English GCSE: The death of reading for pleasure?

'Oh, this poet said this for this reason and to convey this meaning'...perhaps he just said it because it sounded good?

The title 'English GCSE' is specific for me, but since I didn't do English at A-level (for reasons I'll go in to later) I can't speak for the whole of English teaching in general.

Reading in my opinion is a very important aspect of our lives, since it allows us to be creative and stories bring us all together. The point of this thread is that in my opinion I think the English curriculum destroys this.

I'm sure many of you cringe at the thought of language analysis, looking for specific sections of text and overinterpreting so much that it is inevitable that you will hate the text that you're studying by the time you're finished. If you really like a book, did you enjoy it because you analysed the crap out of it? I doubt that a lot. I could also make a nice bet that the majority of people, if they had to analyse their favourite book in the same way they did at GCSE and (perhaps) beyond, they would lose interest.

Now, there are lots of children who do not read for pleasure and probably never will. In my opinion English GCSE encourages this even further.

I didn't take English further than GCSE just because I knew I would be doomed to do this for another year at least. And before anyone says 'Oh you just didn't understand the meaning of it all.' I got an A in English Language, I can analyse texts comfortably.

I just wondered what other people thought about this. The nature of this thread could be applied to many subjects, which brings us on to the debate about whether education at the moment actually works and whether or not it is only outside interests that determine how you do at school.

I completely agree with the original poster. I am currently doing an A-level in English Lit, and my passion for books and especially poetry has died a miserable death since. Most of the analytical work we do is just reading far too deeply into it in my opinion, coming to conclusions about a particular text that even the author of it probably hadn't considered. 'Oh, this poet said this for this reason and to convey this meaning'...perhaps he just said it because it sounded good? I actually enjoyed English at GCSE level, but ever since it has just seemed like a completely pointless subject to be doing.

Most of the analytical work we do is just reading far too deeply into it in my opinion, coming to conclusions about a particular text that even the author of it probably hadn't considered.

'Oh, this poet said this for this reason and to convey this meaning'...perhaps he just said it because it sounded good? I actually enjoyed English at GCSE level, but ever since it has just seemed like a completely pointless subject to be doing.