Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

experimental-history.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 360 posts

Re: I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

#161

Post by the_af »

blobbers wrote: post #101
adambb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you delve further into the article, and (ironically, based on the topic) consider the ideas presented, it becomes more clear. Or skip to near the end to see. TLDR: AI and generic pop culture artifacts have something in common - a lack of a certain type of depth that makes art great.

I think that's not the author's point; he's mostly talking that time solidifies ideas as shown by the evolution of points of view. At the same time, his picture of the wave shows that over time the painting feels more distilled and simplified. So is his point actually that simple ideas persist and are appealing? It isn't clear? That an art improves? I think slop-pocalypse misses one thing. AI's time of thinking is ve…

So it seems in summary you do see the "H" and "N" of it, you just disagree with some parts of the article.

Re: I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

#162

Post by eapriv »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #120
AIorNot wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Joni Mitchell song Both Sides Now applies, life is a conversation with experience.. you are not the same person you were in your teens, in your twenties.. and once you go through life some more life you perspectives shift even more drastically. Doesn't mean younger perspectives are useless.. you were more engaged with the world when you younger and more innocent.. you really can't get back to that I don't…

I think my favorite part of this song is that there are excellent versions of this song from her in her 20s, 70s and 90s

??? She’s 82.

Re: I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

#163

Post by chrisweekly »

serbuvlad wrote: post #138
lordnacho wrote: post #33

As an old man I now think the art and humanities classes in school landed at the wrong time. You need context to really understand a book or a work of art. You want to know what kind of environment produced it, what it's talking to. But when you're in school, there isn't time for that. You aren't going to know a bunch of things about history to put things into context, because there simply isn't enough time for it. S…

Because the book tells you? To my shame I've never read Dickens, but I did read the Romanian canonical authors (I am Romanian), and a lot of them, the ones I liked, gave you a very real sense of the life of the people at the time. Ion, for example, is basically a tragedy about the titular character scheming to marry a woman whom he doesn't love (but who loves him) because he's poor and she's "rich" (owns land). And t…

> "To my shame I've never read Dickens"

I suggest dropping the shame; you're not missing much. IMHO Dickens is hugely overrated. Paid by the word and it shows.

Re: I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

#164

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

PsylentKnight wrote: post #100
schoen wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That speech is expressing an awesome idea: Juliet is saying that she loves Romeo-the-person, but she is terrified of her bad luck in that he happens to have a certain surname ("Montague") which will automatically cause her family to hate him. Which, indeed, they do. It's basically something like "why did I fall in love with such an inconvenient person?", together with "why does my family care so much about this thing…

Sure, but the archaic language can obscure the awesome idea. "Why are you Romeo?" may sound less poetic to modern ears, but isn't that how people back then would have parsed it - just as easily as everyday language, because it was their everyday language? I feel like in a way we're losing Shakespeare's intended effect, because we insist on using a "language" that isn't used anymore. Yes, I understand that it's consid…

True, but a big part of Shakespeare is the rhythm, and if you replace the words with newer words that disappears.

Not to say it will be a complete failure, but it does lose some of its poetry and power.

And smut. There's a lot of smut and double entendre in Shakespeare. An innocent modern word like "nothing" has multiple layers of meaning in Elizabethan English.

Modern audiences don't get it unless someone explains it to them.

Re: I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

#165

Post by 38484848 »

hibikir wrote: post #152

The anecdote about the garden of earthly delights is going to be relatable even for art students. I've met art teachers that ended up "trapped" in Madrid by the Prado Museum: A green, American future Ph.D student that was heading to Greece to specialize in old greek art. But instead of flying straight there, they stopped at Madrid to see the Prado, and were never able to leave. Changed their direction immediately, an…

[flagged]

Re: I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

#167

Post by mcphage »

magneticnorth wrote: post #60
pavel_lishin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It felt even worse when reading Shakespeare, which is nominally the same language you and I speak, but just barely. Add the fact that it's a play, where the performance carries a lot of the meaning. The end result was that I - and as far as I could tell, 99% of my classmates - got basically negative value out of sitting in class and reading lines we didn't understand out loud, without even time to try and parse it ou…

Yes, I agree completely with the Shakespeare point. I was lucky enough to have a close friend (also a teenager!) who really got Shakespeare. She would explain to me what was actually going on, and read it with the correct emphasis so you could mostly actually follow it. She is 100% of the reason that I was ever able to appreciate Shakespeare. You would hope that most teachers could do this, but in my experience it wa…

> in my experience it was only my one friend who had the literary and dramatic talent to explain Shakespeare well to teenagers.

Could she explain Shakespeare to teenagers, or could she explain Shakespeare well to you. If she was in front of your class—explaining to all your classmates how she explained it to you—would your whole class get it? Or would some kids get it, and love it, and some kids bounce off it? In other words, what already happened, just with a different set of kids getting it?

Shakespeare isn't always easy to explain, and I don't think all kids get it the same way. I don't think there's any one way to teach it which will work for everyone. Instead, you're exposed to it a bunch of times, by different teachers in HS, in College, in Life, and ... hopefully everyone will be reached by at least one of those.

Re: I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

#168

Post by vinipolicena »

Edit: fixing quotes.

I've thought something similar but never put it into words. It's nice when someone else puts your thoughts into words so clearly that you go, "That's exactly how I see this topic!"

> I was presented with art and literature as if it was self-explanatory, and that everything wonderful about it was plainly visible from the outside. But those works were much more like dark, winding caves with treasure stashed inside of them.

> But if someone had outfitted me appropriately, if they warned me that you have to bring one of those crank-up flashlights and you might have to shimmy through some narrow antechambers and spelunk through some flooded passageways, but that eventually you would reach a room full of untold riches—well, maybe I would have actually tried.

Re: I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

#169

Post by matherial »

RealityVoid wrote: post #146
serbuvlad wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the book tells you? To my shame I've never read Dickens, but I did read the Romanian canonical authors (I am Romanian), and a lot of them, the ones I liked, gave you a very real sense of the life of the people at the time. Ion, for example, is basically a tragedy about the titular character scheming to marry a woman whom he doesn't love (but who loves him) because he's poor and she's "rich" (owns land). And t…

Oh, such a day, a talk about Ion on HN. I get your point, and the book does say that. It's just... For a teenager, it rarely lands. And connecting context is super important. I mean, sure Ion wanted land, but you really can't contextualize that kind of desire when your needs and desires are completely different. Maybe you were more capable of empathy or better at contextualizing what you were reading. I sure as hell…

> I get your point, and the book does say that. It's just... For a teenager, it rarely lands.

Basic education is weird because it has two conflicting goals. One is to get everyone to the same basic level needed to function in a society. And that's where all the incentives are - that's what you and the teachers are graded on. But another goal is to give you a taste of what's out there, so that some of the more talented kids can decide they like literature or math or physics or whatever.

That second part really requires the teacher and the student to care, but the first part conspires to make that outcome unlikely. My memories from public school are that everything I'm interested in today, I'm interested in despite the efforts of the school system to make the topics appear painful and dull.

So on some level, I don't think the problem is with the literature itself, or with the student's age. It's just that the setting often sucks and you kinda start with the assumption that if the teachers are making you read a book or learn some dates, it won't be a fun experience. And so it isn't.

Post reply on HN