po͝oSHing (pushing)

The most interesting thing about each of these films that struck me was that the negative and positive side to both of these films in concerns with literacy and its effect on children, is that it can be boiled down to the exact same phrase. That while both films were displaying teachers and parents encouraging their children to broaden their literacy skills and the kids reciprocating that excitement, there was an overall tension that these practices are pushing kids to know things that may not have be necessarily  useful to them. The only major difference was what we saw was that in Hobart Shakespeare’s class, everyone looked pretty into, but I guarantee there probably have been kids in the past, or in the future that do not have an interest in doing this. However, parents potentially could make them because of the popularity and that many people believe that knowing Shakespeare is the height of sophistication in American society. I of course would love to have seen this class gone to it and participated, but that is because I have loved theatre my whole life and love Shakespeare. I have friends who hated it, but their parents probably would have made them do that anyway. On the flip side, Spellbound, was much more of a negative view overall at kids that study and work really hard to spell words right, an almost meaningless task now with everything being spelled out on a computer for us. What we saw were the kids working their asses off to go to that spelling bee and fail because they could not spell one word right, which is devastating. I think that pushing kids to pursue large goals like learning Shakespeare and spelling has benefits because it teaches hard work and persistence, however it can be just as damaging as rewarding.