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The way we did Shakespeare in high school was absolute torture. Every Shakespeare play we studied in high school English was read aloud in class, with the teacher picking a different student to read each stanza. So most of the reading gets done by students who have little to no oratory skills, many of whom could care less if they do a good job or not. Such a pointless waste of time that could be spent much more productively.
Just saw the posts about memory work - my peeve was having to learn The Lady of Shalott - and not in high school, either - rather, Grade 7 public school (1962 - 1963; during the days of JFK). We had a selection of stuff to choose from, and for whatever reason I picked Tennyson. I guess it was easier than Shakespeare - the only redeeming feature I can think of. Those were the days - before Monty Python - of Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, and Sir Lancelot on TV - so I guess that's where the appeal came from.
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott."
I read much of what's listed above, but a few others stand out for me. S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders (written by a 16-year-old) I loved. We also read the Trial of Steven Truscott by Isabel LeBourdais. And we did a unit in grade 12 English that included Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now, T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men, and Bob Dylan's Desolation Row.
Michelle, I share your sentiments about Shakespeare, and everyone's about Who Has Seen the Wind!
I think with all this talk about Shakespeare, we should do a rabble ensemble performance of Henry V.
I did not have to read Lord of the Flies.
To this day, it is still forced upon MANY kids in Nova Scotia.
[Maybe the Dexter education cuts will unintentionally sideswipe that. One can hope for at least some silver lining.]
I went to a god awful school in the US in the 60s- special for white trash and Mexicans.
But speaking of silver linings- we occassionaly got some interesting weirdos for teachers, who couldnt get a job elsewhere.
Shakespeare, Romantic Poets and Bob Dylan for a couple years.
Reading back to Time Bandit, Shakespeare was always done out loud- distributing the parts. Though I dont remember it making an impression on me. I was impressed by the teachers' passion about literature, even if I didnt get it. Awfuly literal minded at that age.
Surely given the recent conversation about the role of the legal profession, Henry VI would be more suitable.
For you, bagkitty.
I had a better experience of Shakespeare than others here, I think. Instead of reading Shakespeare plays, we acted them out(in condensed form, I’m sure). We did Love’s Labour’s Lost and Julius Caesar, both of which I remember finding fun and engaging, though I remember little about the details now. I must have been a morbid teen-ager: we had to memorize a soliloquy from Julius Caesar, and I picked “O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth!” (Antony’s soliloquy over Caesar’s dead body), and can still declaim with relish:
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter’d with the hands of war…
ending up with
That this foul deed may smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial…
Yikes.
We also had, I think in Grade 9, to memorize a fairly long poem from our poetry anthology, and for some incomprehensible reason I selected “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” by Oscar Wilde – a gruesome work indeed, from which I can still recite,
Each narrow cell in which we dwell is a foul and dark latrine,
And the fetid breath of living Death chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust in Humanity’s machine…
Luckily, I didn’t grow up obsessed with gore and serial killing. Funny how these things stick with you, lo these many years later. Thanks to Ripple for mentioning The Trial of Steven Truscott -- I had forgotten that one, but it had a profound impact. I got really interested in legal issues, and have remained so, off and on, ever since. I support AIDWYC and I went to a couple of the sittings of the Court of Appeal about the Truscott case in 2008. Incredible case.
Another author with a lasting influence was Alan Paton. We read both Cry, the Beloved Country (a lyrically beautiful book despite the darkness of its subject matter) and Too Late the Phalarope. It was the beginning of my consciousness of the evils of systematic racism.
Thanks Maysie it was cute, of course I was talking about lawyers...
But it is the thought that counts, right?
(oh, and that is an image from one of my favourite books.... Scenes From The Lives Of The Great Socialists. It was not part of the approved reading material at my High School, but it had a great cover anyway)
The film Renaissance Man (Danny Devito, Gregory HInes, James Remar, and Ed Begley, Jr.) is, in part, a comment on the relevance of classic literature to life in the modern world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Man_(film)
In this film, a down-on-his-luck advertising executive takes up teaching as a temporary job, perhaps telling us something about the mind set needed by literature teachers: ya' really gotta' love the product. How many do?
[duplicate post]
Oh yeah, I forgot about The Outsiders. We read it in Grade 8. Then we saw the movie. The book is great. The movie, not so much. For instance, in the scene where Ponyboy throws up, the actor spits.
I had the same English teacher for grade 10-11. Besides reading Shakespeare out loud we also acted out scenes. I got to play Petruchio and Richard III in their respecective wooing scene. They both showed incredible chutzpah. Especially Richard wooing Anne while her dead husband's coffin stood near.
