Thread 151173071

Did they really have book reports where you had to pick a book and then write about it?
When I was growing up it was always the school gave YOU a book and you had to write a report or take a test, and if you didn't like that book too fucking bad
Luckily I did like Of Mice and Men

>>151173071 (OP)
Not until high school.

>>151173071 (OP)
Yeah, we did this for a couple of summer vacation projects when I was in the 4th-6th grades or so

>>151173071 (OP)
Yeah I had that in elementary and middle school.
I did also have assigned books, but some reports were personal choice.

>>151173071 (OP)
I remember we had to make up a story and I just turned in a summary of Ninja Scroll

I faked my way through a book report once. Pretended I had read A Wrinkle in Time when I actually didn't. I would just read the first page or so of every chapter and then make up the rest of what happened.
The teacher either never noticed or didn't care cause it was one of the only times I got an A on anything I did in school.

I remember having to do that once in fifth or sixth grade. I did Prisoner of Azkaban. A friend did Order of the Phoenix and the teacher failed him because his entire report was "Harry suspects Malfoy is doing something bad and want to find proof".

>>151173071 (OP)
We would often get an approved list we could select things from.

>>151173071 (OP)
yep

>>151173084
>summer vacation projects
>America, land of the free
>except they make you do school work outside of school
kwab

>>151173501
Makes sense, you can't expect the teacher to have read every possible book a student might choose in irder to verify whether they understood it or not.

>>151173501
This.

>>151173071 (OP)
Yeah, for me that was a thing from 3rd grade up to I think 8th.

>>151173084
Our bitch of a principle initiated that when she took over. As soon as we got the list of books to choose from, I'd race to the library and shit out a couple of quicky reports before summer vacation started. Fuck that nonsense.

>>151173071 (OP)
Most of the time everyone had to do a exam in the same book in my school, in retrospect the only time everyone got to pic their own book was when a book fair happened in school.

>>151174155
>>America, land of the free
Yes, that was always a fallacy. For as long as humans require some form of organized Government, there will never be an ideal "land of the free."

I remember being in first grade and being embarrassingly deep into book report reading time when a classmate told me I wasn’t allowed to do a report on a picture book. I’d misunderstood the directions and they apparently wanted it on a chapter book or junior novelization instead. Must’ve misunderstood the directions or not been paying attention. For that one, we were told to pick a book from one of the shelves in the classroom, so the selection was still monitored. After I switched gears, I think I got a C-.

>>151173071 (OP)
>Did they really have book reports where you had to pick a book and then write about it? When I was growing up it was always the school gave YOU a book and you had to write a report or take a test, and if you didn't like that book too fucking bad
Yep, had this at my school when I went 4th-6th grade. The only real restrictions were that it had to come from the school library, it had to be written with the age group in mind and it needed to be over a specific page count
It wasn't until high school when I had to read books specifically handed out by the school, but the books were all classic american literature so I guess it made sense

>>151173356
I always heard about that book and then when I read it, it was just some cringe, more schizo Narnia AU. Im sure kids just liked it because they imagined themselves as the super smart super special kids

>>151173071 (OP)
We had that in my school but they weren't graded or anything, just to encourage kids to read. Assigned reading was a high school thing I liked Mice and Men too

>>151173408
Well, yeah... that's Half Blood Prince, obviously.

They would have never have done this in my school district growing up. Each kid having their own book would have required way too much work on the lazy teacher's part.
Better to design something with criteria that can be universally applied to all students without any sort of personalization and extra reading on the teacher's end.

>>151173071 (OP)
Yes, but your teacher can be a bitch and reject your submission at the last minute. When I was a freshman I wrote a 5 page essay on The Outsiders and ms.green didn't even skim it and just told me The outsiders is a kiddie book and made me do a report on some nog book for half credit(which I only got a quarter credit for because she accused me of using cliffnotes when i literally sped read the fucking thing in 2 days

>>151173323
Kek I did this my last year of highschool, turned in an essay based on Tales of Symphonia, boomer clearly didn't look it up and gave me the highest mark

>>151175049
If Ms Greene is still teaching she is probably crying and begging her students to manage to comprehensively read something like The Outsiders.

>>151175049
Honestly I'd agree that Outsiders is more middleschool tier, but for a freshman if you were able to write an advanced deconstruction of the books values, is more than adequate for a 9th grade essay. Disregarding an American classic as a kiddie book is laughable coming from some bitch who probably never published a thing her life.

