Garbage that they teach you in AP classes

[MarsMonster]

i still don't understand why it bothers you to see people take the easy way out. you don't have to, it's your choice. they want to- it's their choice.

[waxmephilosophical]

My AP class is pretty perceptive...guess I got lucky. My only gripe is that two student teachers were allowed to use us as their lab rats for weeks at a time...not very fair to the students who took the class for the love of literature and the wish to have a knowledgeable teacher guide us.

[Sam Gamgee]

Well, we don't have AP courses at my small private school, but I have a great teacher, and several very enthusiastic and thoughtful students (basically, enough to make class interesting.)

In regards to the symbolism thing. I think it is true that many people go to far. The great thing about literature is that people can (to a degree) get different things out of them. (I firmly believe in intent of the author, so I only think that can go so far.)

I think too many symbols are SOOO annoying, but then it is interesting to see different interpretations in a text. HOWEVER - the little exposure I have had to freud has been enough for me to want to give up symbolism in literature forever- he RUINS ALL LITERATURE - ugh!

[wimpkin]

you're in AP classes. wait til you take IB English. there's a difference between children's books and AP-ish type of books. it seems to me that you have a hard time catching the symbols..i do too, it takes practice. hang in there. you'll learn to like it.

[Robert E Lee]

you're in AP classes. wait til you take IB English. there's a difference between children's books and AP-ish type of books. it seems to me that you have a hard time catching the symbols..i do too, it takes practice. hang in there. you'll learn to like it.

I tookan IB English course when I went to school in Switzerland. There's really not much of a difference except that the kids aren't as dumb as they are in AP.

[Shea]

I guess I had a different experience than the rest of you. I went to an art school for high school, and my major was literary arts. We were all pretty much of the same interest literarilly (is that a word, I wonder?).

[Munro]

It's whats wrong with education today. The purpose of education was so that you have a good wide knowledge of the world and are reasonably knowledgeable to make it in the wide world when you come of age. Now it is treated as vocation, where kids only do high school courses to get into their university course of choice, so they can get into whatever profession. Their drive to get the best marks possible clouds what they are learning, they never truly enjoy or love what they are learning (which is important) and end up in some ****house office in some dead-end job spending their life making unfulfilling money, having forgotten everything they crammed for in school, and regretting the time they moaned "when the hell will I need farkin' Shakespeare in a job interview?!".
Yer, the symbols thing is hella annoying, which is why I prefer independent reading to studying texts.

[Rotty1021]

Munro, though I'm chiming in a few months late, I must say well said on that last post. I am appalled when my peers joke about the things we are learning in class, are bored during times of deep intellectual learning, and "have fun" when they waste two hour periods doing nothing. While having fun is essential in life, it's a sad thing that they have no clue as to what will happen when they try to pass college courses by slacking off. My opinion on this whole debacle is that there are no elderly figures in these young peoples' lives enstilling in them the importance of an education, and how what happens in high school will influence their lives.

I am in no way saying kids can't be kids; they need to have fun in today's world, but work is important, too. A little more self discipline is needed by students. As a future psychotherapist who would like to work with teens, I pray that I can get this message off to at least one person during my work. I can try now, too, though!

[ThousandthIsle]

I was disappointed with my AP English class too - I felt like our teacher presented us with these webs of symbols that never made a full connection to anything... I kept waiting for some monumental epiphany and was never satisfied. I think it is partly because not every author consciously uses part of their story to symbolize something. I found myself resenting AP English in the same way I resent certain religions - where somebody gets their hands on a book and draws their own conclusions/interpretations without running it by the author, and then puts it in everyone else's face as a fact.

What I DID enjoy about AP English though was tuning into a lot of the adjectives the author used to set the tone... It was like a more mild version of symbolism, where you gained a better understanding of the type of story that was written, without branching out into irrelevancy.

[stlukesguild]

Great works of literature survive because they cannot be reduced to a single simple "meaning"... a definition... but rather they reward repeated reading. A good teacher can only lead the student to some aspects of a work of literature. Some may focus upon character... others upon the development of the narrative... still others upon formal issues of structure and language. Greater understanding cannot be handed to you on a platter. It only comes with time, effort and experience. Any work of literature changes as we change. Someone who has spent a great deal of time reading will bring to any strong work of literature connections and insights that go beyond those of the casual reader. What's the great Lex Luther quote? "Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe." Certainly not every element in a novel or poem is symbolic of some larger concept... and certainly there are elements in some works of literature which may not have been intended as having some larger symbolic "meaning" but may now be seen that way in light of later works of literature (for as T.S. Eliot correctly noted the strong works of new art influence those of the past... or our interpretation of such... as surely as the works of the past impact the future). Having said this much I find myself agreeing with Tomontes in that I might certainly question anyone's judgment concerning literature who could imagine that Huckleberry Finn was no more than a work of "children's fiction".

[PeterL]

I can understand annoyance about symbols being pointed out, and I also agree that sometimes the professors and critics see things as symbols that are not intended as symbols. I also think that most human expression has more than one meaning behind it, and writers frequently create symbols without even noticing. I also have found works of literature in which I see symbols and figures of speech that others don't notice. Writers often insert references to events and people that they know personally without letting the reader know that there is a personal joke, or something, there; these jokes and personal asides are often taken as something with deep meaning that isn't there.

And remember that Lex Luthor quote. It will become very useful if you study literature in grad school.

[SleepyWitch]

what's AP?

[Hyacinth42]

AP means "Advanced Placement" and IB means "International Baccalaureate"... AP classes are "smart people classes" and IB classes are also "smart people classes", there is a lot of debate over which is better/who is smarter I personally think that IB kids are smarter, but yet incredibly stupid for taking IB (unless they're geniuses)

Anyways, what really horrible is when you then start seeing similar symbols in other things... I watched a movie a while back (can't remember what it was) and made connections between it and Albert Camus's "The Stranger" *shudder* and I hated that book... The good thing about putting so many symbols in stories/books is that they are mostly BS, and if you're good at BS, then you do fine

[stlukesguild]

Why, exactly, do you imagine symbols to be mostly BS? Should all art be reduced to a variant of Frank Stella's dictum, "What you see is what you see"? Should we imagine that every work of fiction and every poem is "about" nothing more than the literal narrative? Personally, I find a great part of the poetry in a work of literature lies in the various symbolic interpretations that go beyond the literal.

[bibliophile190]

My highschool doesn't have AP courses. I'd like to take one though. It is a bit annoying when I'm usually the only one in my class to finish our reading assignments.