Recently in our English class we read The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I know for a fact, that quite a few people in the class, myself included, never opened the book outside of class. All because of Sparknotes. The idea behind sparknotes is that a classical novel that many modern day teenagers would consider boring is completely summarized online. 99% of all english teachers despise sparknotes and similar websites, but to the students, sparknotes is like some nice hot cocoa on a cold winters day. Teachers say that students are selling themselves short of the full experience by reading the sparknotes on a book. I would say that students are still learning all of the main points of the book, they just don't need to worry about racking their brains to produce theories that are already out there. Reducing the repetitiveness in the world is truly a great thing. No one will ever build a house out of cheese, with a cheese couch, and a cheese bed, that's too much cheese. Books are the same way.
There will always be that one student who wants to stick to the proverbial old testament of learning, and read the novel, so that the teacher will have someone to bounce the same schpeell that they use every year on and off of. All of the other students will pass, and understand all of the going-ons of the story, adequate to pass the class easily enough. Really it all boils down to whether someone wants to use more effort to produce a similar result. If i could build a log cabin in 12 hours, but the wind could blow through in 1 spot, opposed to a cabin build in 2 weeks that was perfectly sealed, i would definitely choose the previous cabin. The decision to use such a site as sparknotes is usually very obvious, especially with A Tale Of Two Cities. That book is the bane of all sophomore english students. I don't know how i could have gotten through that unit without the aid of sparknotes, and for that, I salute you, sparknotes.
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