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 Overread wrote:
Shakespear does tend to come out at GCSE level (old Olevel as far as I'm aware); however my view is that up until that point they don't build up enough to it so when it hits its a heavy slap in the face for many. Of course we make it through the experience, many getting decent to good grades; but it doesn't instil a love of the literature in most. Instead it tends to have the opposite effect on most who are not already very keen readers.

I'd wager if they teased more of that style of writing and encouraged more general wider reading at younger ages, there'd be a greater retention and at least respect creep in. I'd also say that one major failing of reading Shakespear is that it's a script not a book; it wasn't designed to be read, but instead acted. This, in a major sense, robs part of the experience because a play (like a film) is made to have actors and vision put life into the words.

The heavy analysis is rather the point of an English class (well, that and report writing, I suppose). I rather enjoyed it, especially when it came to comparing the themes and metaphor in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey to Terminator 2, or scene-by scene analysis of The Untouchables. I can't think of any works I enjoyed less after that sort of close analysis. What did kill them was having them read out line-by line by people who'd have trouble reading along if you cut off their index finger. Romeo and Juliet was a turgid load until I saw it performed onstage - I think seeing a good performance (watch Baz Luhrmann's film on DVD if need be; that works well IMO) first. I usually read ahead with the assigned novels, but I had a hard time getting my head round reading a stage script.

It is always difficult to take in a story in a form it was not meant to be consumed in. A play is meant to be seen, not read. It’s the same reason turning a book into a movie often flops.

Shakespeare classes really should use taped performances in addition to the text so people can follow it easier.

Totally agree that Shakespeare comes alive when actually performed. That's when youre ear gets tuned to the language and you begin to appreciate the poetry.

I wonder how many English schools don't have drama classes and facilities, and don't have the money to send pupils to professional theatre. Even so, they could use taped performances as you suggested.

You guys emphasize schools a lot. You're not wrong in doing so, but proper allocation of resource and technique into teaching kids is only one half of the equation. Without an infrastructure to support the schools, all it'll lead to is short term gain. What students are able to rapidly pick up will quickly fizzle out as the access to resources to make their dreams a reality fall out of reach. You need to work on standards of living, so that families can stop focusing ALL of their attention on balancing their own books, and start contributing money back into society, into the futures of family, and friends, into their own neighborhoods, and cities/towns. Both school and standards of living are important. But you need BOTH working together to create a progressive and stable society, and ultimately, a strong nation.

Reminds me of the rhetoric Neil Degrasse Tyson puts out. Smart, amazing man, extremely vocal about funding education, but again, missing the other half of the formula.

I also think that we need people from all walks of life contributing as teachers. the basics like math, science, language, literature, and history are just that, basics. And even then; here in New York City, things like literature and history are slowly becoming less important. They always tell you that everything is related to each other in school. but it DID NOT hit me until i was in college, or at least until my frontal lobe started reaching final stages of maturity. I suspect for many others here in the US, its been the same. You don't UNDERSTAND why literature is related to art. You don't understand why art needs math. You don't understand that math makes science work. And most of all, you dont understand that most crafts and professions today would not be what they are without art, math, science, history, and literature. Maybe if every year, the city or state paid people to take a years leave of their jobs to help teach at a local school, that special something about society, and civilization will rub off on kids, and help them contribute a bit more. Because civilization is truly beautiful. Of course there's a ton of ugly stuff, which was unavoidable because of differences and greed, and unfortunate natural events. But if you think about it from a mechanical perspective, its pretty beautiful. Too much people don't see it. Far too much. But thats also because I can afford such perspective from a priveleged circumstance, which many others can't.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Just offer a variety of approved books. Let the students have their picks.

When I was in High School, it was mandatory to have an English class for 3 years, and of them, there was only one that I enjoyed after a time. . . . See, in Freshman and Junior years we had mandatory Shakespeare (i think Romeo/Juliet was first, and junior year we read Julius Caesar), but sandwiched in the middle of that, was one of the best English classes I had (and I hated English class. . . history was, and still is my jam). In that class, sure we had a mandatory reading, and it was brutal and sucked. . . We read the Odyssey in that class.

