Parents Doing Homework In Montclair

And what about the parents who have trouble reading and writing? Will their children be stigmatized by Mr. Frye's initiative?

Splendid idea! But I think he should assign the parents to comment about a true example of the vernacular in contemporary literature,Baristanet. (Imagine deconstructiong walleroo and mikey.) Also Shakespeare. And, if only to remind them of how dreary high school English can be, "Silas Marner" and anything else by George Eliot.

Man would I love to "comment" on a speech by Robert Kennedy.

And what about the parents who have trouble reading and writing? Will their children be stigmatized by Mr. Frye's initiative?

Not in the least. The Times article makes clear that parents can respond outside of the group forum.

It's a fine idea, but it should be voluntary. Mr. Frye no matter how good a teacher he is should not be empowered to "direct" the educational environment at home. His authority ends at the classroom door.

(p.s. but I'd love to do it.)

Hey, cathar, Silas Marnar is a great book, and George Elliot a great writer. Give her another shot.

More power to Mr. Frye!

jcb (if I read that correctly, I may need spectacles), she may be a "great" writer in the sense that so many English professors and teachers have staked their careers in part on claims as to her greatness. But she remains a very, very boring and prolix one to read.

And it's not that I think the Western canon is culturally irrelevant and should then be replaced by obscure Caribbean feminist poets, proponents of jihad and rappers with pretentions to poesy, but I do think the selections we offer to high school are often bad choices by those particular authors. Badly taught, too, if only because after so long there's little to teach about one so strenuously arid in her prose as Eliot.

I don't even think that a reading of Saul Williams (I know who he is) is really valuable in terms of anything but a desperate attempt at "relevance." (As for Frye's assignment of Kafka, golly, I always assumed he'd written in Czech originally, not English.) Now, if Frye had assigned to parents William F. Buckley, say, or Anthony Powell or V.S. Naipaul, or Alan Sillitoe for the obligaory dash of leftism.....

Tell you what, cathar, you go read William F. Buckley and I'll go read Elliot, and we'll all just be thrilled you're not an English teacher. (Guess how I know you're not?)

The current book being covered in the curriculum is Of Mice and Men. Throwing a little Saul Williams in there is not a bad thing.

Your comment, Clare Lune, takes the notion of liberal guilt to truly absurd lengths, but of course I realize that you were being satirical.

Spoiler alert: Lenny dies.

The parent assignments are critiques on short items Frye throws out each week, and thus are separate from the core curriculum, which includes "Of Mice." Saul Williams, along with Kafka and Whitman, are not the hard core, so to speak.

My son had Mr. Frye two years ago and we both found his dedication to his craft and his students refreshing. I never viewed my invitation to participate in my son's classwork as 'homework' and found the exercises enjoyable. As did my son. Mr. Frye is not only a terrific young man and teacher, but a tribute to MHS as a graduate of the program.

jcb, you are welcome to keep on reading "Elliott." But I've read enough of George Eliot to keep me for eons, thanks.

Appletony, others, let me be heretical here: Steinbeck is kind of way overrated too. The sort of guy I suspect maybe even wrote intentionally high-mindedly, by way of aiming for the Nobel Prize. (His screenplays and "The Pearl" are so relentlessly noble-noodleish that one longs for an upsetting cameo by Mister Magoo). And once he got it became wearisome indeed. If I had to teach a realistic novel about rootless Americans in rural America, for instance, I'd turn first to Nelson Algren. But then, as jcb notes, I'm no English teacher, though I don't have the slightest interest in ascertaining how he/she knew this.

Saul Williams may be fun to read as a rapper (but Jesus spare me from teachers who think this stuff is "hip" at the expense of someone like Wallace Stevens or Stephen Dobyns) but he is only a "poet" in the same way that Snoop Dogg and Fat Joe are too. Their words, however, are much more fun to read. For h.s. students anyway, if not parents.

Dear Ms. Lydia Bishop,

What a surprise you are in real estate, you classless, ignorant wart upon this doomed planet. Great way to inspire your daughter.