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 ...
It's the equivalent of the Boys' Own Paper or Youths Companion - out of school popular reading.
If we take your 75 year limit and work back, there's plenty of good stuff out there since WWII (if we use 100 years, Kipling's well within the limit, he didn't die until 1936). Faulkner, Hemingway (although I don't like him), O'Connor, Lee, Miller (Henry or Walter), Tolkien, Lewis, Orwell, Wodehouse, Sayers . . . there's plenty to choose from. I refuse to have anything to do with J.D. Salinger, who is the most overrated writer of the 20th century (my daughter adapted my dinner-table hymn of hate and got an "A" in her literature class. I think her teacher hated it too.)
It worked. We started reading and never stopped.
I guess she ran out of ideas for the Limberlost. That’s too bad. They were such good stories and Onabasha sounded like someplace you’d want to live. :-)
In 8th grade I was reading Wiiliam Shirer’s “Collapse of the Third Republic.” It was a natural follow up to his epic “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” I read in 7th grade. I took breaks from them by reading articles in “Scientific American.”
OK, I was a nerd.
I can relate. I read The Count of Monte Cristo. All of it. LOL
That's a great link you gave! Grandmother's set was the black castle binding, the set I found is the green. Both 6 volume.
I agree it sounds like a nice place to live. Read "Laddie" if you can find a copy -- it's largely autobiographical.
The Count was my first foray into French 19th c. novels. Led to the Musketeers and Quasimodo and Jean Valjean. What fun!
I’ve been looking for Laddie but no luck so far. I got The Harvester, Girl of the Limberlost and Freckles for Christmas in 1965. LOL I’ve been looking for more ever since.
Besides Porter, I gravitated toward Daphne Du Maurier, Margaret Campbell Barnes etc for historic fiction. I was very excited to finally be able to get books in the adult section of the local library. :-)
Or used: Stratton-Porter on ABE
ABE Books is a treasure trove. It's a consortium of used book dealers, and the prices are ROCK bottom. I got a Liber Usualis (all the Latin chant of the Church organized by the Church year) which is at least $100 normally, for 50. It's marked up and was stuffed full of holy cards, but it was a deal.
Not familiar with Margaret Campbell Barnes, but I'll give her a look-see. Another good one is Frances Hodgson Burnett (she goes way beyond "The Secret Garden" and "Little Lord Fauntleroy" - she wrote adult novels too. "A Lady of Quality" is very good.)
Our used book store had some of her books but they closed before I found any I didn't already have.
Our old book stores around here have closed left and right. In a bad economy I just don’t think they can make it. We’ve lost Old New York Books and Yesteryear Books and the Oxford Used Books store, among others, and The Book Nook is limping along mostly on comic books and cheap paperbacks.
Jan Westcott was another that I read. I had a lot of books in paperback but they have died a horrible death so many years later.
We had 2 and both closed. Both had been around for years. Closed after Obama was elected.
“What they taught then and what they teach now is unbelievable.”
I couldn’t agree more. I foolishly got a teaching credential. The classes were a joke. A monkey could pass them and it was all liberal indoctrination, no education about actually teaching anything.
When I did my student teaching and very briefly taught, the administrators dumber it down more with low expectations. The ‘good’ teachers were those that didn’t send kids to the office and coached something. Teaching effectiveness was not an issue.
We are last and near last in all of the Trends in International Math and Science tests for good reason. These tests have been given for decades now, but the results are covered up. While schools threaten that they need more and more money!
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