I’ll go with the low-hanging fruit: Mein Kampf. I’ve read it, cover to cover. As a piece of propaganda, it’s good. As an example of good writing? Absolutely not (though I will admit I have only read it in translation). Oh, and the whole fascist, racist, and generally shitty worldview of the author that he infuses into the text. And the fact that the author is literally Hitler. You 5-star that book? You’re a Nazi. Period. And as a Jewish person, I don’t look too kindly on them.
Oh man. I got into a fight my sophomore year in HS. My mom made me tell my band director about it (he was kind of a mentor). He told me I would not be allowed to march with the band until I did a few things; one of which was read this book. My mom, who was big into the new age movement, fully supported the idea. I read the thing. It was a story, and not a very good one. I was waiting for the “ah hah!” moment to come that I was promised. It never happened. The story ended and I was like, “why the fuck was I supposed to read that?” So I told the band director that I had finished it. We went to his office to discuss it, and it quickly became evident that he understood it to be a work of non-fiction, which had never occurred to me. I told him that I was having trouble understanding if the author was trying to convince me that a god exists, or if it was some other cosmic force that worked outside the laws of physics. I especially didnt understand the putting the two finger tips together to reveal a little “sausage” and how that was supposed to be proof of anything. The disappointment in his face was evident. I chalked it up to him thinking I wasnt mentally developed enough to get it. He allowed me to march and we never spoke of it again.
That seems…super sketchy and kind of coercive. You were a school student who was told that they weren’t allowed to play in the school band until you’d read the spiritualist gumph that your teacher believes in and wants to convert you to?
That’s a hard “yikes”.
No offense but thinking it is coercive for a teacher/coach to make a kid read a book is kinda naive and spoiled sounding
Let say football coach ban anyone from joining the team if they don’t read Quran and practice 30 minute text dicussion.
It wasn’t an educational text, it was conspirituality woo woo nonsense that the coach apparently took seriously. Weirdo shit
The sausage thing like the optical illusion you can teach a kid the same day you show them how looking through a paper towel tube puts a hole in their hand?