Question, Should Poetry Be Taught As A Major Subject At Our Schools? - Robert Lindley's Blog

If poetry is a passion, a love , a hobby, a way of expressing
more, a much needed way of expressing deeper ones inner 
thoughts/dreams and our emotions, then should it be deemed to
to be an important subject to teach our children in school.
If you are nodding in the affirmative, ask yourself why..>>
Which is a question I have long pondered. Here in America--
poetry is rarely ever covered as a subject to the lower grades
and scarcely ever touched even in high school...
Yet many of us see and know this is a gross mistake in that
poetry is more than just beautiful art--it teaches so many
positive lessons and additionally soothes both heart and the
soul. 
Question is-- why is poetry not taught to our children at
school-- if you think it should be- at what grade level
should such a important subject first be taught?

Below is a link given and an excerpt from a great article
that partially addresses this very important question on
why in America is not poetry a major subject taught to
our children?  -Robert J. Lindley 2-26-2020>>>

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From article: 
 Reasons for Poetry
https://poets.org/text/reasons-poetry
Reasons for Poetry

The Mexican poet José Emilio Pacheco, in a poem called "Dissertation on Poetic Propriety," asks for "a new definition. . . a name, some term or other. . . to avoid the astonishment and rages of those who say, so reasonably, looking at a poem: 'Now this is not poetry.'" I too want to argue for a broader definition of poetry, a definition which will increase our sense of the multitudes that poetry contains. For those of us who care about poetry in this time of widely diverging definitions are apt to be consciously limited in our tastes and churlish in our distastes. We often have more precise ideas, based on these distastes, about what poetry is not than about what it is.

If I cannot come up with the new definition Pacheco asks for, what I say is at least intended to turn aside the easy negative response in myself and in others to poems which are not immediately congenial. For whenever we say, "Now this is not poetry," we are adding to the disuse of all poetry.

Perhaps the most useful definition, in fact, would begin with a statement about expectation: the expectation with which a reader engages a poem, and the reasons for which a poet may have undertaken the poem, and the possible discrepancy between these two. We have all had the experience of fighting a work of art because it was not doing what we were asking of it. John Ashbery said in an interview: "My feeling is that a poem that communicates something that's already known to the reader is not really communicating anything to him and in fact shows a lack of respect for him." Since what is communicated in a work of art is also how it is communicated, a false expectation is almost certain to produce a false reading. And often we confirm this by the happy surprise that comes when a work we had been defeated by suddenly opens itself to us—we find that it performs very well the job of work which was its reason, once we stop asking it to perform some other service which was no part of its intention.

A word here about liking a poem. This should of course be our primary objective and motive. But to like is a function of the critical intelligence, as this passage by W. H. Auden makes clear:

As readers, we remain in the nursery stage as long as we
cannot distinguish between taste and judgment, so long,
that is, as the only possible verdicts we can pass on a
book are two: this I like, this I don't like.

He goes on with the lovely, schoolmasterly, and abashing accuracy of an Audenism:

For an adult reader, the possible verdicts are five; I can see
this is good and I like it; I can see this is good but I don't
like it; I can see this is good and, though at present I don't
like it, I believe that with perseverance I shall come to like
it; I can see this is trash but I like it; I can see this is trash
and I don't like it.

My argument is that we should use the third option as often as possible, when the first response is not spontaneous with us. When we can't say of a poem, especially of a poem that comes recommended, "I can see this is good and I like it," we owe it to ourselves and the poem to try to say, "I can see this is good, and though at present I don't like it, I believe that with perseverance, et cetera."

Poems seem to come into being for various and distinct reasons. These vary from poem to poem and from poet to poet. The reason for a poem is apt to be one of the revelations attendant on its making. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader, Frost said. The reason for a new poem is, in some essential, a new reason. This is why poets, in the large Greek sense of makers, are crucial to a culture. They respond newly, but in the familiar tribal experience of language, to what new thing befalls the tribe. I shall have some comments to make here about three generic reasons for which poems seem to come into being, but even within these genera, the occasion of a poem is always a new thing under the sun.

And poets don't respond as one, they respond in character, with various intuition, to the new experience. What each maker makes is poetry, but why he makes it, his reason, is his unique intuition. The reason determines the proper mode of apprehension. It is part of,,,,,,,