Living in a mining town can (and in this case, was) absolutely a critique of capitalism.

They even called it a crutch and compared it to alcohol and drugs.

There are worse vices, but I don’t get why some of the other comments are enthusiastically supporting OP. This isn’t healthy.

We gonna just ignore that OP was trying to read books at his reading level to look smart but couldn’t understand them?

We gonna just ignore that OP was trying to read books at his reading level to look smart but couldn’t understand them?

Honestly I think the whole “kill the joy of reading” thing is a myth. You for example continued reading in private even when you didn’t like reading in school. That’s a reasonable thing for someone to do if they like reading. No one who’s into movies will stop watching them after seeing a couple bad ones. People who hate reading because of school assignments never had much love to lose.

In any subject teachers should try to make things as fun and engaging as they reasonably can, but not doing so doesn’t excuse being a bad student.

That’s literally the goal though. What else can teachers do? They’re supposed to teach critical analysis through books. It’s a school subject - they’re not there to teach you to enjoy a hobby. Kids get bored with math too, but they still gotta do it.

It probably will. The Luddites were right.