own books, so maybe again 2h.