Can we discuss how terribly English and literature is taught

you can thank the useless fucking pencil pushers who make the required curriculum. my son's godfather is a middle school english teacher, and the shit that's forced into his program... drives him fucking crazy.

>>7641138
So what did your teachers do, exactly?

Freshman year of high school ruined English class for me. My teacher was this enormous SJW who forced 14 year old boys to read shit like The House on Mango Street and Things Fall Apart to "open our minds about different cultures."

From that point on I adopted the mindset that my taste in literature was far superior to that of my teachers, and proceeded to read absolutely nothing I was assigned and act like a pretentious dick 100% of the time.

Senior year was fun though, my teacher was really smart. He actually recommended Pynchon to me, which was cool.

I just think public education has a way of completely fucking kids who have intellectual interests up the ass. It's like putting a race horse on a treadmill.

Thank god I wrote good college essays and had excellent test scores, or I fear I'd be stuck in the same directional state college as the neanderthals who I labored through high school with.

>>7641168
>I just think public education has a way of completely fucking kids who have intellectual interests up the ass.
that's because they're aimed at the lowest common denominator. you can slow down a smart kid, you can't speed up a dummy. but in this modern sensitive age we've decided it hurts the dummy's feelings to put them in a group that moves their speed, instead forcing their speed on everyone else. google "common core". it's the bane of all teachers' existence.

>>7641157
I had this one teacher who thought she was the cat's pajamas, who read into books completely wrong, the problem with the way English is taught is that it's not made subjective, and as literature is art, it really should be subjective. Instead we were shown how we should interpret our reading material, and it was all wrong. The worst part is, She used to say shit to me like "I observe English is not your strongest subject" and "over the Christmas break you should try reading more" because my essay weren't great as I found it hard to emphasize conviction within them when I didn't believe what I was writing. Worst part is, I was a avid reader at the time. Complete plebeians in my class who probably only read R.L Stine before the year used to constantly say things like "wow English class blows my mind!!!!", "Who thought books could have so much secret meaning!!!!" It was painful.

Also, on the Irish curriculum we have to do a "comparative essay" in the Exam, what that basically entails is that we must write and essay comparing the themes and similarities in a play, a novel and a film you have studied. Other teachers would prescribe a film like Bladerunner to be studied in conjunction with 1984, two dystopic stories, which make some sense in comparison. What did we have to study? The King's speech as our film, The Great Gatsby as our Novel and Othello as our play. How the fuck does that make any sense. The thematic similarities she made out for us were so thread-bare it made writing an essay near-impossible.

I don't know if this thread has the capacity for all the melted snowflakes on /lit/.

>>7641250
>allowing school to melt you

fuck no. i'm snowflake as ever.

I actually remember reading some pretty decent literature in high school and having decent teachers
>Fahrenheit 451
>Great Gatsby
>Life of Pi

But like most kids, I was lazy fucker who half-assed everything and constantly took shortcuts. It wasn't until years later that I realized I actually enjoyed those books, and reading in general.

>>7641240
Sorry but subjective interpretations are pretentious and narcissistic. Authors write their stories with specific intentions.

Most of my English teachers were quite good, though pretty much what I expected from a private religious school. One of them started a "World Literature" book club and we slowly went through the classics of a surprising variety of countries. The one I remember most was The Street of Crocodiles (Polish literature) and how bizarre it was compared to what we "normally" read in the Western tradition. When we finished our teacher told us of the author's fate, dying at the hands of the Nazis in 1942. For the first time in my life I was distraught over the death of someone I never knew, all because of a high school book club.

For a high school student it was a challenging read but I can confidently say that was the book that sparked my interesting in reading and why I'm on here.

>primary school
>loved reading at that point
>generally a series of unfortunate events and harry potter, general kid shit
>english lessons
>everyone was given "reading comprehension" questions for SATs at age ~8
>questions weren't asking you what the meaning of a piece of text was
>literally just asking you to write down dates and names
>got bored and stopped doing it
>get chewed out for not reading the selection of graded books at school because they were shit

>>7641704
another one
>10 years old
>whole class is asked to read the first chapter of a book for homework
>get hooked and read the next 4 chapters after that
>talking to some prissy bitch in my class about it
>tells teacher I read extra
>get detention
Now that I know what caliber of person a primary education degree attracts I'm not even surprised desu

>>7641673
Not OP, but I agree. Authors do write their stories with specific intentions.

That doesn't mean, however, that your teacher's interpretation of it is the correct one.

>>7641714
Of course not. The beauty of it is you can criticise their interpretation and use the text to justify your own. That's the fun of it.

>>7641733
Absolutely! But I think what OP is saying is that he would get bad grades if he disagreed with his teacher's interpretation.

I know that was the case in my high school, though I was lucky to have pretty good English teachers (for the most part).

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>tfw senior english class was comprised of reading The Alchemist, Escape from Camp 14 and watching V for Vendetta

>>7641805
V for vendetta is the worst film I've ever seen

>>7641805
eugh.

we had to watch 10 Things I Hate About You. Not only that, I swear we watched the movie like 5 times over. The essays that came out of it were all so boring.

>>7641250
highly underrated post

>>7642544
the irony of that fucking string of words

>>7641810
You don't watch too many movies, don't you? Yes, it's horrible both as a movie and as an adaptation but worst movie you ever seen? You are one sheltered motherfucker.

