Do you know how zen koans work? They help you understand yourself. They don't do it by telling you about yourself, but rather by tricking your mind into paying attention to nothing other than yourself, even though you might not consciously want to. In the same way, symbolism is intended to trick the mind into grasping a concept it consciously has problems with understanding, or perhaps outright disagrees with. It's l…
The thing is, I'm not a dog, but a person, and I am actually quite willing to listen to people I disagree with as long as they are polite and reasonable.
Trick the mind, not the person. Symbolism may convey something you can't understand through normal conversation.
I haven't read any especially good literary criticism, however (as I obviously failed to make clear) I do enjoy reading and discussing a book. What I hated was attempting to mash meaning into every word in the story, even when there was obviously none intended by the author. An example I remember was when, in The Great Gatsby, it was mentioned in passing that someone had blue eyes, and the teacher went on and on abou…
I really enjoyed Handmaid's Tale when I read it. Of course, I didn't read it for school, which might make all the difference.
Me too. I found it fascinating. I also didn't read it for school, but ironically 'borrowed' one of the copies from the English class that was currently studying it.
The author repeats themselves: Page 2 top: "I can’t believe it," she said when she received her F. "I was so proud of myself for having written a college paper." Page 2 middle: "I can’t believe it," she said when she received her F. "I was so proud of myself for having written a college paper."
The author repeats themselves: Page 2 top: "I can’t believe it," she said when she received her F. "I was so proud of myself for having written a college paper." Page 2 middle: "I can’t believe it," she said when she received her F. "I was so proud of myself for having written a college paper."
Perhaps he repeated himself for effect? I certainly found the repetition effective.
The problem with dissecting a book is that -- just like dissecting an animal -- at the end of the exercise, the subject of the dissection is dead. While mulling over a good book and discussing it can be enjoyable, the attempt to squeeze deep meaning out of something that the author put in by chance simply kills the joy of a good book. Besides, I find that often the books that tend to be chosen for literature classes…
The arts and humanities are just terribly taught. People notice it more with regard to English than art or music class, because you have to take English every year pretty much anywhere, while usually you stop taking art or music before you realize how bad it is. I had a lot of great science and math teachers and a few great history teachers. I had some good English teachers but none who were really great. I think tha…
I think part of the issue here is the nature of the beast--for most English teachers, teaching is less about showing their students how to successfully parse the symbolism and subtext, and more about clubbing them over the head with the teacher's own interpretation. I imagine it's easy to fall into that trap. If you give a student the tools to find the answer instead of just giving the answer, you risk the possibility of the student coming back with something you deem "incorrect". In quantitative subjects, it's easy to say, "Nope, that's wrong. The answer is this..." In the arts and humanities however, one can almost always argue for the validity of his/her interpretation. So, an English teacher has a difficult job. On the one hand, you can give your students methods to come up with their own interpretations of the readings (which will inevitably result in "incorrect" interpretations and conflict as the students fight with you over the validity of their ideas). On the other hand, you can teach your own answers, and encourage your students to lightly reinterpret and regurgitate them. In keeping with that old saying about teaching a man to fish, many (if not most) English teachers simply give their students the fish. So, when the pupils come upon a teacher that assumes they already know how to fish, they starve. Disclaimer: I was an English major in college, so this is based on my own experience.
Is there really a considerable portion of American (or we could say Western) society that is practically illiterate? This seems counter-intuitive to me, I thought it was hardly possible to function at all without a basic understanding of the written word. If these people are out there, I have certainly never had any deep face-to-face conversation with them. Try reading the comments on youtube. I'd expect even a car m…
One thing to remember about Youtube commenters; many of them are not English speakers. Compared to my Filipino or Mandarin, their English is pretty good. But if you want to criticize what they're saying , that's a bit different.
I think people overestimate the difficulty of learning a new language. Compared to my Portuguese, their English is downright embarrassing and shameful, and I'm not proud of my current Portuguese due to lack of practice.
It's not that hard to learn decent grammar, especially with the resources available to those with Internet access. The fact that these kids can hammer out imbecilic English sentences doesn't impress me.
Just, basic stuff.Otherwise, it's just ridiculous. That's what these colleges should be doing, if they're taking student's money. No, that's what high schools should be doing. No wait, actually, that's what primary schools should be doing.
Unfortunately, at least where I live, it is almost entirely not allowed to fail students in primary or early high school. So, graduating effectively means "I didn't die before age N". And of course, it's a downward spiral: if you can't multiply and divide, you sure as hell can't factor an equation, and you're definitely not going to get anywhere trying to understand the graph of a parabola.
In my old school, if you fail a year (average below 60%) you repeat that year, if you fail three times, you're kicked out.
>I can bet that woman must be good at something she has never been tested on and probably does not know about. Hah. That women may very well be average at a lot of things, and bad at the rest. This idea that "everyone has a special gift!" is just pixie-dust dreaming. Most people simply aren't special, in any sense of the word. Fight Club: "We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millio…
Amen. It smacks of the 'Oprah-watching, feel-good-book-reading, "let's hold hands and sing kumbaya"' bullshit that pervades society. The fact is that people have differing levels of ability. but with everybody screaming for 'equality,' everyone has to have some 'special gift.' I'm not saying that some lives are worth more than others (although there's an interesting philosophical argument against this), but the idea…
I agree, but I don't think it's an issue of equality in the sense that we're all given trophies and told we're all winners. I think it stems from the fact that most people totally abhor the concept of being thought of as common. Not everyone can be a leader--hell, if that were the case nothing would get done. Really though, there is nothing wrong with being an ordinary working citizen. If you have a hobby, pursue it in your free time. Conversely, if you like watching TV and jerking off, by all means, indulge in it.
The data seem to suggest that, while those students were certainly deplorable, average literacy is actually at an all time high: http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp
Those statistics end at 1979, but I don't doubt that you're correct. The problem here is not literacy per se: these students would have no trouble transcribing between written and spoken English. The problem is with composition and comprehension.
I completely agree that's a huge problem.
I just don't think things were any better in the past in composition or comprehension.
Thoreau said, "For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root." Here is my attempt. Shortly after we're born, we begin to perceive a certain amount of value in everything we encounter. We assign value to food, attention, comfort, safety, pleasure, affection, entertainment, possessions, virtue, appearance, and a million other things. We assign value to a thousand instances of a hun…
> Scholastically, life works out better for people who value books more than television. And better still for people who value knowledge more than almost everything else.
"Truly rich people talk about ideas, poor people talk about other people."