I didn't fully appreciate it at the time, but my English teacher assigned us some real bangers. I was always a prolific reader so I enjoyed it a lot, but a few of my friends were not and it was fun for me to see their wheels start turning. 1984, the Lottery, Harrison Bergeron, The Old Man and the Sea, and Johnny Mnemonic are a few that stood out to me. I don't remember ever picking my own book after elementary school, but Mrs. Henderson had some good taste.

>>151173084
I would have refused to do that.

one year when I was a kid I had to read Gentle Ben over Christmas. Fucking bullshit

>>151173071 (OP)
In my district, during middle school we had a thing where you would log in to a thing and take a quiz on books of your choosing, and if you get like 7/10 questions right, you get points, and you get more points based on like how long/advanced it was, and you had to hit a certain point threshold for the year to complete the requirement. So like you could be done if you finished a single longer Stephen King book, or like 3 EU Star Wars novels. For actual book reports, it only happened like once in middle school and twice in high school.

>>151175049
>>151175079
Kek this is the book she made me do after saying The Outsiders was a kiddie book(which ends with a character commiting suicide by cop btw)
It's literally a rip off of Dead Poets Society but with inner-city black kids. Nothing even happens, it plays out like a Disney Channel movie.

>>151173071 (OP)
When I was 16 we had to do a book report and then a test about Lord Of The Flies

First thing after school, I went straight to Blockbuster and rented the only copy of the movie.
Around 10 people called me later that day when they found out I had it and made an order list to rent it next.
Funny times really

>>151174845
I remember being 16 and thinking George Carlin was deep.

>>151173071 (OP)
This one time in middle school, I was given Catcher In The Rye to do a summer book report about. That was the summer I got into Rick and Morty, so peppered throughout an otherwise dead-straight book report were jokes and quips about how I'd rather be watching Rick and Morty. Thankfully, my English teacher just thought those quips were funny. I was a stupid, stupid child.

Incoming long cringey blog post.

The day I came closest to having a full blown panic attack was the day i had to do a presentation on The Phantom of the Opera. Could feel my heart racing and jumping out of my throat, everything was spinning, my limbs were stiff and jerky, and while I was waiting to be called on, I was sure I was gonna pass out or die. It was silly, in hindsight. I’d picked the book myself, gotten the teacher’s approval, and had read the whole thing.

The thing that was bothering me, was the actual assignment was to make the report in powerpoint slideshow presentation form. I’d only made like, two slides. Other than those I had a pile of rough draft notecards and nothing else material to show for the report. I was a good student usually and I was convinced this was horribly embarrassing and I was going to get a F.

My teacher called on me, I told her I hadn’t finished my report, and she made me get up in front of the class and tell them what happened in the book. In hindsight, I probably did pretty well all things considered. As a kid I didn’t stop to think that demonstrating that I’d read and understood the book was almost as valuable as demonstrating I could use powerpoint, maybe more so.

So, I’m up there sweating. But I’m going off my notes and hitting a groove and covering the plot probably okay for like a eight or ten year old or however old I was. But then I get up to the part of the book where The Persian shows up. And I see my teacher get this clearly confused and troubled look on her face. Like she thinks I’ve gone off the rails and just started making shit up. And I can’t really figure out what’s going on, but I’m sure I’m fucking something up. So I run out of plot, the presentation is finally over, I think I wound up getting a C later. Lost a lot of points for not doing the powerpoint but not as much as I’d expected.

Part 1/?

>>151175500
But that confused face still haunted me. So I gave it a lot of thought on and off for some years as a kid/teen. And finally decided I must’ve been pronouncing the character’s name wrong. I’d probably confused the pokemon Persian with a guy that logically coulda been called The Parisian. Because, the book takes place in Paris, of course the mysterious cloaked dude introduced himself as a Parisian. What an embarrassing mistake on my part. EXCEPT, more years later, I look it up on a whim, and no. The guy is called The Persian, he’s from Persia. So I’m more bothered than ever.