>>7641713
i dont believe you. such a situation as you imply cannot exist

>>7641810
you never watched Troll 2?
or the Wickerman remake?
actually scratch that, Wickerman was hilarious

>>7641168
Those two books are on many state curriculum, or at least regional ones. Teachers are forced to teach them a certain way most of the time.

Yeah, I had a few good ones, a few bad ones, and a few terrible ones. At least with a bad math teacher they aren't wrong about the math. I had one in 11th grade who when reading some poem, she went into painstaking detail of what every word meant, like we were all in first grade. Anyway, the word 'assent' - not 'ascend' - came up and she said that it meant to rise up, I swear to god. How did she get hired? This was an honors class, for Christ's sake.

>>7642558
I'm 21 and still remember this for a reason, it was fucking insane.

>tfw so close to getting my teaching license
have already done student teaching and gotten my bachelor's in english. Gonna try and get work at a charter school where the curriculum is more open

I thought all of my English teachers were quite good...

>>7641657
>"Decent literature"
>Life of Pi

>oh look its this thread again.jpg

>>7641657
>any of these
>decent

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>>7641673

>>7642637
What's the $$ like? What will you do in your spare time?

>>7641240

>old worlders
>having to read gatsby

top kek, how is it relevant outside of north america?

I had some dope as fuck english teachers. Year nine we watched inception then read 1984, brave new world, then watched the matrix. Subject was called 'alternate realities' or some shit, basically we just read/watched edgy shit and circlejerked about how smart we were.

Year eleven we read tonnes of poetry, hamlet, heart of darkness and alice munro. teacher was based. year 12 we did love in time of cholera, who's afraid of virginia woolf and katherine mansfield's short stories. again, teacher we had was dope as fuck, most of the class were interested in learning and made actual interesting observations etc.

I went to a private school in australia btw

>>7641138

>the fucking drivel we were made read
>he thinks The Great Gatsby and Shakespeare's plays are shit

I've got bad news for you.

>>7642918
Year 9 english at a public Australian school involved reading about an Australian-Muslim girl who was trying to tackle being a normal Aussie teenage girl... all while being the only person in the school with a hijab! this was in a city school.

Year ten english we read 5 pages of pride and prejudice and had to write and reflect about the time, the lanague, etc... this was at a private school in the country.

It depends where you are. Generally speaking, the expectations of students in country towns are pretty low, so they accommodate this. Public education in Australia, judging from the four that I attended, is a joke.

my eng teachers were all burn outs

i wanted to be a teach, but gave it up after high school

luckily i taught myself to love reading by 2nd grade

I was stuck with a pink-haired single mother in her thirties for three years in high school. The first thing we'd do every morning was listen to a slam poem.
I know your pain, OP.

>>7642891
I still work in pizza delivery because my student teaching was unpaid and i won't get to do an actual job til the fall semester heard i was gonna be making around 40.000 a year? honestly i don't care about spare time except for the two months of summer vacation

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I see my former english teachers posting stuff like this all the time.

>>7641216
Common Core is a republican buzzword, teachers are either indifferent or love it. Idk about english classes but the way science and math are taught under common core is way superior to how it used to be.

>>7643007
I assume you don't want to write, you just enjoy teaching? I say this because you don't care about having no spare time, and that is usually the time one writes.

>>7643022
I've written some essays and a couple of short stories, but I don't have the head for novelistic structures. If I wanted to write in my spare time, it would be for comics but i don't have money to pay artists. I'm going to try and teach comic books once I get more acquainted with the teaching world

I wrote a short erotica about one of my english teachers and a dog to get kicked out of her class. Sat in the office all day reading Dostoyevsky.

>>7641885
>we had to watch 10 Things I Hate About You
Kek, me too. I remember we all watched it uncensored in 8th grade, but I was once put out of that class because I didn't get parental permission to watch Dead Poets Society.

>>7643014
holy fug

>>7643039
lel

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>>7641138
>tfw your hard left teacher who criticizes white society and says that Black crime is an oppressional myth and that Whites tens to be messed up in the head teaches you Harrison Bergeron and """" agrees""""" with the meaning
P.S. I don't think she understood it.

>>7641138
I had an AP teacher who taught short stories and clashed repeatedly with school higher-ups. We came from a poorish town and absolutely wrecked the exam, I dont think anyone got below a 4. It really is the individual.

>>7641168
The ending of things fall apart makes up for all yam bullshittery

>>7643019
well, my personal experience apparently doesn't line up with your personal experience. the 3rd grade teacher, middle school english teacher, middle school math teacher, high school english teacher and high school math teacher i am very close to all hate it.

>>7641138
>when your mum is an english teacher
>tfw when you have Dostoevsky, gogol, the complete works of Shakespeare, joyce, turganev andthe metaphysical poets on your parents bookshelf

>>7641138
Sounds like you just had problems with accepting authority, then enjoyed reading when you came to it with a feeling of autonomy.

>>7642920
>Putting "The Great Gatsby" on the same level as Shakespeare.
The Great Gatsby is rambling nonsense that only appeals to those small-minded enough to think symbolism is deep.

I think Gatsby and "Lord of the Flies" are the perfect examples of what OP is talking about; these books meander through a boring plot with boring characters, and all the while teachers are forcing their students to recap all the WONDERFUL 2DEEP4U SYMBOLISM that's going on.

