What Made Me Hate Reading

Well I have never really had extremely bad experiences with reading but what did make me hate reading was school. It was the fact that we have to take a perfectly good book and tear it apart to find some hidden meaning and when I could not find that meaning or even have the same meaning as the rest of the class I felt less and less literate and it still horrifies me to feel this way. I come to college to expand my mind and reach new learning horizons but some days I leave feeling I never measure up. In my English 315 class I was supposed to read Harry Potter and the when we were done we were supposed to break it down into what the gender roles were, what the wand and a feather mean and even what a name meant. I could not find it easy to take this book I loved as a child and pull it apart to basically find evil undertones to the whole thing and find it was more of a hidden critique teaching children to be ever so negative about the society they live in. Not what I would imagine a childrens’ book to be doing at all. This book was ruined for me and all because we can not leave things alone and take them for face value. Reading at the college level has forced me to criticize everything I read and I find it hard to read for pure pleasure anymore and I honestly miss it because in my mind it becomes work. I am hoping though that because of this I will be able to show kids how to break down a book but also encourage pleasure reading where the mind is cleared and the things learned in the classroom are forgotten to an extent because literacy is not just what we learn in school it is all around us and it takes many forms and is interpreted in many forms.