[EliRivers]

"Yet we butcher these poems on speculation and assumptions. We don't learn anything from this in my opinion. The entire process of analyzing books/poems/movies in English class is silly."

I have conversations with people (adults) who clearly never had to do these things (or any other similar study of the written word). It's like having a conversation with a child; they miss puns, subtext, irony, sarcasm, struggle to consider more than one conflicting opinion at a time, struggle to interpret beyond the purely literal and struggle to communicate their own thoughts to others. An inability to communicate beyond such a low level is crippling.

[shadowfox]

Interestingly, I have come across at least a couple of people who took great pride in being extremely literal about what they are saying.

One person explained that he did not want to be misunderstood and thus will always speak literally. (He, unfortunately, seemed to expect other people do this too. Which didnt happen all that often. Ergo misunderstandings)