And teachers wonder why people read less than they used to.
 
Then again the school system is severely out of date

literary analysis: okay  
some peoples’ analysis of literature: not okay
 
Just like statistics. It’s all about how you do it and what you do with it.

You know, I don’t mind literary analysis, in fact I rather enjoy seeing where authors come from and use my skills to apply to other novels. What I absolutely can’t stand about it is the way teachers praise every book we have to analyze. Not like “You know, Hawthorn made a very good point back then.” No, no, it’s more like “THIS BOOK IS AMAZING DON’T QUESTION HOW IT’S WRITTEN WHY CAN’T YOU SEE WHAT I SEE.”
 
The whole point of literary analysis is to find what works and, hello, what DOESN’T WORK in other forms of literature. So don’t tell me Scarlet Letter is perfect, instead tell me how some symbolism in the novel is done well and some is done like the word “subtle” never existed.

So. Storytime.
 
As you can tell from the name, I’m a numbers guy. I loved taking the hardest math, science, technical classes I could. But, naturally, for my high school and undergraduate degrees, the curriculum demanded that you take some fine arts, some belles lettres, etc.
 
My senior year in high school I took a humanities class. Just a sort of introduction to the concept. We did some looking at painting, some analysis of music, and some lit.
 
One day I’m reading through a book for fun, completely outside of class, and I realize that I’m seeing where the author’s drawing some parallels between two characters’ plots, or using word choices to make a statement. I forget exactly what. Doesn’t matter.
 
What I realize is that all of a sudden I am basically reading more book than if I hadn’t heard of all of these concepts. There is actually more book in my hands than I had earlier.
 
Why learn literary analysis if you’re not a writer, or music theory if you just want to buy some tunes, or math if you’re not a mathematician? Because doing so makes the world grow an extra layer. It’s work when you’re doing homework in school, but once you understand the concepts it just pops out at you. You inhabit a bigger world than you did.
 
So learn some lit crit. And some math. And some music theory. And some science. And all that stuff.

@Background Pony  
You can thank money grubbing universities and the retards who thought forcing students to take liberal arts was a good idea.

English class after 8th grade is almost entirely pointless.

@Background Pony  
And this is why I scoff at our current education system and laugh at teacher union strikes since most of them were’t doing their job to begin with.

I hate analysis because people seem to draw the most retarded and completely off the mark conclusions about literary work.
 
I especially hate it when teachers do it because they should be spending their time teaching people proper grammar and sentence structure, not discussing novels and short stories

I like to analyse games, but books?  
Analysing books is like torture for me..

That sounds like an opinion Spike would have.

@Yorec
 
Enjoying classes?

@Background Pony
 
I’ve never been keen to the abstract sort of thinking in Literary Analysis or Philosophy.
 
I’m much more adept at concrete logic and memorization, such as mathematics, biology, and computer science.

I could not disagree more.

@Zennistrad  
I’m the exact opposite, I can’t help but over analyze and nit pick to hell everything I read/watch/play

Learning the structure of thinking is mind development.

@Yorec
 
To each his own, I guess.
 
I don’t read fiction to try to think about any sort of deeper meaning; I just want to watch an entertaining story unfold.

You kidding? English is one of the classes I enjoy besides History.