Interesting move. Sadly kids nowadays (at least in Poland, where I live) don't like reading books and tend to skip even very important titles. This may be a good way to bring some interest in the history via a genuinely entertaining medium.
That's because the list of mandatory [1] reading in Poland is 90% haphazardly thrown together nationalistic martyrdom bullshit with terrible state-mandated interpretation.
I used to _hate_ literary analysis, partly because of the works we were studying and how we were forced to interpret them. Then, years after leaving school I've discovered that this can actually be interesting and intellectually stimulating, especially if you care for the work, and doubly so if you're actually explained the point of this sort of analysis in the first place. Every single peer of around my age that has gone through the same system has had the exact same experience, regardless of school or district.
[1] - as I've experienced it 10 years ago
Unrelated: I still have your Arduino knock-off which you lent me back during our days in a company related to a certain fruit.
- book about an anorexic girl (which IIRC was assigned by the lottery to the recovering anorexic girl in my class)
- book about a teenage boy falling in love with a drug-addicted girl and falling down into that swamp as well (names "Einbahnstraße" => "one-way street")
- some other books about adipositas and fat kids/teenagers hating themselves for being fat (IIRC some even contemplating suicide)
+ a bunch of other books in the same vein
Needless to say that was a very fun few weeks while presenting the books and their analyses...
I've experienced this about 30 years ago and I'm experiencing it now with my child, and I couldn't agree more with that description. In fact, it is the best summary of our reading curriculum that I've ever seen. Saving for later.
I'm fairly confident this has been a staple throughout most of the world, and, if I had to wager, time.
huh, I'm not shocked. The only book that I've found interesting out of those mandatory books was Ferdydurke ^^
>Gombrowicz himself wrote of his novel that it is not "... a satire on some social class, nor a nihilistic attack on culture... We live in an era of violent changes, of accelerated development, in which settled forms are breaking under life's pressure... The need to find a form for what is yet immature, uncrystalized and underdeveloped, as well as the groan at the impossibility of such a postulate – this is the chief excitement of my book."
You cannot understand culture and tradition without reading some classics,starting with Bible, Homer's Illiad, or Shakespeare. And of course in Poland we mostly focus on Polish writers. You know, before journalism was invented novels served pretty much the same purpose as newspaper reports - there are the goldmine of information about how Poland looked like back in the day.
Unfortunately, contemporary students prefer to just watch movie based on a book than reading the source material.
I, personally, love reading books. But forcing that material to 12-18 and saying read these classic ones just pushes back youth from reading at all. You either move forward and adapt with the current generation or you try to force old generation habits and slowly curse on the result.
I am not from Poland myself. Perhaps Henrik Sienkiewicz is one of those authors..
Perhaps they should prescribe the Witcher novels too.
What does this mean, exactly? And why is it valuable?
> You either move forward and adapt with the current generation or you try to force old generation habits and slowly curse on the result
The classics are thousands of years old and have served as popular educational material for centuries. Why is Gen-Z categorically different from all of the generations that have come before such that we should change? I'm not sure that Gen-Z is even different with respect to their ability to understand or appreciate the classics, and to the extent that they are, I suspect that's because (at least in the US) we've changed how we teach, de-emphasizing things like civics (probably in favor of an increasingly identitarian curriculum). Note that this isn't a defense of the classics--for example, this wouldn't rebut the idea that classics are overrated--it only challenges the specific idea that something abruptly changed such that the classics are obsolete.
Even kids growing up in the 90s probably didn't have their own computer and the internet wasn't full of video entertainment and free games and kids growing up 2000-2010 didn't have phones and tablets.
80s kids had cable and VHS.
50-60-70s kids had TV
20-30-40s kids had radio
So personally I do think it's a big difference. I'm awestruck by what kids have access to today vs what I had access to growing up in the 70s, early 80s. Kids today can learn about any topic and anytime, anywhere. When I grew up if it wasn't in my family bookshelf or the library I didn't have access to it. Kids today can also watch almost all movies of the last 100 yrs on demand. When I grew up video wasn't a thing and cable didn't happen until I got to high school so all I had was the few channels on the TV and whatever they happened to be showing.
That difference has to mean something. Whether it means "classics" are still relevant or not I have no idea but reading of those arguably came from a time when content was scarce. It's not anymore.
