Teaching people to hate literature.

scriba

RonMexico wrote: »

I am not sure what the hell is going on in second level these days but something is seriously wrong. Students are coming into third level to study literature and they have absolutely no interest. They just want to go to college. They look at literature as a chore, the majority of them do not even read outside of college. A lot of them barely even read the college texts. Then they qualify as a teacher and go into second level to teach a subject they have no interest in...oh... wait a minute :eek:

I wouldn't say the above applies to everyone, but it is widespread!

I think B.A. and B.Ed courses should have an aptitude test to weed out the likes of the above.

It is not the only problem, but it is a major one.

I completely agree. I am a first year tutor of a humanities subject at an Irish university and I am appalled by their 'abilities' they have picked up prior to third level. Grammar, argument, sentence construction are very poor, while they show reluctance and inability to engage with the texts on any level. It angers me that people are entering courses with no detectable interest in the course, or the bones of a necessary skillset to tackle it. Surely they would be better off working for a couple of years, before deciding what they truly want to do, rather than being shunted into third level for another three or four years of 'school'. I cannot figure out whether it is simply general apathy, a poorer standard of student due to results-driven spoon feeding of information, or something else.

Whatever babysitting has gone on at secondary level, I feel I want no part of it.

Apologies for the little rant.

RonMexico

You are right though Scriba, there is just something very very wrong about the attitude of our future teachers. I really think that the future of education in this country is bleak. I have had numerous students in my tutorial groups complaining about having to read.

Take a look at this article, you might find it interesting!

http://www.stumbleupon.com/s/#1IUEIl/www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1931810,00.html/

Captain Furball

Mardy Bum wrote: »

No I don't no. Have you read Ulysses?

No I haven't.Is it any good?

baalthor

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Quality literature is about the story not deeper meanings. Stories purely about deeper meanings are just propaganda pieces for the author and lack any true enjoyment value.

So you wouldn't recommend Gulliver's Travels or Animal Farm ? Or are these classic works just stories about midgets, giants and talking animals?

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Students being taught physics are taught simple terms first, and they start with modern physic theories and concepts, they aren't 400 year old physics, in 400 year old terminology, in order to get a better appreciation of modern physics.

When I was in school, (things may have changed since) we learned about Newton's Laws of Motion before we heard about Einstein's Theories or Quantum Theory. Newton published his Laws in 1687.

But even before that we had Archimedes Principle (Archimedes died around 212 BC) and in primary school we used the Sieve of Eratosthenes (died 200 BC ) to determine prime numbers.

So you really can't start learning about "modern" physics without understanding "old" physics first

Mark Hamill

baalthor wrote: »

So you wouldn't recommend Gulliver's Travels or Animal Farm ? Or are these classic works just stories about midgets, giants and talking animals?

I've never read Gullivers Travels, but I have read Animal Farm. And I didn't like it, because it wasn't in my opinion well written. It wasn't a carefully crafted story that happened to demonstrate Orwells political leanings, it was a carfeully crafted political dissertation with a story loosely draped around it. I found it very boring, the politics kept getting in the way of the story.
Edit: Of course if someone asked me to recommend them some political inspired fiction, then I would probably recommend it to them. It depends on who is asking for the recommendation and why.

baalthor wrote: »

When I was in school, (things may have changed since) we learned about Newton's Laws of Motion before we heard about Einstein's Theories or Quantum Theory. Newton published his Laws in 1687.

But even before that we had Archimedes Principle (Archimedes died around 212 BC) and in primary school we used the Sieve of Eratosthenes (died 200 BC ) to determine prime numbers.

So you really can't start learning about "modern" physics without understanding "old" physics first

Well, in reality you learn the simple concepts, before you learn the complicated concepts. I suppose physics wasn't the best analogy to use, as the simple concepts tend to be the old way of looking at things, hence you are shown them first. Thats not to say that you cant learn about the most modern physical theories first and by themselves, its just that they dont teach it that way.
The difference in literature, is that the simple things arent really explained at all (hence, as RonMexico and Scriba said above, many LC graduates are bearly literate), instead material which is deemed to be the best written, in terms of literary function (invariable quite old), is thrown at you nd then you are expected to gain the simple concepts from it.

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Valmont

donegalfella wrote: »

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Does the current system in this country not suggest otherwise?

Permabear

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RonMexico

donegalfella wrote: »

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You are dead right - the amount of students in third level that cobble together an essay via Cliff Notes, Spark Notes and Wikipedia is unbelievable. I couldn't figure it out and then I had a browse through the Leaving Cert forum on boards. What do I find only a sticky with a list of such websites and a thread where one student revealed that her Leaving Cert teacher pulls all her notes from Sparknotes.

I can't find a big enough facepalm picture on the internet to describe how I feel about this.

Valmont

donegalfella wrote: »

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Do you know what? I have no idea why I posted that. It makes no sense. That's what happens when you speed read and post impetuously.

