Posted on 09/23/2014 5:15:34 PM PDT by Morgana
I recently dug up a 1908 curriculum manual in the Minnesota Historical Society archives. It provided instructions on everything from teacher deportment to recommended literature lists for various grades. As a book lover, I was especially interested in the latter!
With the exception of a few textbook-like anthologies, the chart below lists the recommended reading material for Minnesota 7th and 8th graders in 1908:
(Excerpt) Read more at better-ed.org ...
FYI
bump
thanks
Take this 1931 8th grade test (you will probably flunk)
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/history/take-this-1931-8th-grade-gradu.html
Examination for Common-School Diplomas.
RURAL SCHOOLS.
Saturday, April 6, 1918.
http://www.kansasheritage.org/orsh/library/final_exam.html
1912 Eighth Grade Examination for Bullitt County Schools
http://www.bullittcountyhistory.com/bchistory/schoolexam1912.html
How this generation will communicate meaning will be a problem.
Leave aside for a second questions about which list is better from an educational perspective. That earlier list just looks like it would be so much more interesting to a boy in his early teens. Maybe to a girl as well, but I can’t speak from experience there.
I don’t think you’ve read much young adult literature recently, if that is your opinion. The YA genre is flooded with wonderfully engaging characters and story lines. Give some of them a try before condemning them. Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, the Divergent series, these are all very engaging books for older elementary and junior high kids. Now, what none of these books do is try to inculcate the Judeo-Christian mores and ethics, or the American story that we were taught, but they all certainly speak to big themes like courage, curiosity, and character. I would love to see some author take the imagination and fast pace of The Hunger Games and tie it in with an American/Christian perspective, but I haven’t found anyone who has been able to do that well.
The history is straightforward, so is the literature, but heavy on the New England School (I had never HEARD of Maud Muller, though. I looked it up, it's Whittier (who has gone out of fashion now) and it contains the catchphrase "the saddest words of tongue or pen. . ." Always knew that, never knew where it came from. But now I know.
I would have to really use up a bunch of paper on the math, and there are some obsolete concepts, but again it seems fair.
In 8th grade, (1963/64) I was reading Girl of the Limberlost and Freckles by Gene Stratton Porter for book reports. I think one was written about 1904. I’d have to check.
Any RLS should be very engaging. Treasure Island is the classic, but I'm a minority opinion for Kidnapped. The sequel, Catriona (or David Balfour in America) is a political thriller and probably too deep, as well as having an entire chapter in the thickest of Lothian dialect.
Kipling's later stories are too tough (and the themes too adult) for junior high, but his Jungle Book and some of the Plain Tales would be perfect. I would even give the kids a shot at Beowulf in a modern translation, and the boys should eat Fagles' translation of the Iliad up (in metered doses).
And before you say I'm being unrealistic, I taught a unit on Greek history to my daughter's 7th grade history class. The kids memorized the first six lines of the Iliad in Greek, and we chanted them (a hobby of my first Greek teacher, who also had some odd theories about pronunciation) . . . then we looked at several very different translations and discussed the compromises made by translators. We talked about what it was like in the time of Homer's heroes, and how they were about as far from the Greeks of Classical Athens as we are from the Norman Conquest. Talked about Heinrich Schliemann and his belief that the story of the Iliad was real, and how he went about proving it . . . passed around replicas of the Mask of Agamemnon and a Bronze Age sword (boys loved that), then we dressed up in Greek attire and ate baklava.
They had a ball.
The scene in "Laddie" where her little brother recites apropos Bible verses in meeting is absolutely riveting.
I agree. Few people know her work. I also own The Harvester and Her Father’s Daughter. I didn’t like Her Father’s Daughter at all. Very racist and angry. Nasty book.
Good article. The comments, following the article, are rather heated and quite entertaining.
Is ANYthing written less than 75-100 yrs ago automatically disqualified as good? I read the Potter series, and I really enjoyed it, as did my two oldests (my youngest just started them). I enjoyed the Hunger Games series. Not to be snarky, it just seems this is “one of those topics”...
(of course, given what we have learned about Japanese spies in the U.S. prior to WWII, she may not have been ALL wrong. I think Midwesterners who move to California find it very disorienting.)
She was much better when she wrote about what she knew and loved -- the wild places of Indiana (doesn't that sound funny?)
Agree!
I had the "Readers Digest" books for kids set as a young'un read plenty of classics, albeit abridged.
Later in life, I went back and re-read the unabridged for several of them
Also had this set:
Thanks for the website; I’ll check it out.
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