I trained to be a teacher and spent some years substitute teaching in an economically well off school system.

2 different teaching assignments included reading a piece of literature and watching a film made on said piece, class discussion and written assignments of critical comparison of film to the written story.

Experience 1: Remedial English class of about twenty, 15 to 18 year olds also enrolled in the school system's trade school. I was warned by teacher friends it would be a difficult assignment because the students were not academically inclined and some were trouble makers. The students were a delight, engaged in the assignment and polite.

Experience 2: Advanced level English. Only a dozen 16-17 year olds. I was told I was fortunate as this class holds the cream of the school. They were lazy, socially impaired, spoiled rotten brats. They refused to do the work set by their own teacher, gossiped about and sniped at each other like dysfunctional siblings and gave me no end of grief.

If I had been given a technical manual to teach in those classes, I somehow doubt the outcome would be different, but how much less rich would the education be for those Remedial English students who were participating on every level?

Teachers need to be given the scope to be creative and make the material taught as interesting and accessible as possible. This was becoming increasingly more difficult in mid to late 1990s when I took my teacher degree and started teaching. Standards of Learning (SOLs as they were then called) and the budget of the school were major factors in how much or little a teacher could do.

BTW, it is not on to make a statement like Then again, people like Bobert consider Zap Comix and Fritz the Cat to be High Literature. and then whine about people not being civil. Do you own a mirror?