Anyway, I agree with what you said. I paid for my education so my inherently biased position doesn't work well for me in third level fees debates.

EDIT: Ron, seeing your posts again reminded me to go out and buy a H.S. Thompson book so I now have Fear and Loathing on the Campaign trail '72 beside me. It's tough going what with all the characters to remember but the humour is keeping me interested.

Anouilh

donegalfella wrote: »

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That is a rather bleak assessment and it does not fit easily with my experience of my younger friends and their current activities.

Thanks to new media there is now a flowering in the visual arts among graduates in their twenties and thirties:

http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com/site-reviews-announcements/7623-blowing-a-friends-trumpet.html

Everybody seems to be up to date, even at the cutting edge, when it comes to reading and sharing ideas about the latest books.

But perhaps I am just fortunate and have not encountered the dulling effects of the educational system.

Also, I do not think that third level education should be a privilege. I benefitted enormously from a degree in French and English and many of the teachers I met in my very short career at the educational coalface were very interesting to talk to and passed on their enthusiasm for their subjects to their students.

The complaints about cutbacks in the educational system, caused by the recession, look set to continue.

RonMexico

I think the problem is really confined to secondary students and undergraduates.

That is the age group that really need to be tackled here.

I suppose it also doesn't help that a lot of parents would rather hand their children a Wii instead of reading a book with them. If they don't get into the habit of reading regularly at a young age then it is all the more difficult when they are teenagers and college goers.

Calina

donegalfella wrote: »

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I believe the point of the OP is that if this is the case, we're making an unholy mess of getting that message across to the misfortunates we inflict the LC course on.

I'm of the opinion that how literature is taught needs to be reassessed. The fact is a lot more kids read than read so called high literature. This is not because high literature is automatically difficult to access - Pride & Prejudice is an example of something which is very accessible albeit not necessarily appealing to all teenagers - but because the life of it is bled dry by the need to be examined on it. I think this is true for the Shakespeare as well. Those plays were written to stand alone as entertainment and were the popcorn flicks of their time. Now, however, they are overly accorded reverence, and are the Sunday missals of our time, literarily speaking. The assumption that they might not have relevance to the average teenager seems to be killing some people here but it is something that might benefit being considered. With the teenagers in question.

There is the issue however, that literature is taught to an exam format and the need to fulfill those requirements has a detrimental effect on how readers can approach the works they are reading. No one here has suggested that we reassess how we mark English literature although quite a few have complained about the rote learning required.

In my view, English literature should be separated off from English at leaving certificate level and made a) more challenging and b) optional. Marking should then be freed up a little away from what I recall to be rather formulaic marking by numbers.

In tandem with that, work would need to be done on the literature course for the Junior Certificate.

By the way, my favourite work of literature is not from the English canon, but from the French. The Count of Monte Cristo. I love it.

Valmont

Calina wrote: »

The Count of Monte Cristo. I love it.

That is the second time I've heard that this week. I must add it to my enormous pile of unread books. I should get to it in a year!

RonMexico

Yeah you have to finish Campaign Trail '72 first

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Corkfeen

The approach that they take at times is fairly horrendous. Though I have to admit out of all my classes english would be my favourite. I'm not sure if i'm gonna be left with a hatred of poetry by the end of it. You can't beat reading and writing though.

Lame Lantern

I would be happy with the removal of the notion that reading a book is a shortcut to intelligence. It prompts dry, bovine consumption of dry, bovine novels by dry, bovine authors. Literature should be examined and appreciated no differently than any other medium.

Calina

donegalfella wrote: »

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This sentence is key to what I said. As you omitted it I can only assume you didn't understand why it is key.

Calina wrote:

With the teenagers in question.

You clearly have not understood what I meant by this. I meant that the question of whether these things are relevant needs to be discussed with the population under consideration, not just lectured at them because they are too intellectually impoverished to understand why it's important to them. That is patronising and furthermore, it guarantees that many young people do not develop an interest in the material under consideration.

You are suggesting that a prescriptive approach continue to be taken to literary education which is fine and dandy and currently not adequately done for spelling and grammar; however for the purposes of getting teenagers to engage with and analyse great literature it is basically a giant failure.

I am proposing a more collaborative approach which still requires the students to actually read the stuff but actually engages with their feedback rather than providing a bundle of literature notes to be regurgitated in the examination.

I didn't expect to have to spell it out for you.

sceptre

Calina wrote: »

I didn't expect to have to spell it out for you.

I didn't expect to have to point out that getting narky personal in the Literature forum is a no-no either but here we are:)

Carry on minus the above...

