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Classic Literature, it's Elementary?
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subego
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Oct 12, 2018, 10:04 AM
 
I just remembered our 4th grade teacher had us kill mice with a pushpin to feed her snake.

That’s like, not normal, right?
     
sek929
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Oct 12, 2018, 01:06 PM
 
Good lord!
     
The Final Dakar
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Oct 12, 2018, 02:06 PM
 
Did she also take you guys on a field trip to see a corpse near the train tracks?
     
subego  (op)
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Oct 12, 2018, 02:18 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
Did she also take you guys on a field trip to see a corpse near the train tracks?
Closer than you’d think.

She took us on a field trip to see Lord of the Flies.

I’m not making this up.
     
subego  (op)
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Oct 12, 2018, 03:10 PM
 
Thinking about it, my school definitely tried to push the boundaries of “age appropriate” material.

While showing Lord of the Flies to 9-year-olds is insane, that same teacher read us Clan of the Cave Bear. I actually think that was age appropriate... I mean, I got something out of it... but in keeping with her insanity, she left in all the graphic sex.

Different teacher took us to see an exhibit of drawings from children who lived through Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were generally drawings of people with all their skin falling off. I guess that’s age-appropriate too, but hoooooly shit was it a kick in the chest.
     
The Final Dakar
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Oct 12, 2018, 05:31 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
Closer than you’d think.

She took us on a field trip to see Lord of the Flies.

I’m not making this up.
Just a few months ago I was having a conversation with a high schooler about the terrible reading I was assigned. Lord of Flies topped the list as the most ****ed up one I had to deal with. Also, terrible.
     
subego  (op)
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Oct 12, 2018, 09:52 PM
 
The book was read to us beforehand, and the movie was supposed to be the cherry on top. Also note, I was the fat kid.

I zoned during the book, which I guess is my literature review.

My grade school showed more ****ed up shit than it forced us to read. In rough order of ****ed,

1) Lord of the Flies (age 9)
2) The Orson Welles Nostradamus “documentary” with no corrective... that was part of a student project. (Age 13)
3) Drawings of nuclear bomb victims. (Age 9)
4) El Norte, which is about illegal immigrants. Spoiler: they all die. (Age 12)

I’m fine with 3 and 4, but 1 and 2 were just negligent.
( Last edited by subego; Oct 12, 2018 at 10:50 PM. )
     
subego  (op)
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Oct 12, 2018, 10:49 PM
 
In contrast, my high school was tame. I think I can remember everything I was assigned in English.

Catcher in the Rye (natch)
The Chocolate War
Julius Caesar
Selections from the Bible
Romeo & Juliet
Cat’s Cradle
Moby Dick
Twelfth Night
Kafka
The Natural
Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game
Anna Karenina
Crime & Punishment
Huckleberry Finn


The Bible wins for ****ed up. I say that with no snark. Kafka wants the honor, but I thought he tried too hard.


In terms of what we were shown, we got to see a boob in the Zeffirelli version of Romeo & Juliet. One of the students unironically screamed “PUT SOME CLOTHES ON, WOMAN!”
( Last edited by subego; Oct 29, 2018 at 08:53 PM. )
     
andi*pandi
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Oct 15, 2018, 01:06 PM
 
Lord of the Flies was middle school reading for us, I think. Advanced english. Animal Farm also? 1984?
Fahreinheit 451 was high school.
     
Jawbone54
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Oct 15, 2018, 01:52 PM
 
Lord of the Flies and 1984 were the most impactful novels I was ever assigned in school.

...and they're still in my top-5 novels of all-time. Is that messed up?
     
subego  (op)
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Oct 15, 2018, 02:41 PM
 
Thanks for the split!
     
subego  (op)
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Oct 15, 2018, 02:49 PM
 
Originally Posted by Jawbone54 View Post
Lord of the Flies and 1984 were the most impactful novels I was ever assigned in school.

...and they're still in my top-5 novels of all-time. Is that messed up?
Yes.

Because Animal Farm is better.
     
andi*pandi
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Oct 15, 2018, 02:51 PM
 
No, they were groundbreaking. I wouldn't have a 4th grader read them, but an 8th grader learning how society works, yeah that's important. It ties into when you start learning more complex history too.
     
subego  (op)
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Oct 15, 2018, 05:19 PM
 
Originally Posted by andi*pandi View Post
I wouldn't have a 4th grader read them...
In my case, that was really the thing. Lord of the Flies is just going to scar a 4th grader.

It’ll scar an 8th grader, too, but it won’t just do that.
     
Thorzdad
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Oct 15, 2018, 08:16 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
I just remembered our 4th grade teacher had us kill mice with a pushpin to feed her snake.

That’s like, not normal, right?
No. We just dropped the mice in live and enjoyed the show.
     
subego  (op)
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Oct 16, 2018, 12:29 AM
 
Originally Posted by Thorzdad View Post
No. We just dropped the mice in live and enjoyed the show.
Geriatric snake. Couldn’t catch ‘em.