But where that course made up for it, during a literature block, was a book report we had been preparing for since around week 2. . . . See, during the 2nd week of class we met with the teacher about what book we were going to read for this report. There were a few criteria. There was an "approved classics" list that he had prepared (and many good options on there), but if you didn't like any on the list, so long as you met a minimum page requirement you could simply tell him what book you were going to read. But, if the book you wanted to read didn't meet those 2 things, you could talk to him, and petition for why you should be allowed to use the book you wanted to. Now, this class was probably 15 years ago now, and I've certainly forgotten the book that I read for this class/report, but I do remember a few excellent presentations. One person convinced the teacher that he should be allowed to read A Clockwork Orange, another person read Hemingway.


So, long story short, I agree that school assignments ought to allow student choice, but it shouldn't be so rigid that teachers cannot make approvals for material that isn't on some list. I'd think that in that way, you'll get more student buy-in to reading, but at the same time, you're not getting book reports on 50 Shades or other terribly written works.

You guys had it easy in school. At least they didn't force you to read "War and Peace". It is super long, super dense and like half of it is actually in French...
Mandatory reading in Russian schools is pure suffering. Which, coincidentally is also what most of the books you are forced to read are about. Welcome to Russia, happiest country in the world!

Things that irk me #384658307

English Literatue Exams.

See, in the U.K., there’s two English exams (at least there were. I’m quite old now). English Literature, and English Language.

Language was more about one’s own skill in the language, measuring stuff like verbosity.

Lit? Oh that’s about telling the examiner what their pre-set opinion and interpretation of a given book is. Y’know, the exact opposite of how a book should be. Not allowed your own opinion on what the subtext is.

How do you know what the examiner's pre-set opinion is of any particular book?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
How do you know what the examiner's pre-set opinion is of any particular book?

Well your teacher has the marks scheme and guides you toward the right answers - or at least toward the right material to produce the right answers or somewhere along those lines.

Pretty much that.

It kind of defeats the point of being able to look into subtext when there’s only one accepted answer, no?

And yet somehow everyone doesn't get a A+.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh that’s about telling the examiner what their pre-set opinion and interpretation of a given book is. Y’know, the exact opposite of how a book should be. Not allowed your own opinion on what the subtext is.

I don't know how they do things in the UK, but I am a high school teacher in Canada in litterature and I don't want my students to regurgitate my opinion of the text they are supposed to analyse. I want them to explain their opinion of a given book and explain their reasonning. If that's how they do i the UK, that's fairly stupid. How can you evaluate the aptitude of a student in writting a dissertation if he doesn't even porduce is own arguments and reasonning?

Aye but it means you can farm out the marking of exams to any old teacher and they only have to read the marks scheme and then mark the works accordingly.

I recall my uncle (geography teacher) commenting on how he'd had one student give a very insightful argument in a bit of work and yet couldn't make it for any points since it wasn't one in the mark scheme.


The idea is that students produce their own reasoning with guidance so that they give the "right" reasoning. It also means answers that are not in the "text book" are risky to impossible to use. Another geography example was how we were taught about rivers and how our teacher told us right before the lesson that what we were being taught was wrong, but that he couldn't teach us the newer correct understanding, because we'd get no marks in the actual exam. Which is almost utter madness when you consider that the system not only discourages but will penalise any student showing initiative to read outside or around their subject

Then we go on to Uni and they expect the total opposite of students. Just as Uni needs to shift closer toward work training; GCSE and A-level need to shift closer to Uni style studies. Heck you could wipe out 1 whole year of uni (first year) if they restructured Alevels to be uni-style teaching.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
You guys had it easy in school. At least they didn't force you to read "War and Peace".

Yes they did. Right after Madame Bovary*. At least War and Peace is useful to kill rodents with, or to hold doors open, or as a letter weight.

*(I'm going to leave it as "Madame a ovary" in my old post, that's a hilarious autocorrect if I ever saw one!)

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Totally agree that Shakespeare comes alive when actually performed. That's when youre ear gets tuned to the language and you begin to appreciate the poetry.

