What do you think of High School/Secondary School Req. Reading?

[BjorkPlease]

What do you think of High School/Secondary School required reading for Engish classes? I had a look at my old school work recently (yes I kept them, sad I know). When I was in school at years 10-11 we had to read the following:
Of Mice and Men -Steinbeck (novel)
A View from the Bridge - Arthur Miller (play about US immigration in the 1950s)
The Red Room -H.G. Wells (short story)
The Monkey's Paw -W.W. Jacobs (horror short story)
The Withered Arm -Thomas Hardy (short story)

After this there was a selection of poems. The most prevalent poet in my English anthology was Seamus Heaney if I remember correctly. Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning etc. Also some Sylvia Plath and Maya Angelou, with many others.

I think personally, that considering this was a British Secondary School, the two main readings we had to do (Of Mice and Men and A View From the Bridge) shouldn't both have been American.
I just remembered aswell that we also read part of Romeo and Juliet.

What do you think? Do you think that a country should focus mainly on it's own authour's work in schools? What did you read in school and what do you think should have been set for you?

[kiki1982]

I do not think a country should mainly focus on its own literature, though students should be taught about the differences (if there are any). Or for languages other than English, not too much of the rest.

What I do think is that students should be able to pick their own books to read. Apart from general musts like Shakespeare (for English in particular) and poems (you do not lose much time reading them, only analysing), I don't think that everyone should be compelled to read the same book.

It is rather good to leave students a varied list and have them choose something they like than to compell them to read something they abhor. I was in that position and I detested reading for a very long time.

But it takes a lot of work for the teacher, who has to read all the books on the list, yet it also provides them with varied reading if one has to write an essay. Imagine correcting twenty or even 100 about the same topic!

[dfloyd]

John Steinbeck would have been banned because of his supposed communist leanings. We read A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens. I didn't read it until years later and ralized what I had missed. The rest of the poems and short stories were taken from an anthology book. This was the Junior year. We read Macbeth and Hamlet plus antholgy selections in the Senior year. I hated it. The teachers were abysmally poor, and I didn't read anything until I was twenty-one. Now, I have read all the plays of Shakespeare plus most of the classics of the Western world. Poor techers got me off to a bad start, and I had to learn how to read and what to read myself. I never think of a country of origin when I read. Like most English speaking people, I read from the Western world and Russia. In high school, one should read from a well-rounded curriculum of the best for that age, not particularly authors of the country you live in.

[OrphanPip]

Attending secondary school in Canada I didn't encounter very much American literature. I think the only American novel we read was A Separate Peace. Otherwise, it was all god awful Canadian literature and the usual English lit suspects.

In my French classes I can't remember much of what we read. My last year of high school I remember we did Maupassant's Une Vie, Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir, and that's all I really remember. In shorter works we read L'homme qui plantait des arbres, Baudelaire and some others. I also vaguely remember a lot of French short stories about fur traders and canoes.

[BjorkPlease]

I remember having to do a spoken book review in front of the class, aswell as having to read an extract. While everyone else was doing presentations on Harry Potter and the Da Vinci Code (it was just before the film was released), I chose The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, which is now one of my favourite novels. I remember not having prepared at all and panicking when I stood up. My teacher gasped in delight when she saw my choice. I chose, for controversey, an extract on her receiving shock therapy, then told the class about her suicide after the book was published. "She stuck her head in an oven", I think I said. Not my most tactful moment. It worried me at the time that people of that age were still interested in Harry Potter, but once I reached Uni the people around me were reading some classic lit so I was happy.

[waterfallin]

my impression of high school english class isn't too bad. I'm only about 2 years out of high school, and I found that we had a pretty good variety. Even though I was also in a Canadian school system I found that we didn't read much, if any Canadian literature. We did one Shakespeare work each year- Romeo and Juliet in Grade 9, Macbeth in grade 10, Othello in grade 11, and Hamlet in grade 12. I found that the teacher's weren't too bad in their analysis, but that coud just be due to my complete ignorance of the books at the time. Other books we read (that I remember) were:To kill a Mockingbird, The Crucible, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, Animal Farm, and All the Pretty Horses. We also got a free choice book for grades 11 and 12, but they had to be award winners, so no Harry Potter or Dan Brown for us. I chose The Life of Pi (the only Canadain book of the lot, as far as I know), and The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. I felt it was fairly well rounded, if very western- centred. The only down side was the other students whining constantly about the books-except for all the pretty horses, which was painful beyond belief to read.