Edit: I remember leading up to the executions there was a period where the mouse and the snake hung out together for a week both starving to death.

Sitcoms aren’t what they used to be.
( Last edited by subego; Oct 16, 2018 at 02:09 AM. )
     
subego  (op)
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Oct 16, 2018, 02:35 PM
 
The only books I remember being assigned in grade school are A Christmas Carol and Johnny Tremain.
     
andi*pandi
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Oct 16, 2018, 03:55 PM
 
Grade school:
6th grade we read the Lord of the Rings, there was a girl who was sure she'd hate it but ended up loving it and read the Hobbit. Teacher was cool. If we didn't want to do a book report we had the option of standing in front of the room and singing instead. One girl totally rocked Joan Jett.

5th grade Bridge to Terabithia <sob>

I read a lot on my own so it's hard to recall what was school assigned. Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, anything with horses.
     
subego  (op)
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Oct 16, 2018, 05:00 PM
 
Originally Posted by andi*pandi View Post
6th grade we read the Lord of the Rings...
Yikes! I wouldn’t have had the patience for that in 6th grade, even as a D&D nerd.
     
subego  (op)
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Oct 16, 2018, 06:49 PM
 
Now I want Joan Jett to cover the songs in Lord of the Rings.
     
The Final Dakar
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Oct 16, 2018, 07:09 PM
 
Judging from this thread I had an atypical literary education. I don't recall much mandatory reading: Where the Red Fern Grows, Lord of the Flies, Romeo & Juliet, a few Edgar Allan Poe short stories...
     
subego  (op)
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Oct 17, 2018, 03:44 AM
 
In grade school we had the “Junior Great Books”, which were misnamed because they were almost all short stories. The two exceptions were the 5th grade edition, which had A Christmas Carol, and the 8th grade, which had Antigone.

Other than those two, the only things I remember from it are The Veldt, and there was series of Greek Myths in there somewhere.
( Last edited by subego; Oct 17, 2018 at 04:34 AM. )
     
subego  (op)
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Oct 17, 2018, 07:15 AM
 
I mentioned we had to read Johnny Tremain. For those unfamiliar, it’s historical fiction about a teenager who’s around the events leading up to the American Revolution. That’s about all I remember. I doubt I read the whole thing.

On the other hand, I vividly remember an assignment for it, which was to put on a play of select scenes.

We were unsupervised.

By the end, a bunch of us were standing on the HMS Folding Table, and from a height of about six feet we hurled poor little Jay Agudo, on his back, into Boston Harbor.

Or, a gym mat on the floor if you want to get technical.

The teacher walked in on our third run-through, and, well... he basically lost his shit. We were on double-secret supervision there for awhile.
     
Laminar
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Oct 17, 2018, 07:29 AM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
Judging from this thread I had an atypical literary education. I don't recall much mandatory reading: Where the Red Fern Grows, Lord of the Flies, Romeo & Juliet, a few Edgar Allan Poe short stories...
I'm probably closer to elementary/middle/high school than most of you () and I can't think of a single required reading I had to do. I read a ton growing up, I just don't remember being assigned anything. Most of my classic literary knowledge comes from watching Wishbone.
     
andi*pandi
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Oct 17, 2018, 07:43 AM
 
I had the great books also, 6/7 grade I think. The Veldt, a vonnegut story about children who were too good being weighed down/ugly masks so no one would feel inadequate... I think I still have those books.

We read Antigone in college in french.

Wishbone! I think that was after my time but my nieces watched that.
     
subego  (op)
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Oct 17, 2018, 08:03 AM
 
Harrison Bergeron was the Vonnegut.

That was assigned in my 4th grade, but we got it as a photocopy.
     
subego  (op)
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Oct 17, 2018, 08:43 AM
 
Originally Posted by Laminar View Post
I'm probably closer to elementary/middle/high school than most of you () and I can't think of a single required reading I had to do. I read a ton growing up, I just don't remember being assigned anything. Most of my classic literary knowledge comes from watching Wishbone.
My grade school seemed to push away from a reading syllabus for the 7th and 8th graders. A couple times a year we’d have to pick a book and do something with it, but it was all pretty loosey-goosey.

That switched gears in high school, where they took an old fashioned “English as literature review” approach.
     
andi*pandi
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Oct 20, 2018, 08:58 AM
 
High school:
Romeo and Juliet
The Pearl
Great Gatsby
The Scarlet Letter (way too long discussing that)
Hamlet
     
The Final Dakar
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Oct 20, 2018, 12:16 PM
 
Yes, add Hamlet to my list.
     
subego  (op)
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Oct 20, 2018, 08:41 PM
 
I’m far from a Shakespeare expert, but I think his comedies might be something schools should look into.
     
   
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