I wonder how many English schools don't have drama classes and facilities, and don't have the money to send pupils to professional theatre. Even so, they could use taped performances as you suggested.

Mine certainly had no drama department. I was lucky enough to see three performances in five years (a rather experimental version of Romeo and Juliet with minimalist set dressing, a fairly standard performance of Hamlet and Macbeth with Derek Jacobi in the lead role. I only saw those last two because my younger sister's class was going and I blagged myself in.

I quite liked Baz Luhrman's film of Romeo and Juliet, and there was an interesting version of ... King Lear? Julius Caesar? On the BBC a decade or so ago set in Africa with an all-black cast*, and James MacAvoy was in a good production of MacBeth in London a couple of years ago that also modernised the costumes and sets I never saw a problem with doing that sort of thing; after all, that's just what Shakespear did with his history plays.

* Patrick Stewart once talked about putting on a race-reversed production of Othello, just because he always wanted to play Othello and that was the only way to do it without resorting to blackface.

Here's a logic problem from Radio 4's problem of the day feature.

Someone is driving on the motorway. Due to roadworks they have to drive at 30 mph for 10 miles, then at 60 mph for 10 more miles.

What is their average speed over the 20 miles?

(Change mph/miles to kph/km if you like.)

I'm getting that QI feeling of 'it feels so simple that it must be a trap', but 45 mp/h?

Similar feeling as sockwithateicket, but I've got 40mph?

Classic trap question. The speed you drove for each segment is a distraction.

Exactly. It's an example of how "practical problems" can be confusing because your mind tends to jump to the "obvious" real-world solution, when it needs an abstract approach.

That... doesn't seem the right way to calculate it, as though it's the answer to a different question.

You have a distance where you're able to drive at 30 mph.

You have a distance where you're able to drive 60 mph.

How long it took you to complete those distances doesn't affect how fast you were driving while doing so, surely?

But I did a History degree for a reason, so maybe I'm talking out of my arse.

You use your speed from each segment to calculate how long you spend on each segment. That gives you a total time, and total distance, for an average speed.

It's another illustration of the fact that humans have two modes of problem solving.

The normal mode is everyday pattern matching, in which the mind recognises a problem and quickly solves it by using a solution which has worked for similar problems in the past. This is generally good because it works very quickly.

The drawback is that problems can sometimes look familiar, but don't work the way you think. This fools the mind into picking an incorrect method of solving them.

In this case, we automatically think, "Oh, half the distance at 30 and half at 60, so average 30 + 60 = 45." Only this is wrong, because it's the time taken which determines the average speed, as shown by the solution.

Therefore the second mode of intelligence, which is abstract thinking, has to be used in situations like this. Abstract thinking is slower and more difficult than pattern matching, and it's what is normally meant by "intelligence".

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It's another illustration of the fact that humans have two modes of problem solving.

Like explored in this book? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

I wasn't aware of that particular title, but it looks interesting.

My information came frome some of the psychology titles in the Oxford University Press "Very Short Introduction" series.

They are fantastic little books absolutely crammed with information.

It's got electrolytes.

I honestly think there is an ongoing effort to dumb down the american public by corporate leaders who want a stupid, ignorant, emotional, easily riled up and easily pacified populace to control, exploit and treat as a resource to be used and discarded.

I mean just look at american media. FOr the last couple decades it's glamorized and glorified the selfish, self indulgent, stupid, ignorant moron. Look at charlie sheen on "2.5 men" and remember he was one of the biggest and most well paid stars on tv, and look at the character he played!

Look at shows like "Jersey shore" and "Meet the Kardashians" and what they glorify. Loud, stupid, self indulgent ,shallow morons.

Stupidity, ignorance, shallowness, self indulgence, materialism, and similar traits are held up as the epitome of success. Meanwhile how are intelligent people portrayed?

Look at "the big bang theory". Intelligent people are objects of mockery, abuse, ridicule and stereotyping.

In some older movies scientists could be heroes who helped save thr world. In the original War of the worlds movie the lead character was a scientist, in the speilberg remake the lead character was a slag off who didn;t even keep track of when his kids were coming to visit or keep food in his place for them.

