My school has a tendency to teach English and History classes alongside each other. For example, when we studied ancient Greece in History we read from The Odyssey in English, and we read Animal Farm around the time we were learning about WWII. It isn't a perfect system, but it is a way to give the books some historical context, and it also helped get some of the kids engaged. You'd hear a lot of, "Oh, yeah, we just learned about that in our other class..."
I'm not so convinced that allowing students to pick their own reading material would encourage analytical thinking. I've tutored many a person whose notion of analysis coincides with summarizing a work while trying very hard not to overtly praise it in the interest of neutrality. Sometimes it can be helpful not to know how you feel about a given work, if only because it could prompt you to look at it from different angles.
And better than thy stroke; why swellest thou then?I don't see how that section is even necessary to schooling. The only reason fiction is encouraged is to get people interested in learning on their own. The same as sports are only supposed to be sampled so that you don't need to do standardized gym training.
Fight smart, not fair.Not anything that can't be taught now. Whether or not it can teach doesn't mean it should be on mandatory curriculum.
Fight smart, not fair.Culture is an aggregate of the whole society's knowledge and actions. So, um, good luck with that.
I did not personally like everything I was assigned either. That doesn't make it innately worthless. (For one thing, now I know that people who like Holden Caulfield are probably going to annoy me with their disaffected attitude and should thus be avoided. :p)
edited 4th Aug '11 11:00:19 AM by DomaDoma
Hail Martin Septim!It's not about liking it, it's about utilitarian value. Art appreciation doesn't have any, so it doesn't get to be on the mandatory curriculum, simple as that. Literacy does, so it does get to be on the curriculum.
Exposing students to a varied set of writing styles and genres is more likely to spur an interest in pursuing literacy for the sake of their hobby. Same as exposing them to various comic books or tabletop games. Later, writing skills are necessary, so that's what later classes should focus on, particularly technical writing and information processing.
Fight smart, not fair.Deboss, simply exposing children to things won't make them choose to do it as a hobby. My mother read the same books to both myself and my younger brother. These days I have two book shelves stuffed with books plus a few piled on my floor, my brother uses his bookcase to hold his collection of beer bottles. When he had a test, he quizzed me on it, since he hadn't read the book and I had.
On Topic, I'd like to see more Mythology(Greek, Norse, Asian, ect), and fairy tales.
I am a nobody. Nobody is perfect. Therefore, I am perfect.Or maybe it's just me. I was always taught that you shouldn't overanalyze anything, as the author may have just meant that something in a story was just that: something presented in a story, and nothing more (I know there's a trope for it, but the name escape me).
Edit:
That's it, thanks!
edited 5th Aug '11 3:46:34 PM by Newfable
I'm not expecting them to choose it as a hobby on a high percentage of the time, just as I'm not someone to take up sports after exposure. I do believe it will have a result in a sufficient percentage of them.
If we're popping off anecdotes, my brother was functionally illiterate past high school, he didn't pick up serious reading skills until he took up some table top games and had to analyze the rule books. Ergo: showing students something that might interest them is better than bludgeoning them with crap called classics and then bitching when they don't care.
I think the trope Newfable is thinking of is What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic? or some such. It's one of those crappy snowclones.
Fight smart, not fair.It's not that the books are old. Remember those Newbery books in fifth or sixth grade? You can't tell me that Hatchet and The Egypt Game aren't awesome, but sufficiently picked apart, any book looks like bird cage liner. Hence my initial suggestion god knows how many pages ago that stories should be taught in the way that actually affects people - which is to say, as stories, not as a fiendish code intercepted from an enemy who really likes genitals and identity politics.
Hail Martin Septim!Agree there. Can't say I remember Hatchet or The Egypt Game. Wait, was Hatchet about this dude moving into a log cabin on native american land?
Fight smart, not fair.Hatchet was the one about the kid who survives a plane crash in the middle of the Canadian wilderness and he has to take a sink-or-swim crash course in wilderness survival. We spent way, way more time on his mom's adultery than its role in the story merited.
I think you might be talking about Sign of the Beaver, though I never read that one.
edited 5th Aug '11 10:23:41 AM by DomaDoma
Hail Martin Septim!I only vaguely remember that one. Like one or two plot points. I think I might have read that one twice for class or something, normally I don't reread things.
Fight smart, not fair.Tabletop game source books would make a horrible basis for a curriculum.
There's a very good reason to make students read the greatest stories available rather than Dungeons And Dragons rule books.
“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. BernardWell, seeing as "the greatest stories available" excludes any classical literature, I don't see why you're promoting that standard.
I think I remember the cover to Hatchet. Maybe.
Fight smart, not fair.

Yeah, Lord of the Rings deserves a spot, if only because it largely defined the fantasy genre.