in response to practicing morality

Although I think we thoroughly analyze plenty of literary works in English, i wish we would discuss their contextual significance and current application instead of this constant barrage of literary techniques and methods an author uses to convey a certain idea he or she has. Personally, despite the significance of metaphors and similes and style and tone, i think this year we have done a good job of ignoring the ideas the author is trying to convey. And this seems to me to defeat the purpose of the author's writing...unless he or she actually intended their work to be a stylistic tool for others to learn from instead of a method to convey their personal thoughts....
But i do enjoy some of the works we have read and i think that some are applicable today...even though we don't always discuss it in class ( i guess HOMEWORK is how we are suppposed to apply it to our lives, but really i think it just eats up your time-haha i used a literary device, oh look i'm learning :) ). I found parts of Ben Franklin's Autobiography to be really interesting, especially where he addresses morality and sets out to perfect society by improving his own morals. He made charts and used inspirational quotes and kept journals and journals of his work. Franklin tried to focus on perfecting different aspects of his life, and he would devote a week to this aspect (ex: temperance) and record his success and failure at perfection in a journal. Interestingly, he ran away from his family at 17, and never really rekindled any bond with them, so his family played a thoroughly unimpressive role in supporting his views ( perhaps it can be argued however, that Franklin drew examples of how "not" to act from them). To continue...So after a year of trial and error, Franklin concluded that perfection was not possible, but the "attempt" did improve his character. And i think that i agree with him; that moral restructuring is a worthwhile goal to work towards, but perfection is not necessarily attainable.