One of the first plays I read that actually interested me in Theater was Waiting for Godot. Reading The Stranger in high school exposed me to so many new and complex ideas. Even extremely recent books like "Something that May Shock and Discredit You" by Daniel M. Lavery or "Trick Mirror" by Jia Tolentino are fascinating works of the modern American Canon. I'm not Polish but I'm sure there are equally relevant works in Polish.
If you think kids just prefer to watch a "movie based on a book" maybe stop making them read boring books that truly lack lots of meaningful relevance to their lives today.
And seriously, stop making kids read The Bible as a literary lesson. Nothing made me dis-engage in school like being told "I know you're Jewish and this feels like proselytizing, but I promise, this is purely a lesson in literature, nothing more". That is proven to be a lie when King James's edition is selected over an English translation of the Torah, and when no other non-Christian religious texts are selected for literary evaluation...
[1] - “Biblia: stworzenie świata i człowieka oraz wybrane przypowieści ewangeliczne, w tym o siewcy, o talentach, o pannach roztropnych, o miłosiernym Samarytaninie” ( https://isap.sejm.gov.pl/isap.nsf/download.xsp/WDU2017000035... )
Just because you never experienced Christian propaganda in your public school district in your state doesn't mean it doesn't happen. If your town is mostly religious, mostly Christian, and the oversight mechanisms for something like this happen require a complaint to be filed, who is going to complain? Saying "I never experienced this in my school in the 70s" is about as relevant to somebody else's experience of school in the early naughts as saying "I've never been to a baseball game, so I don't believe baseball actually exists".
As is the case in many of the landmark freedom-from-religion-in-schools cases, Christians.
See, the thing is, America (and even most—but not all, sure—small towns in America) have lots of different flavors of Christianity, and they don't agree on much (especially when you include the JWs and other groups that other Christians view as not-Christian rather than Christians-who-are-in-error). So, typically, sneaking in your brand of Christian propaganda pisses off all the other brands of Christians.
Why was it important for you to verify my experience and the details of it and relay an anecdote that was counter to my own anecdote if not to implicitly refute my experience?
https://www.npr.org/2013/01/09/168613461/promoting-hinduism-...
Maybe it was an expression of surprise and genuine interest.
Thinking about it now, Beowulf should be added to this list. That's another great way to teach students about the evolution of the English language.
It's also interesting how the pronunciation is reconstructed. Looking at rhyming pairs that don't currently rhyme (e.g. loved/proved), looking at different accents of English (Irish, Scottish, American, etc.) to identify historic pronunciations, etc.
So what? Other works lack these archetypes? No, they don't. Literature at school isn't supposed to be courses on comparative linguistics and theory of literature. A short intro is enough. Then move on to modern works.
Bible is better suited to history lessons on history of religion alongside other religions.
If you imply that every word isn't the literal truth you will again have at people howling for your blood.
I'm always surprised that any school would teach creationism. Even catholic priests don't preach creationism as an alternative to current scientific theories. USA has to be a strange place :D
When in grades 3-5 I read about 100 (Admittedly easy) books per year on average. After that we had to read books for school and it almost instantly caused me to drop my yearly amount of books to 10 AT MOST. Now that I am out of school I read a lot more again.
BTW: Shakespeare wrote plays, not books. So why force children to read it instead of watching it?
What the fuck, high school. Why? Why?
The idea of mandatory novels isn't to entertain and captivate. It is to bring young people into the culture that they will live in, and it's done by studying the culture's roots. Having said that, I felt like a TON of that stuff just flew over my head when I was in school - I mean, literary experts discuss the meaning of for example Mickiewicz's work to this day, and I, a child/teen with no frame of reference, am supposed to get some of it? It would require highly talented teachers to pull this off.
In my experience what's causing young people disintrest in reading is that noone teaches the physical skill of reading correctly.
I mean, I never really took any speed-reading courses, but still, when I take a test my speed is usually 400-500 wpm. I read somewhere that typical high school student reads about 100-120 wpm. If I were to read a lenghty book, like any of Dickens of Tolstoy works at that speed I would probably also give up very quickly.
Other than that, I believe it is important to know the roots of the modern culture and society, and classic literature from authors like Dostoevsky, Mickiewicz, Conrad, Prus, Bulgakov, Shakespeare, Orwell, Hemmingway, Schulz, Twain, Huxley and many many others. I've met all of them in my school years and I'm thankful for that.
No wonder there are so many illegal sources for epubs.
I hope it won't be 20 years again. I plan to go there for that light show on the river next time it'll happen with my gf.