And then decades pass from the day of that report, and I finally get around to watching the movie version of the musical. And it hits me. The Persian is a character that is cut from many tv, film, and stage adaptations. He pulls a lot of deus ex machina kinda bullshit in the book moving characters from one scene to the next, but he’s actually kinda easy to write out for time and simplicity for an adaptation or abridgement. This makes him seem like an absolutely essential character to a stupid third grader who has only read the book. And a weird confusing fanfic OC character to an adult who watched the musical where he never shows up and then hears a third grader tell the story but talk about him like he was there the whole time. And now I’m pretty damn sure that my teacher had not read the book proper and certainly knew one of the movie versions way better, like most people who know the story. And it’s really stupid that that big embarrassing moment keeps kicking around in my head over such a stupid misunderstanding.

/end.

schools don't do book reports because literacy rates are too low

>>151175530
It’s almost as though there should be some kind of tax funded government institution that teaches children how to read and thereby improves literacy rates. And that institution should assign the students exercises in reading where they can then demonstrate their learning progress at the end of the exercise.

Letters from Rifka was the book we read in class. I hated it.

>>151175375
I haven’t read Catcher in the Rye, but everything I’ve heard about it secondhand makes me think jokes about wanting to watch Rick and Morty instead would be thematically appropriate.

>>151175375
I keep forgetting Rick and Morty is over 10 years old. I think I was in middle school as well, or at least coming out of MS.

>>151175616
Mine was A Separate Peace.

I still want to know if those fag kids were really gay or not. I think it gave me the impression that gender segregated boarding schools are homosexuality factories and that everyone who goes through them as kids comes out a bit closeted gay. I’ve gotten the notion that most british men are probably gay for this reason.

>>151175657
at that point you might as well say serving in the military or going to prison is designed to make you gay

>>151173071 (OP)
We had all kinds. Typically, you'd pick your own book as a fun assignment. The next level was picking a book from a list. Then there were reports where you had a book assigned.

>>151175338
When I was in highschool, I was put in a retard english class for never doing homework even though I loved to read. The Great Gatsby was on the state mandated standardized test, so we had a period dedicated to watching the movie shortly before the test. None of us were assigned or expected to read the book. I read it just for fun, I dunno if anyone else in that class did.

>>151175673
Maybe it is. Not intentionally probably, but maybe that happens.

>>151173071 (OP)
We did and I fucking hated it. Not because of the reading. I was a giant bookworm as a kid.

No, the issue was the stupid fucking teacher. Here's how HER book reports went
>They had to be on a special piece of paper. Not normal stuff. A special sized one. She'd give you the first, buuuuut
>It had to be completely flawless. I mean completely. Even one single error and she'd give you a zero. And this shit was a big part of your grades. This might sound easy in English but in my language we have accents with hundreds of rules. And of course the calligraphy had to be great
>BUT she also demanded we use pens, not pencils, AND we weren't allowed to use wite-out
You ever try, in elementary school, making a full page essay with zero mistakes, and if you make ANY at all you have to begin from zero?

>>151173071 (OP)
AR quizes and book points took the place of a self-selectd book report.

>>151174239
Id wager its more to curate the aptitude of reading comprehension they want out of you.

>>151175673
There is well documented evidence of people who previously only ever had straight sex turning to homosexual behavior in both those places.

>book report day
>classmate hasn't read a single page, asks for help
>i already did the report, so whatever, just summarize it for him
>he gets called, repeats nearly verbatim my shit and gets a respectable grade

>>151175348
>non-sequitur
He was one of the people who promoted the fallacy.

>>151173071 (OP)
Yeah this was a thing.
kids were expected to read on their own.
I think I read Animal Farm and gave a presentation on that in like 7th grade.

>>151173071 (OP)
Our books were picked for us and our essay assignments were 8 to 10 A4 size pages long. I regret that I didn't punish my teacher for her picks by writing sardonic reports mocking the point she was trying to get across. The same teacher also took us to chinese and arabic movies and had us write essays about those too. The books and the movies were both misery porn. In one essay I wrote "Rich people should watch this to feel appreciative of their money" and that stood out to her for some reason.
You can't fight illiteracy or push ideas by forcing children to read or to write long ass essays. Both of which are eating up additional free time.

>>151175530
I've been looking for this 21st century literary masterpiece since Trump vs Hillary.

>>151173071 (OP)
I'm pretty certain this type of learning is why nobody reads books. If I were in school today I'd have ChatGPT write my report for me while I read a book I actually like

So, /co/, what was your favorite assigned reading book in school? For me it was The Sun Also Rises. I found that book to be extremely comfy, it made me want to go hang out at cafes in Paris and watch bullfights in Spain.