What brought alive Twelfth Night to our youngest this year was watching a DVD of the Stratfod production. One of the challenges with Shakespearean language is keeping the plot straight.
Friday Ms. C and I celebrated our sixteenth anniversary by attending a production of Romeo and Juliet. The premise was interesting, setting the play in NB's language wars. The Capulets were French and the Montagues were English. Differnet scenes were presented in different languages with simultaneously translated captions. It was an interesting concept but the production was very flat. Many patrons left at the intermission and we stuck it out to the end.
For public speaking, there is no greater humiliation than doing The Lady of Shallot.
Okay, the last two posts (and I have no idea why there were two) did not include anything I typed.
What I posted:
I saw Kevin Spacey as Richard III in London last year. OH. MY. GAWD. Fucking amazing. Especially the wooing scene, which is incredibly difficult to get right.
Sorry Romeo and Juliet wasn't well-executed. Sounds like a great concept for setting, though. Pity.
Ray Bardbury, author of notable highschool read Fahrenheit 451, died today. Never picked this one up in highschool or anytime thereafter, but always appreciate a writer willing to write nuanced and critical novels for YA.
I wonder if they will keep studying his novels or retire him to the dusty backshelves.
His short story collections are also worth reading.
ain't that the way it goes.
Oh Caissa you're such a hipster, right in line with:
"Infinite Jest is okay, but you should really check out the Essay collection Consider the Lobster" (this is me, i say this)
"The Great Gatsby is good yes, but his short story collections are the best"
But yes, I will conisder picking up his short story collection (my favourite type of reading), thank you for the tip.
Oh, why did we never read short story collection in highschool, or compare and contrast works of the same author?! That would have been really interesting!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Bradbury_bibliography#Short_stories
Thanks buddy!
many of the standards already listed and:
Druid's Tune for 9 and Foxfire for 12. that's 2!! books with female leads
The Most Dangerous Game; a good argument to review classics when they could get the same thing out of a short story possibly bypassing Lord of the Flies
I feel like most, if not all, high-school book selections deserve merit, mostly i draw issue with the boring assignments, monotony of choice and mandatory (and generalized) reading part. By mandatory reading part, I mean forcing kids to read is okay, but forcing them to read a specific, all-or-nothing book, especially if it is out of their reading range or interests, is not good.
I remember a good experience with reading in public school was when -- actually, err, now that I think about us, they did the division of kids by 'learning speeds' and then forced us to read that book. Mine was a strange book, but being able to discuss it within our small respective groups was nice.
I think a large part of kids not only enjoying reading, but taking other skills out of it (writing, conversing, critical thinking) comes with choice.
In University you get a bit of choice because you get to choose the style of class, but ultimately the prof chooses all the books. That's probably how I end up reading Isben's Doll House.
I'll speak in praise of mandatory reading selections. It introduces you to material you may not otherwise choose to read and it provides a class with a common experinece and an opportunity to work through some universal themes.
I was about to complain of joyless reading assignments and classroom discussions when I recalled my high school introduction to Raskolnikov, the conflicted former student and drunkard's son of Crime and Punishment. Meeting him was, certainly for me, joylessness with a higher purpose.
Caissa and Grandpa_Bill true. You guys make good points. Some of the books I read, I probably wouldn't have picked up (sidenote: this idea was also the whole inspiration for the Babble Book Club), but I also picked out Uncle Tom's Cabin from a list of books given where we were allowed to conduct our own independent study. That experience offered new opportunity because I felt more inclined to read it and create the assignment because I was in control.
Giving kids a selection of books they have never been exposed to could be an idea. When I was reading To Kill A Mockingbird in school, I had already read it, the other class was reading Brave New World and I would have opted for that, but was not allowed because I had to 'stay on class assignment.'
I think also teachers don't like me because I'm all uppity.
Two books I never read in high school:
The film Capote, based on yet a third book (Capote by Gerald Clarke), made me aware of the connection between Harper Lee and Truman Capote. After seeing that film, I did read those two books, Was that life imitating art or just one more of life's inexplicable ironies. Still haven't read Clarke's biography.
On the "Teaching Shakespeare in High School" theme, one of my few fun and memorable assignments in senior High School was - after we had done the usual read-through of Julius Caeser - to write as a group an abridged version of the play, adapted to the politics of the day.
It was Quebec in the late '60s, so there was no shortage of dramatic if not melodramatric material to draw upon: the infamous visit of Charles deGaulle, Premier Daniel Johnson dropping dead in office, parties dividing between federalists and nationalists, new leaders and new parties emerging, etc., etc.
In retrospect, I suspect that whole exercise significantly contributed to making me a fan for life of The Bard... and just goes to show what a little pedagogic creativity can do! (Well, at least for one bunch of adolescent political nerds!)