Compare to a novella like "Of Mice and Men". In under 200 pages we have such excellent characterization of George and Lenny that by the end of the book, when George is presented with one of the most difficult decisions a human could ever face, the reader is right there with him and feels like they had to make the choice themselves.

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>>7641657
>Fahrenheit 451

I genuinely regret bothering to read this. The narrative is narcissistic, arrogant and repugnantly self indulgent. Bradbury's prose reads like he had his head stuck too far up his own ass to see what he was typing. The hypocrisy of lauding his medium in such a self-congratulatory and exaggerative manner and maligning and abusing that medium at the same time is ludicrous to the point where it borders on satire.

>>7641713
In 4th grade we had Accelerated Reading, wherein you read a book and take a 10 question quiz on it for some reason, and one of our elective classes, called simply "Library" involved us going to the library to be read to by the librarian. My best mate and I took the AR quiz for some book when we were like a chapter from finishing it, both scored 9/10, and we got in some trouble for "cheating" which makes no sense, since all we did was guess on the last question, and both of us read the most books in our class anyway, so our overall progress was already high as fuck, since we didn't read faggot picture books for retards and instead read (children's) novels

>>7642976
they let people have trigger warning hair colors in teaching jobs now?

>>7641673
What does intention matter in a subject as abstract and all-encompassing as art? What a primitive way of thinking, seeing the world as pure cause and effect with cause as the only "practical" factor. You're like a savage, doomed to simply hunt for the next source of sustenance and never seek anything higher, denying yourself a plethora of greater ideas and interpretation beyond this silly inapplicable concept of "intention".

It's disgusting that we still allow people like this to take part in the discussion of art. Would you let a medieval peasant discuss modern ranching? Contract a hut-dweller to build a skyscraper?

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>>7641733
>reading for "fun"
>not enlightenment

Disgusting

>>7641805
>watching v for vendetta

But why? Reading the fucking comic book it's based on would have been more applicable to literature, because at least it's got fucking words on a page.

>be in school
>signs everywhere telling people to have a 'personal reader' on them
>almost always did
>our schools never gave us time to read.
>got in trouble for reading when I wasn't supposed to

It's like, they like the idea of reading more than reading itself.

>>7641138
My biggest problem is that they don't let people try to find out different kinds of book. It was always some terrible coming of age book, or else some 'classic' novel. If it were up to me, we'd choose a book from a bunch of different genres so people could find out what they liked.

We had to read some really stupid stuff. In a college class, we read Embasseytown and Soulless (basically steampunk Twilight). Both thoroughly 0/10 books.

>>7641168
>House on Mango Street
Thanks for bringing up painful memories. That was such a stupid book
>b-but muh vignettes

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>>7643399
It was part of a curriculum that was based around reading 1984, Lord of the Flies, and texts about Rwanda, NK and Snowden in some hope or preparing us for a coming storm in America that the teacher foresaw. She was (not-memeing) at libertarian gen-kekser who had a picture of her shooting off guns in Vietnam hanging over her desk.

my high school english teacher taught ayn rand. after i graduated, i found out she was a harry potter fan.
>toppleb.azw

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>tfw had a based english teacher
>same teacher for 4 years
>was a patrician, he might even browse here desu
>he used to listen to beethoven and shit in class
>told offensive jokes to me and a couple of my mates all the time
>had a myspace with pictures of him absolutely pissed in scummy looking bars with hooker looking women
>he knew that i had patrician taste and knew my style of writing, references etc
>he knew the pain of having shit handwriting so didn't mark my work down because of it
>got A's on every test and practice exam constantly
...
skip to last year of high school

>rumour that he's leaving
>i ask him cos i thought he was a good teacher
>he says no but he's obviously lying
>he leaves month after
>had substitute teacher for a bit
>they find loads of based english teachers bills and shit in cupboards, in his desk, in textbooks etc
>i kek'd
>eventually get new teacher
>shes a fucking obese nigress
>literally the first day she singles me out for having my jacket on the table
>i just looked at her like wat
>disagree with her about "opression of minorities and disabled people"
>make her look like a fool in front of whole class
>few weeks pass and i can tell she fucking hates me
>do practice exam paper
>she gives me a D
>she keeps going on about how i'm "struggling" even though i'm not
>she gives her favourite pupils extremely high grades
and then...
>she fucking moved me into retarded classes with borderline dunces
>i can't sit the higher exam now
>max grade i can get is a C because of this dumb fucking whore
>complain to school, show them all my past results
>they side with her decision
>had to do the lower exam paper and could only get a fucking C.

This bitch ruined my fucking entire last year of high school and fucked with my chances in life.

And that is why I'm now semi-racist and against any "muh white privilege" fucking cunts.

If I see this whore somewhere dark with no cameras I'm going to kick her face in. Seriously.

>>7643482
Should have got your parents involved and made a big deal of it. High-schools always cave to angry parents. It's the only reason I passed desu. Age of entitlement and whatnot

Freshman: Dubliners
Sophomore: Portrait
Junior: Ulysses
Senior: Finnegans Wake

of course, you'd have to "read around" these

>>7643497
I didn't live with my parents at the time and honestly thought the school would side with me. I got A's and B's in every other subject... I got a C in English because thats the highest I could get... All because of this fat fucking ape.

