Hot takes from an unqualified legal studies major whose parents were both teachers at one point:
1. If musicals are literature, then so is opera.
Opera isn’t given a second thought in any of the high school level classes I’ve ever had. No one in my class could even name one besides me in one course I took. And some of them have so much symbolism, etc. like the original thread says about musicals that they need to be more seriously analyzed, and not just from a music theory perspective.
That being said, I don’t actually think either of them are literature, they’re unique mediums, like how YouTube video essays aren’t like podcasts… but if musicals are, then hell yeah, opera is too.
Teach the children the symbolism in the Magic Flute, and scar them all for life with Freemason propaganda. /j
2. If graphic novels are literature then so are manga and comic books.
Same reasons as the first.
May come as a shocker, but what if I told you that life isn’t always an either or situation. I think analyzing different forms of media holds great benefit, just like how unpacking a novel is different from unpacking a poem.
4. Like the second thread said, audiobooks are valid.
I was lucky enough to get a copy of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Julius Caesar recording, and I listened to it instead of reading the script (sorry Mrs. Cooper). And hearing the voices of the actors and their emotion- and they were AMAZING- was so much more impactful to me than just reading words off a page. But I’m also picky when it comes to audiobooks since I have a high reading speed, so I prefer to read nonfiction on actual paper.
5. The Working World Paradox
Not really based on the teacher’s comment but tangentially related
The thing about real life in my experience, and in seeing how the lives of my graduating class have turned out, your desire to learn matters more than your ability to think in exclusively theoretical terms. Most people’s brains literally cannot operate at that level- just look at Piaget’s stages- and would be better off having that time fostered into learning real life skills and personal help strategies. Some people just genuinely aren’t built for college, and that’s not anti intellectual or a bad thing or lesser-than; and I hate it when academia treats it that way. It’s just as valid to be a plumber and it is to be a humanities student. It should be about what makes you satisfied in life. There are lots of people who did horrible in school that go on to be hugely successful in a technical, business, or other field, and that’s great, but what most of them have in common is that they get to the point where they actually want to read and want to learn. It’s fostering the desire and skills necessary to learn more independently that should be the real ultimate goal for teachers.
But that’s just my two cents.
