I never said they didn't use symbolism, not once Eric or Fell, I said that people try to find symbolism in everything. There is a huge difference. And I have seen plenty of students with something to contribute smacked down because someone had a theory or an idea about a book that differed than what the person teaching the class said. In fact it was only when I went to RC that I had teachers who really encouraged me to think about books in lots of different ways. Fran and Murry Arndt are perfect examples.
Going back to the rock again, its not that I refuse to see its color as a potential symbol, its that I refuse to be told that that is the only reason it is Red. As if nature and aestetics don't play into it at all. Have you ever seen the Annotated Great Gatsby? They had access to Fitzgeralds research and notebooks for Gatsby. It made a huge difference in my liking the book because I realized that many of the things he wrote about in that novel were not merely allegory. These people places and things weren't ephermal but real, or at least real adaptations in the novel. It certainly brought meaning to the symbolism that the teachers droned on about. I guess its not the symbolism that I hate so much as the lack of evidence given to support it.
I did get told to shut up about Lord of the Flies, because we wern't doing anything with it. Our teachers method of teaching was talking about how she though the book was for an hour. Geez Eric she thought that because they were rescued by a rocket ship from the British Navy that it was kind of a science fiction book too. The rock may have been red because of violent intent, or it could have been piggys blood, or a ferrous piece of ejecta from a volcano. But to be told to shut up because I had an opinion that differed was much more ignorent than having an opinion in the first place.
I don't think that the label of over analyzing teachers is untrue. I think it has a lot more to do with how teachers are taught to teach and what they expect form their students.