tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20099192.post8101503310688491936..comments2024-01-28T03:35:51.182-05:00Comments on Reassigned Time: Crazy's Dream High School English CurriculumDr. Crazyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12457967076373916629noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20099192.post-7974943377715606522010-02-01T13:59:00.241-05:002010-02-01T13:59:00.241-05:00I love the option of Medea instead of Oedipus Rex....I love the option of Medea instead of Oedipus Rex. I always found it tragic that my classes ignored Euripides, when I thought he was the most accessible and interesting of the Greek playwrights. I got far more out of Medea than I did from Oedipus, and I thought it had much more to discuss for a modern, high school class. I also thought it was less alienating for the women and minorities in the class, because it actually approaches issues of race and sex, instead of ignoring them (like most of the Eurocentric canon which I was raised on and love anyway).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20099192.post-63424804209948500032010-01-31T21:52:48.400-05:002010-01-31T21:52:48.400-05:00We actually read a lot of the OT in an undergradua...We actually read a lot of the OT in an undergraduate literary origins class, exploring it through the theme of tragedy. I remember gaining a new appreciation for the books of Samuel that way.Brian Ulrichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06986631330360998134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20099192.post-36865875579243695172010-01-31T21:01:51.508-05:002010-01-31T21:01:51.508-05:00My Bible unit does sections from Genesis, Exodus, ...My Bible unit does sections from Genesis, Exodus, Proverbs, Psalms, and then we try to do the life, death, resurrection of Jesus. At my school, they get the five faiths in history in 9th grade, but I do enjoy getting to teach what we do- in addition to allusions, it brings up some of the oldest themes and symbols, that we then see repeated throughout the year, and the language is so lovely and figurative that the students enjoy that as well. It's also a good exercise in critical reading as they try to separate what they know from their religious backgrounds and what they see in the actual text.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13658961567501794718noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20099192.post-37591804895442251742010-01-31T20:43:39.361-05:002010-01-31T20:43:39.361-05:00I'm totally in favor of the bible as literatur...I'm totally in favor of the bible as literature, don't get me wrong. I just think it would make sense to teach the five major world religions in general--and not place that burden on teachers of literature, who may only need to teach a limited amount of sacred text to make the context of allusions clear. But I do get the need to know the bible for reading literature. <br /><br />I was more interested in actual content because parts of the bible are totally not public high school appropriate. So we're talking the not racy Old Testament stories? The gospels?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20099192.post-63122899640280584742010-01-31T15:37:42.441-05:002010-01-31T15:37:42.441-05:00I may use your high school curriculum as a reading...I may use your high school curriculum as a reading list. I've read chunks of it, but other parts I've skipped. My great joy last fall was to teach with a colleague in 19th c US lit, and so I read Twain & Melville stuff I'd never read before.<br /><br />The odd thing is that I remember reading relatively little poetry in HS -- we did Chaucer (in translation) and Shakespeare's Sonnets in 12th grade, but I don't think much poetry as poetry. Certainly not the Romantics... I don't think I read Dickinson or Whitman until I was in college.Susanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09716705206734059708noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20099192.post-89373740107399911542010-01-31T15:23:59.178-05:002010-01-31T15:23:59.178-05:00This is a great list, but now add to it that we tr...This is a great list, but now add to it that we try to teach only four major texts a year, plus a few poets, and now you know part of why these are such tough decisions to make! I sometimes feel like people get outraged at what isn't being taught in high school these days without thinking of this very practical consideration. And like WN says, we're also teaching the basics of composition, grammar and critical reading, plus vocabulary!<br /><br />I do, however, get to teach the Bible as Literature, and I love it, especially since my ninth graders are also getting a unit on the five major faiths, so they make all kinds of connections with Abraham and the meaning of prophets and it's awesome! We do an allusion project in this unit for precisely the reason you mention--so much richness in Western literature and culture is lost when you do not recognize Biblical allusions.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13658961567501794718noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20099192.post-61500583418522954882010-01-31T15:14:00.819-05:002010-01-31T15:14:00.819-05:00Interesting list. We read a few of the earlier wor...Interesting list. We read a few of the earlier works in my high school, and, well, I really hated some of them. This may have been in part because of WHEN I was asked to read them. "A Tale of Two Cities" the summer before freshman year? HATED. "The Odyssey" over winter break? HATED. And some authors that I read later--e.g. Hawthorne, Equiano, Behn--I highly doubt that even I, a literature-obsessed high school student, would've dug.<br /><br />Clearly this is about taste more than the worth of your list. Your list just got me thinking.