It's been like 6 years and I still want to strangle her desu

>>7643482
I feel angry after reading this

>>7642920
I went to school in one of the wealthiest and highest ranking counties in the country, took AP English, and literally never read Shakespeare. Even education near the peak of what the US has to offer is hilariously bad, with possible exceptions for math and science.

Hell, I took and aced AP history classes for three years, and only after college did I (independently) begin to appreciate history as a continuous narrative rather than a series of useless facts.

Honestly /lit/ has taught me more than school ever did. I graduated from a "public ivy" after studying a social science and a STEM field, and it's felt more rewarding shitposting with you guys and reading the fucking Greeks than school ever did. On one hand I resent the fact that I have to fucking introduce myself to Shakespeare after going to some of the best schools in the country; on the other hand I'm infinitely thankful for stumbling onto this board, and am horrified when I imagine how I would have ended up otherwise.

>>7643567
/lit/, among a few other things, has made me regret going to post secondary school. I'm in so much debt and have nothing to show for it. I browse /lit/ for a year and now I'm better read than 80% of people I come into contact with. In 1 or 2 more years it'll be more like 99%.

Meanwhile, my STEM degree is useless, and unimpressive... Makes me rage when people with no idea about science casually talk about how they know so much about quantum physics or nutritional biochemistry and start talking about the double slit experiment and consciousness... Slipping into mysticism.

>>7643594
>casually talk about how they know so much about quantum physics or nutritional biochemistry and start talking about the double slit experiment
as long as they're not framing themselves as someone who actually studied those things I don't see anything wrong with this
>consciousness
really? you have to go to school to talk about something every single human has experienced? fuck off

>>7641168
Which college(s) were you admitted to?

>>7643603
Bad bait

>>7643359
My AP Lang also detested Bradbury

>>7643594
Yep, my STEM classmates were some of the most boring people I've ever met, who simultaneously managed to constantly circlejerk each other just because we were all doing STEM.

And you're absolutely right about how quickly you move beyond the average reader. Most people don't really study anything--literature, history, philosophy, art, etc.--beyond whatever they learned in undergrad.

It's kind of embarrassing, but at the same time makes it just that much easier to look impressive in comparison.

>>7643603
I meant to say they talk about consciousness in the context of the double slit experiment/quantum physics. Basically The Secret teir. These people have no idea what they are taking about and have actually argued with me over scientific realities... Some one actually tried to tell me my coffee expands as it cools down. This same person who speaks with authority about quantum physics and its implications on consciousness.

>>7643620
Alright that is pretty unbearable, I see what you're talking about

Public education is just horrible. Most of the people can't teach for shit because they spent their entire undergrad studying how to teach rather than what to teach. The people who can teach and have valuable insights either teach at university or they're doing something else with their professional career. You end up with people who have good intentions but don't know what they're talking about, or those who pursued an Education degree because jobs are always available. Of course, there are outliers-- some will have a masters degree in whatever their subject is. Pile onto that mess kids who just do not care whatsoever, or only 'care' because they need a grade. Not to even mention how students will sometimes antagonize teachers because they're tired of being locked up in a building for eight hours. Not to even mention the kids with talent and ability, if not made to do so by their parents, hate school and end up just doing what they love in their freetime since public schooling is too much of a mess to really address their needs and wants. Some students will be recognized but that varies by state, and the student has to perform well in school or on a PSAT test in the first place. Efficiency has killed public education, honestly.

>>7643620
It's true. As my coffe cools, the cup gets bigger. It does this to facilitate the augmenting mass via the cooling liquid a la Bässle Klein theory of the petit recalcitrant.

>>7643628
>English and history teachers catered to the lowest common denominator
>learned nothing in all of high school
>both AP physics teachers had master's degrees
>would jokingly talk shit to people who did poorly
>knew their course material inside and fucking out
>set the curve based on the highest score, coldly fucking over the class if even one person was able to do well

I had so much more fun in HS science than english/history.

>>7641673

Is it weird if I often don't like knowing the author's intentions? It seems to ruin a lot of enjoyment for me.

>>7641138

Maybe I'm just an idiot but what always annoyed me about English class were the writing prompts

prompts tend to be so vague. This is obviously done so the teacher gets a lot of different responses, but I always had a tendency to focus on the concrete. Sometimes I felt like a good response to a prompt could be done in 2-3 sentences, and yet we had to write 5 pages worth. I generally like to write, but it made it extremely unenjoyable when I felt I had to make up bullshit just to fill a length requirement.

>>7643373
wew

>>7643384
fantastic post, I love you

>>7641138
Education is awful. I was actually going to be a teacher, but during a practicum I talked about masturbation once, just ONCE, and that was it.

>>7643614
I'm in an engineering school now, and I hate it. You literally put 'science' on anything and they'll eat it up.

>don't study anything
This makes me sad.

>>7643594
It's weird how the site once called 'The Internet Hate Factory' is one of the most helpful sites out there.

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>>7643676
>I talked about masterbation once, just ONCE

>>7641805
Australia right?

>>7641250
>melted snowflakes
Thanks senpai, gonna start using that.

>>7641673
intentional fallacy: the post

try better next opportunity familey

>>7641240
Eh, comparative essays are nice. I teach English at secondary school level in Sweden (presently as a substitute, but once I have my license, that'll be my career), and they're comparing the action-flick In Time with The Hunger Games (not my choices); if I have kids complaining about the quality of story, prose, dialogue, etc, I just go "good, there's a fantastic thesis statement", and divert the streams of frustration to the river of harsh literary criticism. You can annihilate any work you like as long as you follow the rules of literary science: evidence, evidence, evidence.