>>151175526
> teacher watches movie
>grades students’ book report according to how well they remember movie when the kid read the book

Anybody got examples where the kid would fail if this happened? Frozen/The Snow Queen and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs come to mind.

>>151173071 (OP)
I get the picking for you thing. a lot of the genre fiction kids gravitate to only are meaningfully examined in the sense of broad cultural archetypes and trends or trade writing minutia, there's often not much their for a kid to work with in theming.

>>151176072
I chose to do a report on Watership Down once. And that was a fucking slog because it turned out the assignment was to analyze the main character: their personality, motivations, conflicts, etc. And it is not a character driven story at all. Arguably there is no main character in the first place. Great book, but absolutely sucked for the assignment at hand there.

>>151175599
You mean like No Child Left Behind?

>>151176567
More like Every Child Shuffled Through, amiright fellow millenials?

>>151175988
OP, I already mentioned Mice and Men but probably that. Best thing ever made by a pinko. If I was alive in the 50s and the Cold War turned hot, I would hesitate before shooting John Steinbeck.
We read Maniac Mcgee too, I liked it but I don't remember shit

>>151176626
>Every Child Shuffled Through
Sarcastic or not that was kind of the point
Dogshit schools were shuffling kids through, usually minorities, and they came out dumbasses who can't get a job above McDonald’s
The bill set standards that had to be met for funding, but instead of making their dogshit schools not dogshit, the schools half assed their way through and blamed the bill when things went wrong

>>151176739
If a bill isn’t fool proof it’s a bad bill.

>>151173071 (OP)
>describes the cover illustration to try to bullshit his way through

Would be funnier with this.

My schools did both.

>>151175526
The Phantom is also basically a proto supervillian who built murder robots for the Sultan.
Another thing that tends to get dropped in adaptations is that he us not scarred but deformed from birth.

>>151173071 (OP)
Middle school was more assigned books like The Hatchet.
High school they let us pick the book.

I always hated the assigned reading period where they forced everyone in the gym to read books for an hour and then dolled out punishments for anyone caught making noise. You expect a packed gym to sit in dead silence for an hour? They just wanted an excuse to punish anyone they could. It's what I imagined detention must've been like, but this was a mandatory period sometimes.

>>151175229
Was this bitch white?

>>151174964
Wrinkle in Time was always "the teacher picked it as part of 6th grade English curriculum"

>>151173356
>>151178066
This cover slaps and was on display in my school library for at least like six years. Massively disappointed when I read it as an adult and it was only mid. Probably woulda blown my mind as a child.

>>151178249
Try C.S. Lewis' Space trilogy it's the same type of thing.

>>151175988
The Phantom Tollbooth. Gave me a love for wordplay that I carry with me to this day.

>>151175991
I'm reminded of doing a report on Thunderball in Middle School, only to be accused of watching the movie.

>>151178362
>only to be accused of watching the movie.
It's not great

>>151175348
Certainly more deep than certain people that believe he'll be on their side right now.

>>151175229
Public school teachers love nigger books. Holes, The Outsiders, To Kill A Mockingbird, anything that fetishizes the poor oppressed nigger and the White people who bravely stand up for them is made top priority in class. One of the main reason why American culture revolves around niggers.

>>151177979
>The Hatchet
Gary Paulsen is just Cormac McCarthy for middle schoolers.
I'd give my left nut for a Mr Tucket adaptation.

>>151173071 (OP)
No, they gave me the books. Saves time for teachers to actually read the damn thing. I got:

Don Qujote (super short version)
100 Years of Solitude
Farenheit 451

>>151178450
Does not explain why it is the most consumed culture in the world.

>>151178310
Oh yeah i still need to read the second and third books.

>>151173071 (OP)
>Did they really have book reports where you had to pick a book and then write about it?
Yeah that was a standard grade school assignment when I was a kid in the 90s. Surprised if they don't still do it.

We also had to bring books to read to ourselves during a silent reading part of class. I remember bringing Goosebumps and my teacher told me it wasn't a "real book". I was annoyed at first, but she gave me Where the Red Fern Grows instead and I loved that book. So I forgave her for dissing Goosebumps (she was right honestly, as much as I loved those books).

>>151178729
Sustained Silent Reading time kicked ass. Sucks for me now though, because it might’ve trained my brain to think reading needs to happen in dead silence. Which I can’t find anywhere anymore.

