What would you propose in its stead, and why?
Comment on Mitochondria
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
If we’re going to scrap something from high school to add a tax lesson, let’s ditch some literature. Over four years my graduating class studied 5 shakespeare plays and a handful of sonnets. Surely we could have cut out Much Ado About Nothing and The Tempest if we still have Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet and Henry V.
Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Surely we could have cut out Much Ado About Nothing and The Tempest
The only subject that was required for all four years when I was in high school was English, and senior year English was all British literature, so we got Chaucer, Shakespeare, the Bronte’s, shit like that.
Honestly I think later high school English classes do more to beat any love of reading teenagers have out of them by force feeding them dire dour old ugly hateful and just plain obsolete shit written by damaged people who lived in a world before the invention of epidemiology so sometimes your neighborhood would die of cholera because someone’s pit toilet leaked into the ground water.
Make English 4 if not English 3 electives rather than required. Replace them with a semester of driver’s ed, taxes, fire safety, how to safely refrigerate chicken, I can think of a lot of shit that would benefit the world more than having teenagers read a Skakespeare play they don’t get aloud.
GiveMemes@jlai.lu 1 week ago
When Americans already can’t read, you’re seriously suggesting doing away with requiring English for all 4 years? I understand wanting to change the material, but that just seems really heavy-handed and counterproductive.
Microplasticbrain@lemm.ee 1 week ago
If they can’t read by junior year of highschool I very much adoubt fucking Shakespeare is going to be the aha moment
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
If it’s that bad the problem is earlier than 12th grade and needs to be fixed there. I started flight school in 9th grade, I had no problem reading textbooks that said things like “Aerodynamics of maneuvering flight” in them.
Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Make English 4 if not English 3 electives rather than required. Replace them with a semester of […] how to safely refrigerate chicken
Imo, this is something that can be taught in a basic foods/cooking class, or a home economics class (which has at least been taught in the past ^[1]^ — I haven’t found any current data).
References
1. “Why is home economics not taught in schools anymore?”. Author: Cortney Moore. FOX Business Network. Published: 2020-06-16T17:44Z16:44Z. Accessed: 2024-12-11T05:17Z. foxbusiness.com/…/home-economics-not-taught-schoo…. - ¶2. > […] in 2013, the number of students enrolled in a home economics class was a little over 3.4 million, which were taught by more than 27,800 teachers […]
Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Make English 4 if not English 3 electives rather than required. Replace them with a semester of […] fire safety
I disagree that this should be in some form of course. I think that this can be taught in a short afternoon visit by a fire department — it may even be already.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I am convinced beyond internet argument that you wouldn’t be better off eliminating a semester of English Literature class from the end of high school and replace it with a semester of “living in the world” lessons that might just be a week of driver’s ed, that field trip to the fire department, some first aid, just cram a semester full of basic adulting skills.
We used to call this “Home Economics” but that got stigmatized as the cake baking class girls took while the boys were in shop class, and then women doing housework became a politically charged issue so we deprecated even that.
But give it four years and we won’t have a public education system in this country at all anyway, so all this does is vindicate my decision to not have children.
Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Make English 4 if not English 3 electives rather than required. Replace them with a semester of driver’s ed […]
I disagree.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
How many hours of the average American’s life will be spent behind the wheel of a car?
How many hours of the average American’s life will be spent examining 400 year old stage plays?
If they get something wrong behind the wheel of a car, what’s the worst that can happen?
If they get something wrong examining a 400 year old stage play, what’s the worst that can happen?
I propose that teaching Shakespeare instead of more in depth driver’s ed isn’t entirely ethical.
Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Make English 4 if not English 3 electives rather than required.
For clarity, are you saying that you don’t think that it should be mandatory that English, or any of its derivatives, be taught as a course to children?
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I’m questioning the importance of literature class as I remember it taught in late high school.
Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I think later high school English classes do more to beat any love of reading teenagers have out of them by force feeding them […] obsolete shit […]
How are you defining “obsolete”?
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Much of the language Shakespeare uses is obsolete to a modern English speaker. Let’s start with his use of the archaic second person singular thee thy thou and move on from there to words we don’t use anymore like “contumely” or “orisons” and then arrive at metaphors that haven’t made sense since the industrial revolution. Shakespeare wrote in English v. 2.3.1, here in the 21st century we speak English v. 6.13.2.
Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
Reading comprehension is more important than ever … And you want to cut the classes that teach it? Why?
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I’m unconvinced that Shakespeare is a particularly good exercise in reading comprehension given the vocabulary, phraseology, spelling and grammar is 500 years out of date.
I remember reading Hamlet out loud in class, and that was the last of the plays we studied so we had read some Shakespeare before, and every other thing you’re running into a sentence that doesn’t work or a word that is NEVER said except in Hamlet like 'contumely" or ‘orisons’ and you just get a room full of teenagers saying words one by one taking none of it on board.
Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
If anything, learning to understand words from a text without knowing their definition makes it better for that
Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Hrm I’d argue that regardless of the parlance used in the work, it’s still an exercise of reading comprehension, as one is still comprehending the work while reading it.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Especially in something like Shakespeare’s case I don’t think that’s necessarily true, because 1. a lot of the vocabulary is just…not English anymore. Let me ask you: what part of speech is the word “contumely”? Is it a noun? An adverb? An adjective? 2. Not all of the information is there. Shakespeare only ever wrote down the dialog not the stage directions because he told that stuff to his actors in person. Comprehending the play by reading the dialog alone is difficult because the context is missing.
The gravedigger in Hamlet is in the habit of saying “argal.” Because he heard someone literate say “ergo” and he uses it right, as a synonym of “therefore” but he doesn’t pronounce it right. It’s an interesting bit of characterization because it shows the gravedigger maybe should have had a chance at some school. I realized this watching the Kenneth Branaugh production years later when I found it in an old stack of VHS tapes, not in 12th grade listening to my classmate Jeremy try to read it without having it explained to him first. He kept pronouncing it “ARgul” rather than “arGALL” so he never heard himself say the joke.
Perhaps my English teacher could have done a better job conducting this lesson but was this really a useful exercise in reading comprehension?
fsxylo@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I’d argue it does the opposite for literacy. You tell some teenager with a third grade reading level to read “thou prithy foresooth bout thy they thou thumb” and they are going to completely check out.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
“Man, I can’t do this.”