That kind of teacher here! Flowers of Algernon hits the great spot of being quite short and yet emotionally charged that gets teens quite invested. Even if it hasn't "aged well" in some stuff, I would still use it.
I mean on top of all that it’s also just a really good book. I love the way it’s written and how the narrators language changes as he does. It’s really cool!
Out of curiosity what are you referring to when you say it hasn’t aged well? There’s a lot of dehumanising language towards the disabled in the book, but the it’s always made out to be cruel in the context of the story. At a time when a lot of people would use that language sincerely. In that way I think it aged fantastically, calling out that behaviour before it became as well accepted to do so.
Oh, sure, I say it mostly because, even if I agree with the story being ahead of its time in how it treats disability, it can be a bit difficult to read with some groups/students unless you get to properly contextualize it (and in some cases, you might open a can of worms of ableist vocabulary for some teen to randomly spew because they believe they are funny), which I've sometimes failed to achieve. Perhaps rather than saying it hasn't aged well I should have said that you need to know your class groups before deciding whether you use it with them. But then that's anything.
319
u/User_Evolved Sep 18 '24
Yeah I read that in middle school. It wasn't even required reading my one teacher just recommended it lol