Even the local library doesn’t discourage conversation. Homeless people and teens are always chilling there playing videos on their phones or talking about bullshit. The librarians chat with each other too. Everywhere else in public blasts music over its speakers, and my neighbors don’t shut up.

>>151178729
My buddy got yelled at for reading Maus in that period. He asked why the hell the classroom had it on the shelf if he wasn’t allowed to read it.

Did they really expect Kids to read a whole fucking book in one or two days?

>>151175203
Had something like that in 5th grade. You could use your points to get something out of the prize drawer at the end of the year.

My parents got me a big collection of illustrated classics from Walmart. Classics but aged down a bit with pictures. Stuff like call of the wild, Robinson cruseo, 20000 leagues under the sea, etc

Didn't realize they were abridged so wasn't getting great scores on the quizzes but still trying my best dammit to earn those points.

At the end of the year my teacher changed the criteria to needing like a 85% overall because I guess kids were just taking the quizzes for any book and randomly guessing.

So for trying to challenging myself i missed out rather then reading age appropriate

>>151179336
I could.

>>151178729
Shit, I remember reading this in the 4th grade. Well "remember" might be a stretch, the only thing I can recall is the ending.
>>151179263
Was it because of the swastika on the cover or because it was a comic and therefore not a "real" book?

>>151179336
A lot of these are short ass books.

>>151179412
I think because it was a comic. I hope they knew it had a swastika. It was on the shelf in their classroom.

>>151175599
The mean the kind of tax funded government institution that have failed to do that for years and years?

>>151175625
It's "you have to have a high IQ" tier if you think the POV character is right or wise, but it's not that way if you take it as a character study of a fucked-up kid who thinks too highly of himself while hating himself at the same time.

>>151173071 (OP)
We got the choice on a couple of different books to read, and then make a book report. It also comes down to a couple of things, that you cant choose any book to make a report about.
1. The teacher dosnt have to read 20 different books, to check if the pupils read the book.
2. So you cant just pick a book you read long ago, and make a report about. (The books the teacher picked wasnt something a normal student would pick)

>>151179627
>>151175625
>phonies who don't get that Holden was right

>>151179627
Hey a load of this phone

You either identify with the main character or think he's a whiney asshole. Theres no in-between

>>151176626
>how can you eat your pudding if you don't have any meat?

>>151179627
>>151179673
>>151179830
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKMDYZZAtHA

>>151173071 (OP)
I remember there being a list to choose from for me.

>>151173071 (OP)
I did mine on Watchmen in high school, I had to ask my teacher for permission because it wasn't on the list but I did well on it

>>151179351
I was massively disappointed the christmas my grandmother got me one of those sets. I didn’t know the terms for “classic literature” or “unabridged,” but I had already read like two of those and found out they didn’t match the originals, and was pissed. So I described the series to my gramma perfectly and said “so okay, you know those? NOT those. Just stuff ~like~ those. The ~real~ books, please.” Of course she got me the box set, I’d spent ten minutes describing it. Maybe I woulda been more articulate if I hadn’t been stuck with six year old level reading.

>>151180551
Tbf I loved these when I was like 8

>>151180605
I love that children and the low reading level handicapped can access these stories with them. But younger me was not in the market for it.

One of the WORST books I had to read for summer reading assignment was Go Ask Alice
Dog shit story of a teenage girl having on/off drug addiction. The worst part was the ending where it seemed like she finally cleaned up her act only to be found dead by her parents one night.

Years later I learn that the author of the book was using the "WRITTEN BY A REAL TEENAGER" as a marketing thing to get it pushed for sales.
I did not regret asking my dad to burn this shit

>>151179336
Are you like 15 or something? Generally serious book reports were a week or 2 due, and you might even be given time during class to read a chapter or 2.
Books given in less than a week were probably really short, I imagine books assigned to elementary student were around 100-120 pages max, which can be sped read in a day if you don't have adhd.

>>151180551
I only just got around to reading Moby Dick like two years ago because I thought I’d read it when I was seven when I had one of these. Spent mist of my life having no idea what people were talking about when they said it was long and boring and full of not plot relevant chapters and themes of cosmic horror.

>>151180890
Aw I liked that one. I think it taught me the game Button Button Whose Got the Button.

>>151178056
Yes, in a mixed middle class school. Also at this point I had already written reports on books like Roll of thunder hear my Cry and Monster, so it's not like I had to be force fed the "black experience".