>>7641138
>assignment is to write about a minor character in romeo and juliet
>teachers face when my assignment isnt all about the nigger in the movie
>how intolerant
>wrote assignment about the nurses previous charge because the entire story is about the absurdity of the star crossed lovers, the english were terribly superstitious of earth quakes and so her being killed by a falling brick, following an earth quake and then suddenly having another job openning right away to look after juliet as the worst possible #YOLO pedagogue imaginable that makes the whole tryst possible.

>that never happened
>she watched the movie
>she zoned out during the bits that didnt have explosions and sex
>failed assignment

>>7641240
try simone de beuaviours autobiographical trillogy alongside leon, the 5th and lucy.

>>7641673
yes but as hesse wrote about steppenwolf in his introduction, lol kids dont know what my book is about but my all means keep buying my books faggots.

>>7642935
ausbro here
look, the teachers cannot be fucked to read the books. I had english teachers who would boast they hadnt read a book in decades and even just watched the movie for their grade 12 assignment. its not a matter of failing the students for not reading the book, its a matter of the teacher not giving a shit about their job and only being willing to put in the absolute minimum effort.

we were meant to read dracula then watched van helsing in class and just had to write about that instead.

>english assignment about the topic of utopia
>tfw I go and actually read thomas moores utopia
>it was not a creative writing course
>everyone write shit about riding rollercoasters through clouds or some shit
>I fail

>>7643046
>teacher believes in the message of dead poets society
>puts up feet and watches movie over several periods instead of actually understanding the message of the film and improving their pedagogical methodology.

>>7643419
>leaves book poking out of pocket with title visible as fashion accessory

>>7643482
you're not the only one bro. i was reading more complex lit than anyone in school including the teachers, reading ability IQ section over 140. scored high on my australian version of final standardized exam. got fucking Cs and Ds for english because the teachers were too retarded to understand what I was writing.

>>7643594
just trip them out by talking about expectancy breaching

>>7643652
that's because very few people ever actually reach functional literacy or progress beyond the concrete operational stage. piaget himself said only about 20% of people ever fully develop the final stage of cognitive development. shits gotta be written so everyone can pass.

>>7642976
>The first thing we'd do every morning was listen to a slam poem.
poem by whom ?

I fucking hated my senior year of English, or even all my high school years of English.

I live in Australia, and a lot of the books we read for English were either written by Australians, or had something to do with Aboriginals.

For the senior year, the literature side was a little better, in the way that it wasn't filled with Australian shit. We had to read 'Life of Galileo', and 'This Boy's Life'.

We also had to watch a movie about this guy called Eddie Mabo who was an Aboriginal that did some shit in the 70's.

I fucking hated how much they forced this Aboriginal culture and acceptance shit on us. The only worthwhile book we read was Catcher in the Rye.

>>7644229
>Catcher in the Rye
>worthwhile
you realize the only reason anyone paid even the slightest bit of attention to that book was because some nutjob blamed it for giving him the irresistible urge to john lennon?

>>7644239
To kill John Lennon? Heh, yeah I heard about that. I hated the book, but it was certainly better than anything else we'd read. We also read and watched the 1968 and 1996 version of Romeo and Juliet, I guess that's not too bad.

>>7641138
I'm an English teacher. The way Shakespeare is taught is fucking appalling, has been for many years. Some of my colleagues have started to catch on, and allow kids to watch the plays while following them with the text in front of them (or if they are smart, putting the subtitles on so students don't look away). Getting kids to read out Shakespeare in turn, like they do with novels, only ensures kids hate it.

But there is more to it than that, you are required to cover different interpretations. You know the thing of 'Oh, the sky is blue, what did the writer mean vs what the teacher thought it meant'? That kind of thing is nonsense, but it's on the curriculum so I have to do it with a smile on my face while inside me I'm screaming.

>>7644239
you realise it was a massive success as soon as it was published, right? Not because of some event three decades after the fact? RIGHT?

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Guys, I'm about to graduate as a highschool English teacher.

I'm terrified of turning off students from reading forever by assigning them Shakespeare or Milton or whatever. At the same time I don't want to lower the bar too much. I could always take my students to the school library and have them each pick out their own books, but that's pretty difficult to assess and keep track of later on.

Any tips from your own school experiences?

>>7641805
>The Alchemist

*Combusts internally*

>>7642601
>Anyway, the word 'assent' - not 'ascend' - came up and she said that it meant to rise up, I swear to god.

Wait

Oh shit

>>7644323
I think you should assign them books from the /lit/ starter kit. I'm not even joking.

>>7644323
Be a good talker, if you aren't, work on it. Wherever possible present content in a way that makes it tangible and relevant for your students. If your classes are exciting your students will trust you to give them reading assignments that are worthwhile and will be more ready to suspend disbelief.

The best experience i had with a german (that's my native) teacher was the guy we had in high school who would go into an in depth analysis of some character in faust then whip out silly but accurate remarks about how X's behavior in the book is sorta like student Y's own typical behavior in class. if you make them read shakespeare tie romeo&juliet's affair to anakin&padme's affair in star wars (okay maybe not quite but you get what i mean). just give them something to hold on to. and obviously it always helps if you're an all around interesting, engaging person in general but that's less directly related to your teaching i guess.