Mark Hamill

donegalfella wrote: »

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But why shouldn't what students learn be relevent to them? I dont necessarily mean right when they are in school, but at sometime in their lives. I will never willingly read poetry or shakespeare in my life, and as a scientist, I doubt I will be required to. Now, such a position is not going to devalue my appreciation of books (in fact, it was school that nearly killed my love of reading) and an education lacking in them would be no less inadequate than an education lacking in the study of any languages great prose.

donegalfella wrote: »

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Well, define value. Is enjoyment not valuable? And why should modern novels, graphic or otherwise, be automatically considered to be of less value than older pieces? Have you ever read a graphic novel? Or a recent fantasy or Sci-Fi novel? How can Shakepeare be objectively better than Alan Moores "Watchmen", or Neil Gaimens "American Gods" or any other modern work of quality?

Meeja Ireland

Lame Lantern wrote: »

I would be happy with the removal of the notion that reading a book is a shortcut to intelligence.

Very well said.

I'm always bother by the idea that one medium is inherently better than another. What makes books so special, compared to other vehicles of art or narrative?

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Ave Sodalis

donegalfella wrote: »

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That, sir, is a HUGE assumtion. I for one don't watch tv and can bearly remember the names of bands. As for Man. United, I am sure many an adult also would have a sports team relevent to them. Transformers are mostly used by 5 year olds, not 15.

We are not in the dark about life and are pertectly capable or making our own decisions. We are in a position to engage in some kind of collaborative approach to deciding what is and is not relevant to our lives and our educations. We aren't as inane as you seem to think.

I have a great amount of time for reading and writing, and indeed for "the geography of Africa". I do care very much about intellectually serious matter and I understand perfectly well, as do many of my friends. Prehaps you are forgetting you are dealing with senior cycle students who know what they want to do as a career or have a fair idea at least.

Eliot Rosewater

Mark Hamill said "Its amazing that in anything else, if you have a simple way to do something and a complicated way, its the simple way that is usually considered best."

Wrong for literature, I'm afraid.

Consider the book Slaughterhouse 5 for example. The author Kurt Vonnegut (a character of whom my user-name is named after) goes to Dresden, experiences the bombing. Kurt could do the simple thing - write a memoir of his experience with a simple plot etc etc. Explain how he felt and how he trys to get over it etc etc.

Or, of course, he could do it the complicated way. He could invent a host of supernatural characters promoting a concept of being "unstuck" in time, reinforced by a non chronological narrative structure. The point of these outlandish literary inventions being that Vonnegut or the protagonist Billy Pilgrim cant change what happened. They played so small a part in the war, and in life, they couldn't do anything about it.

Vonnegut never says the book is about dealing with the past. I sure as hell think it is. In fact if you were to ask me about past events in my life Im not proud of, I'm liable to say that thats something I cant change a lá Slaughterhouse 5. See what I did there? See how I applied a dead Americans view of the Dresden bombing in 1945 and what life lessons that entailed to my life in 2009?


As a more accessible example consider 1984. A book that is effectively an attack on totalitarianism and specifically the socialist flavour. It was written in 1949, and Orwell died the next year. Yet 60 years after being published, a person giving out about Google Earth asks me have I heard of the book. See what happened there? See how because its thematic and literary it retains its relevance to our lives years after socialism disappeared from Europe?


So where does Terry Pratchett do this, may I ask? :P

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Lame Lantern

donegalfella wrote: »

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We will if in a period of increasing British nationalism Neil Gaiman is seized upon as the "best writer ever England must totally have produced" and forcibly returned to the limelight after years of obscurity, or if 50 Cent's uninformed contemporary critics confuse his blatant, simplistic flamboyance and colourful origins for genius.

There are arguments centering around canonicity that are more than reasonable. It's not mere semantics and it is vital that people question the works society at large insists are of impeccable quality or are otherwise important.

Though for what it's worth, Neil Gaiman is a tool.

Lame Lantern

donegalfella wrote:

American colleges and universities are indeed turning to Harry Potter, Homer Simpson, and modern graphic novels in a desperate effort to revive student interest—and students do indeed find such courses to be more relevant, accessible, and enjoyable. Whether they will learn anything of actual value is another question entirely.

Speaking as somebody who studies English, they're turning to them

a) Because they're lazy. The works of medieval romance with the most critical attention are the shortest ones. The culture of literary scholarship is one that lacks intellectual rigour and one that fears anything that would invite the burden of long-term research.

b) Cultural critics, distinct from literary critics (and there is a large overlap) would find all of that stuff relevant.

c) As the creators of graphic novels insist on being regarded as contributing to literature, it behoves literary critics to criticise them as such, or at least consider the merits of their arguments.

I'll point out that a little over a century ago the practice of studying literature was deemed idiotic. The association of literature with intellect emerges as literacy became more of a concern for ordinary people in the twentieth century and has coasted on that misconception ever since. And finally, having been compelled to read contemporary prose for the first time in quite a while for the sake of some cheap review work (my interests and research areas are mostly modernist or earlier), Grant Morrison's All Star Superman remains the best work of literature I've read all year.

I'm not advocating the elimination of all concepts of good and bad art but there should be no pre-judgment on the basis of medium, especially when so few people are legitimately informed when it comes to, say, the comic book medium.

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