>>151175988
We read a lot of Kurt Vonnegut for some reason.

>>151180796
No need to be bitchy.

Louis Sachar books felt like a fever dream. I was pissed a fear years ago when I found out they made a wayside cartoon while I was still in middle school, that would've been my shit

>>151181093
That was not sarcasm. I really do think those books have a place.

>>151181093
Not my problem you're retarded anon.

>>151179608
So you agree its about time.

>>151177457
Or this.

>>151175988
I didn't have one because we read a bunch of garbage.
>school assigned books
>hatchet
>number the stars
>great gatsby
>books I read by myself
>Jules Verne
>HG Wells
>Ray Bradbury
>Asimov
>Moby Dick
>Count of Monte Cristo
And that's not to jerk myself off, school curriculums simply do not understand what kids actually want to read.

This one aged a little too well, surprised it never got adapted

>>151181102
Don't feel bad the cartoon was absolute rubbish

>>151175023
They can just>>151175991

>>151181164
To stop sinking money into failure?

>>151175991
The way to fail kids in that scenario is to make them quote parts of the book, or discuss things like tone and author's intent with passages to back it up.
The actual problem is everything is focused on 'comprehension' which means any essay ends up no different than a wikipedia summary.

>>151181250
To stop failing.

>>151181321
I'm sure pouring more money down the hole will guarantee success.

>>151173071 (OP)
i think i remember 3rd or 4th grade they made us. At the time I disliked reading purely because I was forced to read. I thankfully enjoyed harry potter and only read book 2 i think? I disliked the project so much I forgot everything in the book up till a year or so ago. finally read them all this last year or two in order.

Did anyone have to read The Scarlet Letter in school? Most miserable experience I ever had reading a book for school.

>>151181715
Was it anything like this?

>ctrl+f
>sparknotes
>0 results
Get good ya bunch of nerds

>>151173071 (OP)
One time the school sent me a letter that basically said
>he idiot, since you've been such a terrible reader your whole life you should get started on your report now
Then when the teacher found out I was already reading a book I was told it was cheating to use it.

>>151173071 (OP)
I did a book report when I was in Grade 8 and I picked Johnny Tremain because of the episode where Bart was homeschooled and had to do a book report on it. 20 years later and I don't even remember anything about it.

>>151181715
>>151181996
I always heard about the book title without knowing the plot. When I saw someone draw a character with a neckleace saying it was the scarlet letter from the book of the same name. I thought he was bullshitting (I imagined it was a postal letter).

>>151174964
>>151178066
>>151178249
I liked it as a kid. The sequels were better though.

>>151181715
Nat Hawthorn had some much better short stories.

>>151182858
I think it had to do with the american revolution.

>>151173071 (OP)

i haven't read a book since high school roughly 9 years ago kek. just try and make me...

>>151185016
Some people who like reading comic books and watching cartoons based on books also sometimes like to read literature. Go figure.

>>151173071 (OP)
Yeah. I usually wrote about the Artemis Fowl series.
>>151175023
At my elementary school we were to read a few chapters during our presentation.

>>151173071 (OP)
For summer reading it was normally a
>pick one or two off this list
>pick one of your own
>book report for the first one
>tell us about the second one in class

Which basically means pick one from the list and we don’t give a fuck about the other.

>>151173356
This is nothing, I chose an obscure YA book from like a book fair that my teacher told me she never heard of when I wrote it down for which book I’d do.

Literally came up with the plot on the fly because I dropped the book after like 10 pages it sucked so bad. Got a decent grade on a completely falsified book report for it.

I still wonder if she ever read the book and realized it didn’t resemble the report at all.

>>151174845
Whenever I read these kinds of comments I always think of an asshole child who never grew up. You just know they want to do some awful shit that is illegal.

>>151175809
That's the point smart ass

>>151185487
Worse is that they can’t actually imagine the reality of a world without industry, electricity, laws and police.

>>151173071 (OP)
They stopped for me right after elementary

>>151173071 (OP)
Yes and no. Majority of them time the school would give you list of like 50 aproved books to choose from and you usually had to pick 4 or 5 to write about through out the year. I did know some teachers who actually gave people the choice to write about any random book they liked, however these essays were more esoteric and were less about reading comprehension and more about writing ability and critical thinking. The teacher didn't have to know what you were talking about as long as you could argue your points efficiciently

>>151173071 (OP)
Yes. Jesus. How young are you?