>>7644330
There's definitely some good stuff on there.

>>7644346
>Wherever possible present content in a way that makes it tangible and relevant for your students.

Yeah, we've had some discussions about this in class and I get what you mean. Might even have some ideas for comparisons and so on, mixing "high culture" with pop-culture also seems to be a growing trend among English teachers.

>>7644346
>>7644323
also consider the whole spectrum of media (or mediums? excuse my lack of accurate vocabulary) in which great writing occurs. now more than ever, most people are in touch with quality writing by proxy. film, music, art, but also TV shows, advertisement, presidential candidate campaigns, etc.

>>7644370
>mixing "high culture" with pop-culture also seems to be a growing trend among English teachers.
yeah there's always the danger of looking like a tryhard (you know what i mean - that one teacher that unironically tries to pick up street slang). if you hit the spot it can be fantastic tho

>>7642835
You're just memeing into stupidity if you're honestly trying to argue The Great Gasby isn't at the very least a decent book. No, it's not fucking Homer, but it's still a legitimately good book. It has good prose. It's thematically strong.

>>7644056
>>7642918
>>7643760


Another Ausbro here.

I went to a country high school and the teachers were generally fine, but we had two fucking great English teachers. One did a science-fiction unit that honestly elevated the genre for me (we did Neuromancer, Dune, 2001, Brave New World), the other had the most patrician taste in poetry I've ever seen. We had a course on postmodernism and she hooked a few kids onto Paul Auster as the gateway. When teachers are clearly legitimately passionate about a subject and make an effort to connect that passion to kids in forms they understand, classes can really turn out well.

>>7641138
I don't recall anything in my english classes that was particularly bad, but I will say that I was turned off from reading for almost all my life until this year.

Although I think that was less of English's fault, and more that my intelligence level was so low back then I could never understand what the fuck is happening in books I read.

>>7643994
> beuaviours
Seriously?

Britfag here

I'm an oldfag and left school in '99. All I remember from GCSE lit class was everyone in the clas being forced to read out loud a paragraph or so of Romeo and Juliet until we'd done the whole thing (it took a whole term). Then there was this "anthology" from which we briefly studied "Daffodils" and some shitty African poem about a scorpion.

My attendance record was below 50%. I submitted pitiful coursework. I got a C. I was more than satisfied.

>>7643614
I remember having a conversation with STEM classmates about "new words that shouldn't go in the dictionary." I tried to explain that the dictionary and linguistics in general was descriptive, not prescriptive, and they just wouldn't get it.
STEMs are supposed to be smart, but most of these people know nothing about literature, philosophy (even though we had a basic course on it), and they don't look further than the formulas, not giving a shit about the epistemology behind it.
One of my friends hadn't even read fucking Harry Potter. Who hasn't read Harry Potter?

>>7644446
relax, I'm australian and her work means nothing to me. except that it caused multipass to be a thing. also, i can never spell beureau properly either because I just cant get my head around the eauaueuau shit. how do you people even remember it?

>>7644578
> beureau
You mean "bureau", right?

Her name is written Beauvoir, as in bo-voa-r.

>>7644558
I didn't, because I didn't want to and I have a strong dislike of anything related to magic.

>>7644592
yes but what meme do you use to remember that? its just not a very common english arrangement

>>7644597
You're missing out bro, those books are pretty decent. Story's great.
I mean, nothing spectacular, but they're not bad, either.

>>7644601
Because it is a french arrangement :^)

My trick to you is to just listen to the word being spoken and practice, then write it as you think it is written in approximation and correct it. Just about every written language on Earth began as sounds put one in front of another, so to learn another language you must go back to its origin, in some way.

Also french is my first language, so that helps.

>>7644601
No meme. This comes off as abrasive, but I just honestly find it weird adults still need "i before e except after c" style stuff to remember how to spell. I just...remember how to spell it correctly.

Not the person who corrected you on behaviours btw; I see absolutely nothing wrong or strange about misspellings on the internet. We're not at work here. Heaps of us are typing on phones anyway.

>>7644446
Before I saw the post you were responding to, I thought some had typed behaviors all British like and misspelled it.

Also nice internal quads, desu senpai

>>7644610
>I see absolutely nothing wrong or strange about misspellings on the internet.
Sure you can shit all you want on English, the poorest tongue in the world, but not on the glorious french language.

>>7644558
>Who hasn't read Harry Potter?
me

>>7644617
Thank you.

>Lit --- Hating English Class since 2010

>>7644269
This X100
Shakespeare's like the opposite of highbrow if you understand what he's actually saying.
>Twelfth Night:
>By my life, this is my lady's hand these be her
>very C's, her U's and her T's and thus makes she her great P's.

And that interpretation thing is bullshit too. Everyone here realizes that when it's retardedly easy to make up something that sounds plausible.