<br /><br />So, perhaps extraneously, I'd like to mention those works that I read in high school that I loved (we had an excellent English department--it was an International Baccalaureate school, which surely changed the curricular options). These are, to the best of my recollection, the books that drove me to become an English major:<br /><br />Poetry by Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, "Madame Bovary," "As I Lay Dying," "To the Lighthouse" [LOVED it even at age 17 or whatever], "A Room of One's Own," "Death in Venice" and other stories by Thomas Mann [I became a lifelong Mann fan after that unit], "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," and Ngugi's "A River Between."<br /><br />Oh, and I really liked "Ethan Frome." Heh. I was probably the only one in my class, though.<br /><br />I'm not sure what my point is, exactly, but I think there is some literature that students aren't prepared to be gripped by in high school, but I have no idea how to judge that (and there's no way to appeal to everyone, obviously). My brother's high school English teacher once told his class that Dostoevsky was his favorite writer, but that he'd never teach him to high school students because he shouldn't be read until one is older. There's something to that, I think (and I may well have actually liked Dickens if I hadn't been exposed to him too early).<br /><br />But I do get, too, that what you're after isn't the literature that students will love, but a cultural awareness that will help them in later years. If it can do both, so much the better. (And a lot on your list looks excellent to me.)heu mihihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08529298049179816825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20099192.post-22853868803088930912010-01-31T12:47:27.504-05:002010-01-31T12:47:27.504-05:00Great list. Many, I might even say most, students...Great list. Many, I might even say most, students who end up in my classroom have read Hawthorne in high school--and, as a result, HATE Hawthorne. I wonder every semester why the short stories don't get chosen instead, as more appropriate in all kinds of ways to the kinds of questions that high school students might want to discuss. And wish every semester that I could have The Scarlet Letter back.hylonomehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05261512351192250513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20099192.post-12145953604774867142010-01-31T11:48:01.075-05:002010-01-31T11:48:01.075-05:00Re: Bible as Lit, I think that the Bible is extrem...Re: Bible as Lit, I think that the Bible is extremely useful to read in a literature course (a course I TA'd in read selections from the old and new testament) but I got no Bible (or any other religious text) in high school. Luckily, I caught Biblical references because I'd attended Catholic school from K-8, but my BFF went to public school all the way through, and so her knowledge of the Bible was fairly limited to pop culture re-renderings of Biblical stuff (the movie The Ten Commandments, Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat, Jesus Christ Superstar, for example). I know she ends up spending time just telling her freshmen basic stories from the Bible because they've never encountered them - like, they don't know who Judas is, for example. In that regard, I think assigning parts of the Bible is useful just for catching allusions if for nothing else. This isn't a substitute for a religion course, but often I think the Bible (and other religious texts) get dumped into lit courses in a secular setting, for fear that "teaching religion" somehow violates students' personal beliefs. (Note: I think that fear is totally stupid.) Oh, and I should note that while I was strong in knowing the biblical references, I didn't actually really understand anything about Islam or even really protestant Christianity in any sort of a sophisticated way until I was in college. (I remember in grade school thinking that Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, Jr. were the same person, and was shocked to learn that they were in fact two totally different people later on.)<br /><br />Also, I know that a goodly portion of my list is stuff that I either read on my own in high school and then either later encountered in college, or that I encountered for the first time in college. A lot of my reasoning behind the list is that I wish my students entered my classes with more of a foundation than they do for the stuff that I assign. While I don't necessarily need students to have read everything in the whole world, it would be nice if they'd at least have HEARD of some of the authors/texts that I assign. Things my students this semester have never heard of: Samuel Beckett, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Adrienne Rich, just to name a few. I'd happily get rid of The Red Badge of Courage, for example if it meant that it could be replaced with something that would be more relevant to them later on.<br /><br />What Now: Thanks for weighing in! And yes, things do take MUCH longer to teach in a high school context, and that does limit one's options hugely, and it's something worth remembering for those of us who teach college.Dr. Crazyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12457967076373916629noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20099192.post-37631315019076835852010-01-31T11:21:39.641-05:002010-01-31T11:21:39.641-05:00You could add Derek Walcott's version of The O...You could add Derek Walcott's version of The Odyssey, which would certainly offer a cool critical counterpoint to the Eurocentrism. And it's very readable!Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16034528640228752280noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20099192.post-43104475699230432472010-01-31T11:20:35.626-05:002010-01-31T11:20:35.626-05:00It's an interesting exercise, isn't it? An...It's an interesting exercise, isn't it? And, having just been grumping away on my own blog about curriculum debates in my HS department, I will say that we actually teach quite a lot on your dream curriculum.