We don't teach literature right. A kid comes into the classroom, and comes back out the same, untransformed, having completed some boring and annoying assignments, but just the same as before. So no education happened. We need to teach the children to actually appreciate beauty. Teachers stick something "classical" under their noses. Children react as if it were a pile of tasteless, unseasoned greens. Eat it, it's good for you! Eat it, I said. No candy, until you eat it! No cookies! No reality TV! Eat your Shakespeare, boy!
Students need some emotional resonance. Whoever came up with the whole idea of that checklist-based rote in literature courses? Shakespeare: this, this and that. Faulkner: that, that and this. Got it? Okay. Now you are educated.
Go write an essay; go recite a monologue. There's a good lad. The teacher checks off another B-, the kid goes back to his or her seat, both much relieved: it's over.
That's not education, that's a waste of time. If there was no actual emotional reaction, the whole thing was pointless.
Beauty has therapeutic value. It heals our psyche. I am sure we could prove with hard facts and figures that Bach and Shakespeare, Michelangelo and Picasso lead to us having better doctors and engineers. There is actual business value to beauty.
That is why schools should instill sense of beauty and good taste in children, not have them cram a few irrelevant plots and passages. Those are usually forgotten after the finals.
