The straightener

Due to an inconveniently hedonistic conception of reading, what are known as ‘compulsory readings’ in schools and high schools began to have a bad reputation. Paraphrasing Borges, it was said that ‘compulsory reading’ was an oxymoron, because all reading implies pleasure, and there is nothing compulsory that truly gives enjoyment. But in educational centers everything is compulsory: the multiplication tables are, or the periodic table of elements, or grammar, even the schedules. Learning implies yielding and placing oneself at the service of certain knowledge, or of wisdom that must be imposed as truths are always imposed; these are supposed to obey no one, but rather it is we who must pursue them. The end of compulsory readings meant nothing more than that they were no longer compulsory by law and common throughout the country, but rather that the choice of works was left to the centers. In my time, the classics of Catalan and Spanish literature were combined with more current and accessible books, often even commercial ones, ultimately of more than questionable quality, which made the important or canonical works that, often against the grain, we had to swallow, shine by contrast.

That it was difficult, in principle, to read certain books written many centuries ago or that had a language and a narrative that was not, for us, conventional, made it all a challenge, a highly important key to our learning and formation. If it had not been for those ‘compulsory readings’, there are many people who would never have read certain works –or anything at all–; I often find old schoolmates who all they remember from their high school years are the hours of reading works that perhaps they did not like very much, but which in some way made them broaden their horizons, or think and feel things that have been highly important, and now they are grateful for it, even if it is only to be able to say that they have a certain culture.

A society without shared literary references is also a society without memory, without a common literary past in which we can see ourselves reflected. Now everything is immediate, frivolous and light, things –little books– that are read to pass the time or to educate not literary taste but certain forms of morality.

At school, they shouldn't give you what you like, but rather teach you what you don't know you might like. The world of knowledge and learning often does not let itself be conquered without a certain effort. If there is one trait the classics have, it is that they continue to tell us things we might not want to hear, because they come accompanied by strangeness and difficulty, as well as a context that might not be 'politically correct' now. In the name of pleasure or ease, we impoverish the lives of our youth, who do not yet know that what will make their lives better are the pleasures they will have had to learn to appreciate. We cannot force young people to love literature. But we can already see what kind of world we have, forged by those who despise it. It would have been much better for all of us if they had reached adulthood having gone through the rigors of having read something valuable.