You Can Hate Grammar. That Doesn’t Give You an Excuse for Butchering/Ignoring It.

I understand that not everyone appreciates the English language and grammar the way I do. Heck, I’m aware that there are people for whom my respect of both falls dramatically short of theirs.

I am also aware that many people struggle with grammar rules, especially the really obnoxious ones (many of which came from trying to force a fundamentally German language heavily infused with French influence to conform to unnecessarily Latin rules).

But you know what? That’s where my understanding ends.

Stop Trying to Teach Shakespeare (& Other Inaccessible Classics) to Teens & Preteens

I bet your jaw has dropped. “But Brooke, you’re an English major! You read Charles Dickens when you were 10 and were obsessed with Jane Austen in high school (and let’s be honest, all the way through college)! Surely you want to make sure that every student reads Shakespeare and the great classics of English literature! Especially at a young age!”

Hahaha – no. I don’t.

In fact, I think it’s a huge mistake and a major blow to literature that we try to teach incredibly difficult and often inaccessible classics to middle schoolers and high schoolers. I think it turns them off from literature and ends up stunting their analytical and paper-writing skills.

But this is me, so get ready to have my position explained and defended.

“Not What the Author Intended”, Eh?

I love Pinterest. It is fun, has a lot of variety, and can fit my mood whether I’m feeling like looking at funny pictures or planning the dream house that I’ll never be able to afford.

However, sometimes the Internet giveth, and sometimes it pisses off.

Ever seen this image?

A serious misunderstanding of how literary analysis works.

Dear Richard Dawkins: Don’t Mess with Shakespeare

Congratulations, y’all. We’re doing an extra blog post this week.

So I like to at least make the effort to be aware of what’s going on in the world. Every morning, while I’m getting ready, I read my news app. Lately, Richard Dawkins has been showing up. A lot.

In case you want to know who that is, you can check out his Wikipedia page here. Quick summary: He’s a very well-known atheist. I’ve, however, mostly encountered him when he says horrible and very white-male-privileged things, like when he was sexist or, more recently, when he defended people who sexually abuse children.

Besides the fact that there are some very thoughtful and thorough take-downs of Dawkins’s positions on his sexism and apologies for child sexual abuse, I don’t feel qualified to take him to task on either subject (not to mention that’s a little outside the scope of this blog).

And then this happened: