Twilight and Harry Potter

I might be a little biased just because I really enjoy both of these books and have read them multiple times. I feel that both of them have earned the right to be at least considered for classroom use. My initial feelings toward very popular literature are that they might not be the best things to teach in the classroom because of the fact that so many people can get caught up in only reading them for pleasure. I feel that books taught in classrooms need to be interesting enough to where they offer some entertainment to keep the reader in the story, as opposed to losing the reader and causing someone to have to re-read passages over and over because they can't remember what they just read, but also doesn't enthrall them so much that they just keep reading and forget to do any analyzing. I think, a good book for a classroom is one that makes you want to analyze the text and ask questions. I definitely think that these two books would be great to either start out a class with or to end a class with. If you start a class with them, you can use them as easy examples to teach the children how to analyze things since there are themes that obviously show themselves on the surface. If a teacher taught them at the end of their class then it might offer a bit of a break from rigorous course work. So I do think that they have a place in the classroom.

I honestly think that Twilight would be a very good book to teach in maybe a freshman english class because obviously when kids reach high school there are certain things that come up that have never been issues before. Sex is of course a big topic in schools now and kids are facing it earlier and earlier. While I agree that students need to be taught about safe sex practices, I think there should also be something in the schools that promotes abstinence. This book does a very good job of showing the value of a love that is very pure and just that basically it is possible for two people to love each other without having sex. I just think that it's very important to promote the best defense against teen pregnancy and health problems that children could get themselves into because they don't realize that even though they are being safe there are things that can still happen.

As far as Harry Potter goes, I think that this book does a very good job of showing a few great things that are good values for children to see. It promotes ideas of acceptance and equality by showing that a "muggle" Hermione Granger is still equal to the other students even though she isn't a "pure-blood". I think that J.K. Rowling is definitely making a statement by having this conflict of "pure-bloods" hating "muggles" because of the fact that there are still instances of racism. It isn't gone like some people believe and this makes kids aware of some of the things that they are doing to discriminate against children even if it isn't saying straight out, "Billy you shouldn't pick on Johnny because he is of a different ethnicity." I also think that this book promotes certain values like courage and testing yourself to find your abilities that kids need to do. They need to put themselves out there to try out their abilities and find things that they're good and Harry and the others characters in the books and throughout series do a good job of promoting this idea of how testing yourself is the only way you'll find out your own strength.

I think that the question "but is it good enough" is definitely a very good question to ask. I think that every single text that has a chance of making it in the classroom needs to be placed under scrutiny to make sure that it offers some form of enrichment or teaches some key point of the curriculum. I know that there are some teachers who would break there back to find a way to use Twilight in their classroom simply because they really enjoyed it, but they wouldn't really think of why they wanted to use it. All they know is that they want to find a way to introduce it to their students and if they add to their curriculum then they know that their students will have to read it. This is a very horrible thing, but I have known teachers like this. I think that there's a very fine line between what needs to be brought into a classroom and what doesn't and I definitely think that certain texts need to be put through the wringer so to speak to make sure that they are actually doing the job that they are supposed to be doing to hold up whatever they are supposed to cover in the curriculum.