Oh, we also did a unit on poetry and short stories, which is where most of our Canadain content came in. I can't recall the titles of them, though.

[OrphanPip]

We did that one shakespeare play a year too, although high school in Quebec runs from grade 7 to 11. We did in order starting in grade 8: Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, MacBeth, and Hamlet.

The god awful canlit was all in short story and poetry form, which is probably why I don't remember much of it. I do remember doing a fair amount of American Poetry, I remember doing Roethke, Plath, and Frost in high school.

Edit: I remember one of the canlit authors, Hugh Garner, I remember doing The Moose and the Sparrow in grade 9. I'm sure we also read some Mordecai Richler. I also vaguely remember a Scottish born Quebec poet, but I can't put my finger on his name.

We're required to take four English literature courses in CEGEP (which a sort of mandatory jr. college thing in Quebec that takes 2 years). In CEGEP I took a course in American literature so we read Poe, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Malamud.

[Night_Lamp]

I think political correctness has robbed students of a few outstanding texts; yes, there is a prostitute in Catcher In The Rye, and that unmentionable "N" work in Twain, but those are some great books that I really enjoyed during my youth and teen years.

We just had a VERY short government debate here in Canada about rewording our national anthem because of political correctness. Thank goodness Canadians had national pride and a little common sense for once.

[BjorkPlease]

Nobody goes overboard with political correctness us British do! They banned a nursery rhyme (Baa Baa Black Sheep) because they thought it was racist!

[OrphanPip]

We just had a VERY short government debate here in Canada about rewording our national anthem because of political correctness. Thank goodness Canadians had national pride and a little common sense for once.

A leak from the Tories said Harper brought up the subject because he thought it would improve his poll numbers amongst women . Didn't really have much to do with being PC, just a cheap political ploy that backfired.

[DanielBenoit]

Okay being one who still is stuck in high school English classes, I must say that hardly any reading is in fact done, even in the advanced classes I'm taking.

Things improve as the years go by, for example I was very excited that we got to read Antigone last semester. Too bad I already read it two years prior lol.

What doesn't bother me is the reading list (because there virtually isn't any), but rather that when we do read something, we never get into any sort of in-depth discussion about it and I'm left in frustration when other students are simply trying to identify the different characters in a story.

I know, I'm the bad guy for sounding so pretentious, but how can one bear a classroom of teenagers trying to figure out who is Antigone and who is this Oedipus fellow.

[BienvenuJDC]

In my Jr year (11th) American Literature was required. My Sr year (12th) English Literature was required. I also think that there ought to be some leeway for the student to choose SOME of their reading, but that would make it very hard for the teachers to grade if there wasn't a certain reading curriculum established.

[L.M. The Third]

Nobody goes overboard with political correctness us British do! They banned a nursery rhyme (Baa Baa Black Sheep) because they thought it was racist!

How did they figure that one? And what does "banned" imply?

[BjorkPlease]

Perhaps banned was not the correct choice of word. Some nursery schools in Oxfordshire changed the lyrics to "Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep" and some elsewhere to "Baa Baa Happy Sheep". The rhyme has colonial links: 'Three bags full' refers to the three bags of wool which the slaves were told to collect and 'yes sir, yes sir' is how the slaves would reply to the slave masters when told to do a task. Basically it originates from slavery.
It wasn't legally banned but there was an attempt by Birmingham council to ban it, which failed. The newspapers here probably exaggerated it all which they often to when it comes to political correctness. Most people here don't like all the PC talk and the term "Political Correctness Gone Mad" is quite common.
I wouldn't be suprised if they tried to change the words of Rule Britannia next!:
"Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves,
Britons, never will be slaves."

[BienvenuJDC]

Some nursery schools in Oxfordshire changed the lyrics to "Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep"

When will people be 'upset' that homosexual sheep are being promoted?

I was just thinking that....




...yep, I found a picture...


There are REAL black sheep in the world. I feel your pain concerning Political Correctness. When are we just going to accept the past as the way it was? If we don't teach our children that SOME things actually happened, then they won't have a chance to be appalled by them. It's a matter of a few generations that history will repeat itself.