The Catcher In The Rye Essay

Submitted By KarenMichelleLi
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Pages: 4
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The problem that I will talk about Holden Caulfield is he shows no interest in school or academics. Holden Caulfield didn’t go to school regularly and he always skipped school. He was never focused on his academic studies so he never did his homework or tried to work hard for his grades nor academics. From chapter 1, page 4, line 3-6, it wrote that, ’’They kicked me out. I wasn’t supposed to come back after Christmas vacation on account of I was flunking four subjects and not applying myself and all.” As well as from chapter 2, page 10, line 17-20, the conversation with Holden’s history teacher, Mr. Spencer, it wrote that, “”How many subjects did you carry this term?” asked by Mr. Spencer. “Five, sir.” Holden answered. “Five. And how many are you failing in?” “Four.””
From these we can see that Holden’s academic result is very bad as he has failed 4 subjects, and only passed English as he has studied all the stuff when he was at his previous school. We can also see that he shows no interest in school or academics as he is not applying to himself at all, he thinks that failing 4 subjects out of 5 has no problem at all as in the conversation he didn’t feel embarrassed for such poor result. Moreover, Holden has been kicked out of four schools, but there are only three mentioned in the book which are Whooton School, Elkton Hills and Pencey Prep. We know this information in chapter 2, page 9, line 8-9, as Holden said, “This is about the fourth school I’ve gone to.” From this we can surely confirm that Holden’s academic performance is poor as he has been to four different schools because he has been kicked out of these 4 schools.
The first recommendations for Holden’s academic problem is to have a private tutor. This is because as we can see above, Holden’s academic results are terribly poor as he is failing 4 subjects out of 5 and he has been kicked out of 4 schools. With a private tutor, Holden can tell the tutor what he doesn’t understand and thus the tutor can be more focused on what Holden is weak at so as to improve them in long term. Tutoring is always the best way to deal with poor results as it can help the student to know what they don’t understand and to correct them. Therefore with private tutoring, Holden can slowly improve his academic results and this may also increases his interest in school as students usually find school interesting if they do well in school.
The second recommendation is to have home school. This is because Holden didn’t get along well with people at school and he often found them annoying and “phony”. If he just stayed at home for his studies, he can be more focused on his studies and he won’t need to deal with the people at school. Moreover, with a home school, Holden can choose his own teachers as it is his own school, thus he doesn’t need to deal with the teachers he hates or the subjects he doesn’t like at all. However with the home school, Holden may want to go to his tutors’ homes for the school as he doesn’t like to face his parents since he is not having a good relationship with them.
The third recommendation for Holden’s academic problem is taking courses online. This is because Holden can just stay wherever he
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