Pickles gonna be fine.


And just because:

I read The Odyssey in high school and it wasn't in ancient Greek. Shakespeare's work is important enough as a cultural touchstone that teaching it is mandatory imo, but there has to be a better way than lolfootnote hell.

If you take the purpose of HS English lit classes to be teaching students to engage critically with literature (as opposed to learning about the role of thumb-biting among Veronese street toughs if Veronese street toughs were basically London street toughs), then obviously Shakespeare is not the best choice, because most English literature is much more accessible. Not much more to it than that.

It's also funny how it's mostly liberal types turning out to cheer for imposing the deadest and whitest part of the Dead White Guy canon on students.

Bro if you're confused by thumb-biting it's because you don't UNDERSTAND ENGLISH

We watched West Side Story after reading R&J. Can't really say that connected with the class any better tbh.

My highschool teacher actually gave us a "translated" Hamlet. It was set up so the translated English was on left, original on right, with annotations.

What would make you think that?

I got an A in English Lit in our equiv of high school, so she must have been doing something right. It likely helped that I was able to choose essay questions on Animal Farm and not the Shakespeare book we studied that final year (Romeo and Juliet iirc).

The reason I and many others 'got' AF more than Shakespeare was it managed to be a hugely more complex and intricate story as a full on allegory of Stalinism (R&J is YA forlorn relationship bull**** not much better than Twilight, plus he stole almost the entire story) but it never pushed you out of the story with archaic words and phrases.

90% of the teaching on Shakespeare is going to be "this is what this word means" whereas with Orwell 90% of the teaching is "this is what this character represents". Knowing what biting a thumb at someone means did nothing for me but I actually learned something when I found out Mollie represented the upper middle class.

lol

dude

It's funny how you don't understand what racism is or how it works. Also funny how you think Shakespeare is "dead."

Gonna need some footnotes to make this comprehensible

Yeah try reading. The students filed a complaint saying they were attacked by their professor. The professor said they filed a complaint because of the content of her lecture.

Seeing Shakespeare performed well really helps kids appreciate it more. I remember seeing Kenneth Branaugh's Henry the Fifth and loving it. Because of the strength of the performance, the meaning of the text was evident.

It also helps to just have a good teacher. I had an enthusiastic teacher who taught Shakespeare (who also happened to teach drama) and he would help us get through parts and explain jokes that we otherwise might have missed.

Yes, it was difficult. What I find alarming is the people who seemingly want to dismiss it because it was hard. Cause high school students don't get anything out of something they have to work for?

Now that I'm older, I'm surprised how many references to Shakespeare you see in popular culture. Not to mention that even today there are constantly remakes, adaptations, etc. Again, assuming I'm not a freak, I believe people who worked through Shakespeare got a lot out of it and find still see value in it (in my case almost 30 years later).

Approaching Shakespeare as a play to see and subsequently read, instead of just text to read improves the experience a lot.

90%

I agree with Max (gasp). math success (at the level sklansky is talking about, at least) is much more a function of hard work than natural talent.

But 90% can't score in the top 2%. Clearly a trick question.

Breaking Bad >>>>>>crappy Orwell novels then.

How fitting that a thread about the importance of teaching math to kids turns into a thread about how much people hated reading class as kids.

I realize that. I'm saying I don't believe them. I could be wrong, but I've seen variations on this theme before and it's usually just butthurt students.

Yep. So many parents pass the belief on to their children that only people with the "math gene" or whatever the **** are strong in math. I believe Max is right, almost anyone can succeed. Practice makes good! This has been discussed before, but there are people graduating American high schools who haven't mastered the four basic operations of arithmetic. This is unacceptable.

I quiz my nieces on math all the time. The younger ones are better but the oldest is kind of bad. I blame the school tho. She's supposed to be in a sort of special ed (troubled childhood doesn't tend to help with leaving) and they were trying to get my sister to take her out. My sister questioned them because her reading scores were low and it turns out they weren't giving her the extra reading curriculum they were supposed to so they were trying to get her out of the program so they wouldn't get in trouble for not doing what they were supposed to.

Well fwiw, I would include "actual instruction" in with "hard work". The point is there is no such thing as "math people" as the term is commonly used.

I think there are math people. I was a math person until I started blowing it off in calculus.

I agree. I was trying to use an anecdote to illustrate that some folks don't even get the chance to improve like they should.

right, I'm just clarifying my position