The subject of public education in the United States getting worse, and the country falling into a literacy crisis, has been brewing for a while and only seems to be getting worse.
Ironically, a video about students' slang comments about The Great Gatsby might actually offer up a little bit of hope.
TikToker @miss.dugan1 is a high school English teacher, and one of her classes had just finished reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's most famous novel, and she'd been so entertained by some of her students' closing remarks that she had written them down.
She shared some of her favorites, including:
"Why did the dude write like this? Bro is doing too much. It's like old English or something."
"Tom's tough, but Gatsby's tougher."
"Daisy is a bop lowkey, like, am I wrong? Exactly, no I'm not."
"That dude came over, and Gatsby got slimed out."
At one point, a student even quipped about the archaic English:
"So what, did we all just get dumber or something?"
To offer a little bit of a recap, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby follows a young man named Nick Carroway who has just moved to a new neighborhood, right next door to an eccentric elitist named Jay Gatsby. Throughout the novel, Gatsby throws lavish parties with bright green lights in an attempt to draw the attention of his former lover, Daisy, and since Daisy is his cousin, Nick actually agrees to help him win her back.
As Daisy was married and agreed to an affair anyway, the students calling her a "bop" in modern slang is pretty fair, and how her husband, Tom, eventually handles the situation might be simplified in the students' comments, but it's still accurate.
As for Fitzgerald "doing too much," that's open to interpretation.
You can watch the video here:
The video went viral on X, Instagram, and TikTok, where comments were divided over the students' remarks.
While some saw this collection as a sign of a literacy crisis and us being doomed as a society, some pointed out that the fact the students were able to explore the book through slang suggested that they actually understood the text better than their comments let on.
Fellow TikTokers pointed out:
@miss.dugan1/TikTok
@miss.dugan1/TikTok
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@miss.dugan1/TikTok
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@miss.dugan1/TikTok
@miss.dugan1/TikTok
@miss.dugan1/TikTok
Literature enthusiasts may not appreciate these students' comments very much, as they might be taken as too light-hearted or dismissive of the text, but when a person really thinks about what these students are saying, their comments demonstrate an understanding and retention of the material.
Maybe the students aren't all ready to write a 10-page literary analysis using their best theoretical jargon when it comes to The Great Gatsby, but they were clearly paying attention throughout the book and the film, and that's what's actually more important.
@joehas/X