<br /><br />The biggest challenge I found when I moved from teaching college to teaching HS was that suddenly there were so many other things besides literature that I was also supposed to be teaching: writing, grammar, vocabulary mostly, in a far more deliberate and extensive way that I ever had (and I'm still figuring out how to teach those things well). And so, although the HS year is so much longer that a college semester, one has time for far less reading than one would at first think. Plus, my school has limits on how much homework we can assign -- very reasonable, I think, since we're trying to teach them how to work hard but also protect them from overwork, as befits their age -- and so suddenly a novel like Huck Finn takes *forever* to teach and thus squeezes out any number of other works one might include. So I spend a lot of time making peace with what I can and can't accomplish and trying to prioritize my many goals for my students -- something all teachers do, of course, but I feel it much more now that I'm a HS teacher.What Now?https://www.blogger.com/profile/04017629066466055668noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20099192.post-42776691690545374912010-01-31T10:38:01.712-05:002010-01-31T10:38:01.712-05:00I had a Bible as Lit class that read a fair bit of...I had a Bible as Lit class that read a fair bit of the OT, and it was great. The teacher did a really good job balancing the discussion, talking about how the text worked as a text, and helping me learn a bunch of stories that are very foundational to English lit (and American lit).Bardiachttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11846065504793800266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20099192.post-63934032120445892492010-01-31T01:38:29.130-05:002010-01-31T01:38:29.130-05:00I read a lot of this stuff in college. High schoo...I read a lot of this stuff in college. High school was more like the red badge of courage and stories like the scarlet ibis with poems by edgar allan poe.<br /><br />I'm curious about the idea of reading the Bible in a literature class. I think religion should be taught in high schools and not in a bible as literature kind of way. I'm just curious what part of the Bible Brian has in mind.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20099192.post-36934376840894474502010-01-30T22:10:40.954-05:002010-01-30T22:10:40.954-05:00Thanks for posting your list. I know that's ve...Thanks for posting your list. I know that's very bold because I think of posting my own list, and think of all the great classics I've forgotten and how it would be so totally incomplete. It's such a tough decision to make, maybe why it's so hard to do for high school curriculum people.FrauTechhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03466617977964303158noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20099192.post-18570882269634357042010-01-30T16:40:48.471-05:002010-01-30T16:40:48.471-05:00I totally agree ancient Greek stuff is foundationa...I totally agree ancient Greek stuff is foundational. I'd also add parts of the Bible in that category, and I think you've hit on why things change slowly in both literature and history. Ultimately what changes isn't (or shouldn't be) just addition/subtraction, but the questions and themes pursued.Brian Ulrichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06986631330360998134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20099192.post-24321524361571705942010-01-30T16:17:13.199-05:002010-01-30T16:17:13.199-05:00Brian,
Oh, yes, it's totally Eurocentric. Why ...Brian,<br />Oh, yes, it's totally Eurocentric. Why no Things Fall Apart? Well, because I forgot about it. Why no Garcia Marquez? Also forgot. Li Po I've never read, and same with the Ramayana, so those weren't even on my radar as possible choices. <br /><br />Re: The Odyssey and Oedipus, though, I would argue that reading those at the beginning as foundational texts, in the context of literature written in English, is necessary precisely because the Greeks are foundational to literature in English that comes after. That's the reason the canon takes so long to change. You can't switch out The Odyssey for the Ramayana, because if you do, all of a sudden 4 other things you might put on a syllabus no longer have context. But at a certain point, you can't squeeze anything else in, right? So what do you do? <br /><br />I tend to err on the side of a Eurocentrism, and I know this is a weakness of mine.Dr. Crazyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12457967076373916629noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20099192.post-58009154983957056682010-01-30T15:54:13.760-05:002010-01-30T15:54:13.760-05:00Kudos to Cisneros, as I wrote my senior seminar pa...Kudos to Cisneros, as I wrote my senior seminar paper (kind of like a mini-thesis, as my ug school didn't have a senior thesis option) on Woman Hollering Creek.<br /><br />That said, isn't this pretty Eurocentric? I'd definitely place Cisneros below the likes of Garcia Marquez, Li Po, Chinua Achebe, and the Ramayana. Granted you said English, but you are including Greece at the beginning.Brian Ulrichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06986631330360998134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20099192.post-11664581497184165532010-01-30T15:17:35.707-05:002010-01-30T15:17:35.707-05:00What a great list! Alas, I read only a few of tho...What a great list! Alas, I read only a few of those (19th century and canonical, mostly) in HS classes. We didn't do much pre-1800s except for a couple Shakespeare plays.<br /><br />I think your third point about assigning things that your students can/will actually read is important, as are your reasons for holding back Woolf's novels.Bardiachttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11846065504793800266noreply@blogger.com