In the old flash gordon series Dr. Zarkov was a hero who fought to save earth and was respected. In a horrible flash gordon remake on the SFC years back he was a pathetic spazz everyone abused and bullied.

Scientists, intelligent people, educated people today are generally ignored in the media today or portrayed ad things you don't want to be, kids!

See, shallow, selfish, materialistic, stupid, ignorant people are easier to manipulate and exploit, and that;s what the corporate overlords want.

This says it all, just cross out government and write in corporations.

Yes, if you selectively pick out examples that fit your theory and discard everything that doesn't you can "prove" that kids these days are stupid and modern culture is in decline. Alas, in reality this is just the same old argument that has been made for literally thousands of years and still hasn't become any less absurd.

Just to name one obvious problem with your theory, even under the assumption of rule by corporate elites the elites still need scientific development to drive progress. You can't pacify the masses with consumer goods if you can't keep inventing the next new thing, and you can't do that without creating scientists and engineers to invent it. Capitalism requires educated people to function, and the last thing it wants to do is discourage people from becoming those useful tools and make itself vulnerable to being out-competed by rivals that do support education.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Edit:

Moving the discussion from the other thread here:

As to your comment, TMM is a commentary about a problem that is becoming more and more serious in modern society.

No, it's a failed attempt at commentary on a nonexistent problem. It makes multiple incorrect assumptions:

1) That intelligence is primarily a heritable trait rather than one that is primarily influenced by the environment. And that, as a result, the "morons" are permanently doomed to low intelligence and education is not an option. In reality intelligence is strongly influenced by the environment. A child growing up in poverty is going to struggle in life no matter how smart they are as a result of their genes, simply because they don't have the opportunities for education and success that someone with more money would have. But give that child better access to education, enough job security and income to be able to afford to spend time on personal development, etc, and they will do much better. The supposed trap of permanent low intelligence does not exist.

2) That birth rate is a product of low intelligence rather than low wealth and standard of living, and as a result the lowest-intelligence people will out-breed everyone else. In reality birth rate drops as standard of living improves, especially in the modern world where birth control is easy to get. The birth rate problem is not an unsolvable one, improve standards of living for the masses and birth rates drop.

3) That intelligence can be quantified as a single scale, preferably evaluated with a single IQ score, and easily judged as "morons" vs. "elites". In reality intelligence is far more complicated and IQ scores are pseudoscientific garbage.

4) That modern technology is somehow damaging our intelligence, disregarding the fact that our use of tools is what makes us unique as a species and that similar advances in technology did not create a sub-race of "morons". The TMM argument has to handwave away the fact that, for example, inventing writing allowed us to store information in permanent form instead of having to remember it but nobody would seriously argue that we were better off 10,000 years ago.

In short, it's the same tired old "KIDS THESE DAYS ARE STUPID AND DO NOT RESPECT THEIR ELDERS, OUR CIVILIZATION IS CLEARLY IN DECLINE" nonsense that people have been coming up with for all of recorded history, and probably longer.

Seeing this article recently reminded me of TMM.

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/scientists-earth-endangered-by-new-strain-of-fact-resistant-humans

You do realize that this is a humor piece posted on a parody site, right?

It is the way of mankind to lament how far society has fallen, even while we deny their progress.

In Book III of Odes, circa 20 BC, Horace wrote:

Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We, their sons, are more
worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more
corrupt.

Pretty cool huh? 2000 years ago the youth were appalling, and bound for nothing but trouble. Sure, these kids are filled with reality shows, rather than Punch and Judy puppet shows, but give a kid the necessary materials and their cell phone and they can build a boat, a gun, a house, or start a fire with a potato chip.

Every government uses propaganda to try to create ideal citizens- I would say that's becoming harder again, with the fragmentation of information streams. In my day (growing up in the 90s) you talked about the 2 or 3 shows worth watching on TV every week because that's all there was. These children just stream up whatever they like- its far more difficult to send some sort of cohesive message for what humans ought to be. Even their heroes are all over the place, from Captain America to Deadpool.