>>151173071 (OP)
Going back a few years now but in bongland we were only forced to study Of Mice and Men and The Crucible because they were on the final English lit exams for our year, also multiple Shakespeare plays. Otherwise we could read and write about whatever.

>>151175718
In college I got a C (only time I ever got such a low grade for an essay) cause the professor didn't like my interpretation of the themes of a fictional short story.
We also had a test at the end, despite also writing a big essay, that was probably the worst class I ever had.

>>151175988
Mrs. Frisby and the rats of NIMH. I also hated the secret of NIMH movie for all the changes they made like making nicodemus a wizard and his partner a forced villian, alongside all the magic shit.

>>151175988
Fourth grade, The Hobbit. The teacher let us pick any book from some she brought in to supply our class with a library, and I picked out this version of the hobbit. Honestly this assignment ended up being a pretty big deal for me because to this point I was something of a, I'll just say it, shit student. Didn't do any assignments, kind of fucked around in class, wasn't a punk but definitely a class clown. Well for some reason I actually decided to sit down and read the book because I didn't even know there was a movie and I just really got into it. First time I got an A+ on an assignment. Then I read the Lord of the Rings (Hobbit was part of a set) then I read a bunch of other books and my English, spelling and all things literary sky rocketed. Still wasn't so good at the math. Still aren't honestly, but I went from a shit student to a pretty okay decent one. End of the year teacher let me keep the whole set of books. I still had it till recently and gifted it to my nephew. He adored it and now he reads almost constantly. So Thank you very much, Mrs My Fourth Grade Teacherson.

>Have fun reading anon's anecdotes
>Realize nothing here is /co/

>>151187233
Hey man, I tried to bring up comics and cartoons in a few posts, but it didn’t catch on.

>>151173071 (OP)
I didn't get to pick a book that wasn't assigned or from a reading list until college. And then we picked Of Mice and Men because it's only 200 pages.

>>151175718
Were none of your classmates dyslexic?

>>151187233
/co/ content is not allowed in English class

>>151186320
Genuinely heart warming anon. Glad that teacher helped you so much.

>>151183826
I remember being really disappointed that Little Women didn't end with "They were no longer little girls. They were little women."

>>151187451
Little Women is a harem anime where the author spends a huge chunk of the book building a ship with the genki, only to let the lolita win instead in the final stretch.

>>151187469
Is that a surprise tho? It's in the title

>>151173071 (OP)
Yeah, elementary school at least, it was the 90s. I remember Pizza Hut even had a program where they teamed with the schools to incentivize kids to read by giving out a free personal pan pizza for however many books a kid read and the teachers at my school at least used book reports to verify if a kid had actually read the book before punching the ticket, fucking sucked because my dad was a penny pinching redneck and my mom had this idea that children were totally innocent and went through multiple bible thumper phases when I was a kid so in second or third grade I’m getting flunked on book reports because all we had were little golden books, bibles, and hunting&fishing magazines. The only two actual books I had were because my grandmother was a cook at the school and slipped me $10 for the scholastic book fair and I got a copy of the Invisible Man (my dumb eight year old ass thought H.G. Wells was how you spelled R.L. Stine) and a book about the Loch Ness Monster, caused a huge fight between my mom and grandmother because the old bitches at church convinced Goosebumps and other books about monsters were satanic an dad was pissed at me because I was “bumming money” from my grandmother like a “welfare reliefer”, never read enough books to get that damn pizza but grandma took to get one and I got food poisoning and mom went on a rant saying it was my punishment for reading satanic books

>be in highschool
>forced to do book report
>be tryhard and do three muskteers translated from spanish old english style.
>try reading it
>holy fuck way harder than I thought
>used snopes or something to write the essay
>can't remember grade

>>151187469
Oh, so it's 5Tobun.

>>151187593
I know you were a kid at the time and probably couldn’t manage it without your parents getting in the way, but what you needed was to find your way to a library. Probably your school or church coulda helped you, even if your nearest actual public library was out of reach.

>>151187601
>19th century french novel translated into spanish then translated into pic related

>>151187650
School wouldn’t let books leave the library, and the church mom drug us to every Sunday was a Methodist church that got overran by hardcore evangelicals after the pastor left for a different parsonage. Aunts, uncles, and grandparents were a godsend wouldn’t have had books, comics, Pokémon cards, or video games without them when I was growing up

Book reports blow.