>Reading The Odyssey
>Write a feminist interpretation of
>fug

>>7644323
Diversify your books. What I see is that the schools assign 'classic' books and then the students think that's what reading is like, but you might try to expose your students to as broad a spectrum as possible.
Here's my suggestion:
>Shakespeare - and point out all the dirty jokes
>Something from the /lit/ starter kit. I like Catch-22 a lot
>Shel Silverstein, or Calvin and Hobbes. Something funny from childhood. Hell, even ask /co/ for comic recommendations.
>Something philosophical. Try Ecclesiastes, The Myth of Sisyphus or some shorter Nietzsche
>Have your students pick out some smutty fanfiction.
I'm serious about that. The purpose of this is to just get them reading (and who doesn't love smut).
>Asimov
>A mystery. Try Christie or Doyle.
>some greentexts
>your favorite book.
Best of luck, /lit/izen. Remember to 'accidentally' leave /lit/ up in your browser.

>>7644558
>descriptive, not prescriptive
To be fair though, some of those portmanteaus nowadays are pretty retarded.

>>7644619
Are you kidding? Everything in the English language that makes it inefficient and difficult to learn comes from French--our silent letters, and non-phonetic spelling especially

>>7645189
Well yeah i can be mad about new words and still understand that i have no say in wether or not they exist.

>>7643760
This was in Maine m8

>>7641138

Yup

From 7th grade on we were fed a constant stream of white guilt literature:

>muh slavery
>muh jim crow
>muh Holocaust
>muh native Americans

Repeat until sick

I really just thought I hated all books until 10th grade when I stopped paying attention in school and started reading on my own.

>>7643628

Don't call it public education. Call it government education, because that's what it is. A despicable monopoly.

And these libtards think socializing Healthcare will improve it

>>7641168
>>7641216
Even in the premiere public schools, that ones that are screened to admit the top 5%, the education is very weak.

Most teachers have personal issues and are simply jaded by experience (not limited to classroom experience), naive and with limited interest in the topic they are teaching, or have some kind of agenda (if they are knowledgeable enough to actually hold convictions, which is rare). In better schools, teachers seem relatively more interested in the topics, but that always comes with some kind of SJW or very progressive politic that invades all the humanities.
>>7643198
Think about it, if you've been teaching for 10-15 years and have all your lessons thought up and ready to implement you would hate Common Core no matter how good or bad it was. That being said, top down education plans are terrible and the whole thing is a racket for 'curriculum generators' to make millions every few decades by revamping the whole system with new buzzwords.

>>7641168
Things Fall Apart is a good book, though. Not a masterpiesce as the SJWs would lead you to believe, but certainly not Mango Street tier. That book is fucking cancer, and this is a mexican telling you this.

>>7644558
If you're going for the misunderstood patrician meme, you shouldn't be playing the I <3 Harry Potter card. I didn't read them because I already had books around the house, Verne, Wilde, Stevenson, Dumas. That was my childhood. Now all of my classmates are obsessed with Harry Potter to the point of mental infantilization, and honestly I'm grateful that I never got caught up in that. Harry Potter has been instrumental in the disgusting fetishization of reading that's going on right now, because it gave all the idiots a shared symbol of their special-snowflakeness. It gave them something to belong to, when in reality reading shouldn't be about belonging, but raher about finding yourself.

>>7643606
Vanderbilt, Duke, UVA, North Carolina, and Florida.

I go to Vandy.

English lit class was shit but my US history teacher ran a fucking boot camp and filled in all its shortcomings. We had to write a paper every single day while every other week we had to produce a proper research paper. Granted, those daily papers helped in developing a pool of primary sources but it was still pretty grueling on top of every other class.

I'm still amazed that he managed to grade everything.

>>7644391
Whelp in highschool i read a total of 4 required books throughout my entire time there

>Hunger Games
>Lockie Leanord
>The Cruciable
>The Great Gatsby

no wonder kids these days dont read books.

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>>7641673

>>7646370

>Hunger Games
Did you just graduate or something?

>>7647370
it came out 2008 du

EXCUSE ME STANDIN ON ONE LEG
I'M HALF CASTE

Let's design a high school world lit curriculum, /lit/. Pick zero to two long works each that are:

American
British
European
Latin American
African
Near Eastern
Russian
Far Eastern

Plus any short stories or poetry that can be interspersed throughout the year. Comments on how to teach them to high schoolers are optional.

>>7643039
>I wrote a short erotica about one of my english teachers and a dog
she enjoyed it.

>>7643482
>This bitch ruined my fucking entire last year of high school and fucked with my chances in life.
you fail to understand that there is no point fighting. keep your red pills for yourself.

I literally can't express how much better my life has been since I attended Oxford. I went to a state school and gradually became the stereotypical moody, withdrawn sensitive type who both despises the quality of his immediate culture and feels a weird pride for having been raised in a sort of anti-intellectual and brutal environment. I was all set to take my Russell Group humanities BA and spend my life working as an anonymous, insecure wageslave forever thankful of being offered a job and forever too insecure to pursue my creative ambitions. The chip on my shoulder had become something of a wedge, and I felt too out of place regardless of my environment, too resentful and bitter to even attempt to make it in the artistic world. Then I finally applied for Oxford and got in to study an English MA, with reassurance that should I work hard enough a career in academia or within one of Oxford's affiliated companies would be almost guaranteed. I turned up as apprehensive as usual, and the first few days were spent regretting my decision and desperately feigning a cultured personality. But then I realized that the people there were just interesting and that the snobbery and exclusivity I had anticipated was just a myth borne out of my working class upbringing. I've since graduated, having spend the year dining in grand halls with groups of interesting people, dating several girls (one of whom, a petite Russian whose family traces back to the aristocracy, is now my fiancee). I work four days a week at a publishing company and earn £38k a year. I regularly meet up with friends from my college and visit Oxford for nights out and for meetings with my professors.

