Duplicate Trope: School Study Media

How would fusing these tropes work? From Entertainment to Education is about works of fiction being used in an unexpected academic context, like a science fiction novel who's marine biology is so accurate it's read in actual marine biology courses. But fusing it with School Study Media would mean adding a bunch of entries about literature that's read in literature classes, which seems both different and way less interesting.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Mar 21st 2022 at 3:28:22 PM

Yeah, I agree. Looking at some of the actual examples listed on each, there's a difference between Shakespeare being studied in literature classes and something like this from From Entertainment to Education:

• The Far Side: One of the collections has a foreword by a college professor who notes that he puts up the comics on a bulletin board at the beginning of the year, leading to much confusion among students. And as time goes by, the students see the comics again... and "roar with the confident laughter of the enlightened".

Also "entertainment" seems way too narrow to describe works of classical lit/poetry/etc. being studied in lit classes.

Edited by Twiddler on Mar 21st 2022 at 1:06:59 AM

I just woke up and now moving to Useful Notes is the top option. I think I'll give it until at least 12 AM CDT before calling, because I'm guessing the above two posts had something to do with it.

"A story about X is used in X classes" is not how I saw From Entertainment to Education, so maybe pushing School Study Media examples into "Literature" folder wasn't the best idea.

What would the supposed Useful Notes page describe?

As far as I know, the contents of School Study Media would stay the same after being moved to Useful Notes; I personally don't see anything in the description worth changing. We'd just be moving the page from Main.School Study Media to UsefulNotes.School Study Media.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 21st 2022 at 5:04:59 AM

Moving to Useful Notes dipped down to 2.11:1, which is barely above consensus range, so as a heads up, if we end up with no options being within consensus range (2:1 or higher) on the 24th, I intend to close the thread with no action being taken. Of course, as I'm writing this, we have two more days to see what happens.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 22nd 2022 at 7:03:54 AM

If Useful Note wins, we should probably rewrite the description to remove the third paragraph's current focus on "this thing I had to read/watch for high school English". The trope is broader than that. Maybe we could add something about lesson planning or how works come to be School Study Media.

In regards to concerns about From Entertainment to Education being about entertainment used in education for other disciplines, the trope description doesn't actually have that restriction. It's only present in the School Study Media link.

Edited by VerySunshine on Mar 22nd 2022 at 2:41:05 AM

That entire paragraph reads like Conversation in the Main Page (because it starts with the Word Cruft "It should also be noted" and then proceeds to ramble), just tacked onto the description instead of an example, so I have no problem with getting rid of the whole thing.

Edit: If we removed it, the page would look like this:

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 22nd 2022 at 4:02:51 AM

If it doesn't make that explicit it probably should, because "a fiction novel used to teach about astronomy" is very different from "a fiction novel used to teach about fiction novels".

The line about them not being written with the intent of being studied is weird. Is there a single work of fiction that was written for the express purpose of being studied academically and nothing else? the whole first paragraph reads as weirdly hostile, and (this is a more minor point) misdefines the word "canon".

Edited by TheMountainKing on Mar 22nd 2022 at 5:53:30 AM

The Film and Filmmaking and Language Arts and Writing folders dispute the differences.

The only works intended exclusively to be studied in academic settings that I can think of are professor vanity projects with tiny print runs. There might be works that have a large academic focus or were commisioned with educational settings in mind, but aren't exclusively for academia. For example, the original The Oregon Trail was commisioned by a school district, and Sim Refinery was created as a training tool for Chevron's oil refinery employees.

The Oregon Trail wasn't created to teach about video games. It was used as tool to teach students history, but they didn't do academic analysis of the game itself, the way you do with a novel in an English class. Same goes for simulations used in job training. I think those professor vanity projects are more motivated by vanity than by their utility for teaching.

The Film folder on From Entertainment to Education shouldn't exist, it's making the completely obvious statement that films are used in film classes to learn about film. The Language arts on is weird because both examples are actually films used to teach about writing, which might be better, but honestly using Pixar movies to teach about story structure (using fiction to learn about fiction), seems meaningless.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Mar 22nd 2022 at 11:25:34 AM

What about this tweaked version of what I previously posted? I removed the "canon" part and tried to make the first paragraph less snarky.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 22nd 2022 at 10:48:21 AM

That still keeps the weird line about the works not being intended for academic analysis, as if there are some books that are "supposed" to be analyzed academically and some that aren't (fittingly it's a pothole to What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic? a page that is weirdly hostile to the idea of literary analysis).

That "not for kids" statement is weird too.

The second and third sentences still feel off, but I can't figure out how to fix them.

At this point, this is looking like a Useful Note. I'm changing my vote. (Edit: Seems like the crowner won't let me.)

Edited by VerySunshine on Mar 22nd 2022 at 12:28:21 PM

I think your version looks good. I don't have any problem with using it for the final version of the page if nobody else objects.

Double posting because I copied VerySunshine's draft to Sandbox.School Study Media partially to make it easier to edit, and partially for readability; the forum doesn't seem to handle line breaks the same way as the wiki, so the first two paragraphs don't have a space between them on the forum, but they do on the wiki.

That's a result of the folder markup not being broken from the paragraph. Still easier to use a sandbox for this anyway.

I dislike sentences 2-4

• "More notable": we care about Pokemon Oneshot About Nurse Joy as much as we care about The Great Gatsby
• Fanfics I wrote for school - how is that relevant
• Epileptic Trees and Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory - this sentence reads as facetious. Sometimes deeper meanings and symbolism are intended, guys.

Good point. I torched them. As an added bonus, the article now opens up with a single, brief sentence, and Brevity Is Wit.

The "more notable than popular fiction" was poor phrasing on my part. I was trying to convey the idea implied by "people who don't normally read books will claim to have read this". How about something like this: "Academics consider these works to be more culturally significant than ordinary popular works, even if the school study media was originally released for mass audiences. Many of these are part of a 'canon', or standard set of works studied in academia."

I'm thinking of the term 'literary canon' here.

I added the first sentence. I left out the second one because I was afraid we'd be back at square one regarding what was previously brought up about the article's use of the word "canon".

Then I'm taking out the line about the Western Canon for the same reasons.

No objections. I didn't even notice that part until you removed it.

They're considered cultural significant, but that doesn't separate them from "popular fiction". The fact that the books taught in middle and high school aren't very avant-garde isn't an accident, they need to be accessible to the average student. There are plenty of books that are culturally important but aren't commonly taught because they're considered too difficult. The whole page has this weird idea that the height of ivory tower academia is a high school English class.

I also should say that this page is related to the idea of canon, it's just that "the books you read in school" is just an aspect of canon, not it’s literal definition.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Mar 23rd 2022 at 8:40:41 AM