Some 11 Year Old Ire

Surfaced this morning in the shower, as I randomly found myself thinking about reading assignments in public schools. Specifically, I was remembering my near decade-long Quixotic campaign against the practice of forcing schoolkids to read novels in painstakingly small segments. I regularly earned the annoyance of my teachers in gradeschool (and later high school: Sophie's World, anyone?) for finishing a book within 24 hours of its distribution to the class.

One year stands out particularly in my mind, though. Back in elementary school, each class generally had three levels of chapter books, with different assignments for each. Near the end of fifth grade, the advanced readers all got to read The Hobbit. Being an annoyingly precocious child, while my classmates were groaning over the thickness of the novel, I naturally spoke up and said that I'd read all of Tolkien back in third grade, and oh boy, The Hobbit! At last, something decent to read.

"Oh," said my teacher. "Well, we can't have you re-reading that, then. All the assignments for it are based on you never having read it before." I stared back in blank confusion, having always fabricated my answers to those sorts of assignments since kindergarten. "We'll have you read this otherstory instead," she continued, passing me a wafer-thin kids story on some guy who went adventuring in his hundred-balloon basket. I glared at her, took a copy of the book for the kids who read below grade-level, too, and then proceeded to finish off both of them by the time Reading Period was over. But she still made me do the assignments for the balloons story, while all the Tolkien kids got to decipher the runic substitution code on The Hobbit's map.