>>7643482

maybe your a little retarded but your family and teachers never mentioned it due to "positive reinforcement" so they gave you straight "A"

>reading Day of the Locust
>very young child forced to dress up like a man and sing sexual songs
>transvestite lounge singer
>painting of the riot and destruction of the city is clearly described as sexually charged
>write in my essay about abnormal sexuality
>teacher writes a paragraph long note about how describing any of this as abnormal is marginalizing

>>7644619
>tfw shakespeare is worth more than the french canon

>>7649037
Classic pasta

>>7643482

I had a similar falling out with a STEM teacher in high school. Wouldn't let me rewrite some pieces of written work since she said 'I'd be flogging a dead horse', even though I needed these pieces to be marked relatively highly to pull my mark up. Ended up getting Cs. I never really forgave her or the school for that. Couldn't move schools though, since we lived in a smallish town with two schools, the other one being too far to get to.

>>7643594

I'm currently living near my university with a number of STEM guys. They're not bad people, we just don't have the same interests. They play lots of videogames, listen to pop music, and talk about entry-level science.

I don't mind it, since i have some /lit/ friends at the uni whom I live close to, so all isn't terrible.

How I can hack a Facebook ????????

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>>7643067

>tfw teachers tried to make me a self-hating white leftist
>tfw became a white nationalist

>tfw pretty sure the average age of everyone ITT is 19

I'm an English teacher in Alabama and the problem with my school's English classes is that we are forced to teach junk for most of the year. I have time to choose no more than 1-2 books a year, and if I expect them to actually read everything assigned I don't have time even for that.

>>7644323
hey.
>>7650761
here.

Here's the deal. If you are in America you won't be making the choice between things like Milton and Shakespeare in a public school. I am told what to teach most of the time. I have a quota each year. I've taught all of the HS grades, and it's different every time, but for example this year I must teach the following:
3x "classics" - from a quite short list. I chose Frankenstein, The Odyssey(This is the first year I got this choice. Very happy.), and Diary of a Young Girl.

I then must choose a Shakespeare play from a list of about five - I chose Macbeth.

Then I chose an American dramatist - from a very short list - and ended up with The Crucible this year. Not happy about that.

Finally, the only thing I truly have choice in is poetry. I, as a 11th grade teacher, have to ensure my students leave able to pass tests on poetry. I can use any means I choose to do this, so most of the variety my students see comes through poetry.

Those five books and poetry are it man, and the list was short for alternatives. All I may choose is anything I can fit in between. And it isn't easy to get kids to read five books in a year, especially not when one is Macbeth and another is The Odyssey.

I occasionally use short stories to explain a concept or something but for the most part our day goes -

read a poem, quickly discuss the meter and such, then do some auditory quizzing and discussing to make sure the kids are actually keeping up with the book we're reading.

>>7650785
The Crucible's a great read and very easy. Be sure to include the cut scenes where the protagonist and antagonist rail on eachother.

>>7650785
Also, my principal is an ex-English teacher and we discuss this regularly.

He insists that, despite how wrong it seems, this system filters English teachers into teaching relevant material. He's been in the system since the 60s and he insists that we really are better with these rules, because people who choose English degrees just can't be trusted to pick good and appropriate material. Reflecting on my previous class mates and current colleagues I can see this, but I can assure you it is putting me on a fast track to trying to teach college.

Constantly was top in both English and history classes, but they never advanced me even when I requested and my mom requested because I didn't do my homework. I just didn't see the point unless it was reading something.

I tested within the top 10% of my state (NC) on everything I did. The above is one of the reasons why I just dropped out and went to work.

Scotlandfag here.

I only did English up to the age of 16 and in retrospect my complaints are the exact opposite of everyone else in the rest of the world. Rather than having The Great Gatsby / Catcher in the rye / dickens pushed on us, we had absolutely nothing pushed on us. Literally nothing. The most advanced (whole) book I read as part of the curriculum was the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe at age of 10. I discovered reading on my own at the age of 17 although when I look back I realise that I was more passionate about reading at the age of 5 to 12 than I am now. I would read literally every book I had multiple times.

>>7641138
I always hated reading good books in school, because it would inevitably ruin them for me.

>>7642935
Public schools vary hugely on the demographics of the school's catchment. There are some very good public schools, at least in Victoria, but they're all in middle to upper-middle class areas.

>>7645306
pretty much. mcmillan revises the school textbooks every year. exact same content. page numbers shuffled around by swapping two chapters so you buy the new book and if you buy an older textbook the teachers handouts dont match the page numbers for all students. the quiz questions at the end of chapters modified slightly so you can't do the homework with the old textbook.

>>7645228
not from french. english is a fantastic pigin of a bunch of languages. you need to know latin, greek, french, old german and old english spelling conventions and you can wind up using them all in the same sentence.

>>7650749
i say 22

I don't know why/how "English" (literature) should be taught in schools. It's entertainment and should be pursued recreationally. Learning to write well is a worthwhile skill that seems to be lost so schools can force students to read their obligatory Shitspeare instead.

>>7641168
>thinks he's so smart
>fails to realize those books are a normal part of the curriculum

>>7651132
This might be the worst post of the thread. Impressive.

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ITT

>>7650749
4chan has aged. most people on the niche boards are 20+ i think.