Posted on 08/03/2006 11:38:51 AM PDT by neverdem
The stopped the Ottoman invasion of Western Europe at the Battle of Kosovo and later, Serbian mercenaries fighting for the King of Poland relieved the siege of Vienna by the Turks.
School in general and english class in particular were the most boring, unproductive and needlessly punitive experience I have ever been through. I have tried to pick up Shakespeare a couple of times since, and every time I have been utterly unable to enjoy it due to memories of a boring incarceration. I still enjoy reading, but not any of the material I was given at school. So to my view, they ruined those books to me for life.
I could not disagree with you more, however. Teenagers as a group sink to the lowest common denominator. They have to be pushed a bit, or all they'll read is trash if they read at all.
In my opinion, encourage teens to read trash if they enjoy it. That will at least impart the habit of picking up a book for pleasure. Maybe they'll move on to deeper material later, and maybe they won't, but at least they'll read.
James wasn't upper class, and the comment was from a teacher, not a parent, but other than that... okay. :)
"Phallophobic."
I like that. Another new phrase to add to our lexicons! Thanks for the post.
"Think about it - the long-term implications are serious!"
Of course they are. But it's unlikely to change. The unfortunate truth is that in our legal and political system, as well as in large parts of our popular culture, males are simply not considered to be as valuable as females are.
I'm not aware of either of those socioeconomic groups' being coerced into attending Shakespeare performances, or any other theater.
I agree, though, that I've no interest in replicating Elizabethan education in Deo Vindice Christian School (where our model, Stonewall Jackson, certainly didn't know Ancient Egypt from a hole in the head)!
Quite so. Not to mention the fact that the medieval and early modern history of Serbia is far more relevant to current affairs than anything to do with pre-19th Century Egypt.
>"Care to speculate how that happens? They [men] hire each other. They give each other bigger raises. They don't have to be any good! They'll whine all the while about how all women are stupid and useless, and how none of them would be hired for anything save for affirmative action..."
Listen to yourself. You are a bitter victim. <
No, I'm a survivor. I see what goes on, and I don't pretend the world is perfect, but I don't beat individual men up over it, and I don't even try to tell them that they've never lost a darn thing.
Only a fool chirps and dances and pretends everything is perfect when it is not. I don't keep throwing books at people to wail, moan, and cry about victimhood.
Attacking me because I relate truth doesn't change the way the world works.
Yes, poor, poor boys. Isn't it awful. Maybe women should be chattel again for a few centuries...poor things...mum and dad raised them to be impulsive savages, and now they run amuck in a structured classroom...oh, their testosterone is being thwarted O WOE.
Animals will misbehave, too, if they are not 'gentled', and taught some early manners. Works with small humans, too.
The groundlings just wanted to see the murders and the low comedy.
I'm fond of murders and low comedy, myself!
Surprisingly, I learned a great deal. I never took it personally . . . he was just the way he was, like thunder is loud and lightning unselective.
If I were you, I would give Tom Sawyer a try, then Huckleberry Finn. Shakespeare is not to be missed, start with one of the comedies -- Twelfth Night, perhaps, always one of my favorites. If a good local company is putting one of the comedies on, go see it first, then get a Folger edition (very reader friendly with extremely helpful notes) and read what you just saw.
Fortunately you can usually find schools that aren't like that. We worked hard learning which schools to avoid before our children reached school age. The City of Atlanta public schools are SO bad that there was never any question of our children attending them. I wouldn't send a dog to any Atlanta public school except Jackson Elementary and Morris Brandon . . . and there's a waiting list for them about four years long. Had my children not been able to get into the schools we wanted, it would have been homeschooling for us (I homeschooled my son for a couple of months while waiting for a place to open up in the school of our choice . . . )
I still re-read the stories occasionally, but if you haven't run across them and you like Sherlock Holmes, you really need to read Conan Doyle's historical novels. The very best are The White Company and Sir Nigel, although I also like Rodney Stone and the Brigadier Gerard stories.
But he did have an engineering degree from the University of Georgia (class of 1843).
That's nuts.
But from the point of view of Western Civ., it's a little off the beaten path. ("Not that there's anything WRONG with that" . . . but for a survey course it's a bit of an outlier. A history of Eastern Europe would be a VERY good secondary course though.)
Try adventure novels (which is what I'd suggest for much of high school reading). Horatio Hornblower, Captain Blood (Rafael Sabatini), Kipling, Stevenson, etc. Try G.A. Henty, one of the most popular novelists of the turn of the century (20th century, that is), making a comeback among Christian homeschoolers.
Try "The Saint" detective stories. You need a top quality vocabulary and a knowledge of history, Latin quotes, French and German, and comparative religion to get through this stuff with full comprehension. Dang it, people used to be somewhat educated! "The Saint" is pulp magazine fiction, for heaven's sake, but the author assumed the reader knew French and German!
There is plenty of good, solid, classic fiction that is oriented toward the teen/young adult perspective. And let's be honest, adults love this stuff too. It wasn't teenagers buying the World's Great Pirate Novels in the 19th and 20th century, it was adults. It wasn't teenagers who made Louis L'Amour one of the bestselling novelists in history.
I dug the Harry Potter books, once I picked them up. (The hand of God placed one in the bathroom when I was up at 2 a.m. with Vlad, some months back.) Of course I bring a middle-aged-mom perspective to the stories. Want to hear my thesis on the essential theme of fatherlessness in the Harry Potter series?
Can you give me one way ancient Egypt is relevant to modern life, except for "Stargate" fans?
(My Patrick almost revealed his Goa'uld identity the other day, but he stopped at the last second and banged on the wall with a spatula.)
And of course all modern linguistic analysis began with J.F. Champollion and the Rosetta Stone. We stand on the shoulders of giants.
(I'm rather like Epimetheus in The Water Babies; I'm always looking backward. Kingsley thought Epimetheus was more important than Prometheus, and I do too.)
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