Oh, this made me laugh and flinch at the same time. When I was in college, I took a seminar on Thomas Hardy and let me tell you, I kept waiting for things to get better. We were supposed to read every book he wrote and sit around talking about it. I have no idea what lies I told at the end about Jude the Obscure or others I may have skimmed. Tolkien was something else again - his world captured me in paperbook when I was living in Boston after college and had a long commute.
Junior high and high school: Lorna Doone, Silas Marner, Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates, The Mill on the Floss, among others now forgotten by me. Not to mention those novels themselves now largely forgotten. I attribute this to the teachers having the same novels inflicted on them in the 1930's when they were students and those teachers the same down through the decades.
What is it about senior English courses, apparently world-wide,* that they seem designed to kill off any fledgling English majors? My AP English class at Terry Sanford High in Fayetteville, circa 1973, included Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, from which we had to read in the Middle- (Olde-?) English dialect, that our formidable and intimidating teacher, Mrs. Wilma Godwin, had mastered. We, sadly, never did, and are scarred to this day. It took me 10 years in the Air Force before I was able overcome that trauma and go get my English degree.
* An assumption derived from a sample pool of two.
2 things: I love Emma Straub (This Time Tomorrow is a joy, especially if you liked her dad's writing, or if you miss your own dad and wish you could time travel and do things different with him.) And a Zojirushi rice cooker is expensive and absolutely worth it. (It does play a delightful little tune when the rice is ready.)
PTSD from the mention of Drieser's "An American Tragedy." Long story short, my daughter's AP English assignment years ago was to summarize EACH chapter and to DRAW a map where the action occurs and write a brief description of each location's relation to the action. NO TYPING - for a student with, among other things, dysgraphia. And the learning objective? Nobody knows. Was Dreiser even on the list of the AP curriculum? No, he was not. I, the commercial litigator (at the time) was told to 'modify the assignment however I wanted.' Seriously? Uch. 800 pages. Thanks for the memory!
In my senior year of high school, in a small cowtown in the Texas Panhandle, in 1965 (how’s that for dating myself) my English teacher was Miss Douglas. She was small and prim and dressed rather like I imagine she thought an English teacher should dress. Her entire persona fairly screamed “I am yet a virgin.”
But she was wicked smart and sassy and tossed the entire excruciating high school lit class canon aside in favor of Mice and Men, A Farewell to Arms, Jane Eyre, The Stranger, Crime and Punishment (for extra credit), Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Tom Sawyer, and To Kill a Mockingbird. The kids who could think did so. We argued. We dug deep. She just guided us.
I had a terrible crush on Miss Douglas. Thanks in large part to her I’ve been a passionate reader all my life. Somewhere along the line someone had forced me to read Silas Marner. She undid the damage.
By the time I graduated I’d read every word that Camus had published and described myself as an existentialist.
I went on to college and double-majored in Philosophy and Classics.
The motif of my home decor to this day is “Books,” everywhere.
It really does appear that psilocybin could be effective in treating mental illness, and I hope that it will be studied more rigorously. At the same time, I’m somewhat concerned that with the growing trend of legalizing marijuana, medical and otherwise, we are discovering that it’s not a panacea for all of life’s problems and may in fact make some underlying health conditions worse. I’d like to see it studied more rigorously, too, and not just with the relatively low THC marijuana Ole Miss is allowed to grow for scientific research. Don’t get me wrong - I think there may very well be an appropriate medical role for marijuana in addition to recreational use just for fun - but, I believe it might be smarter to slow the train down a bit and gain an even better understanding of marijuana’s long-term effects on people, and see if the anecdotal evidence about its utility in treating medical conditions is backed up by solid science. I hope it is. I hope it can be an alternative to opioids, for instance, but let’s see what, if any, downsides there may be to its use.
Preach it, Tommy! As a school librarian this is my pet peeve. When there are so many wonderful books that will nurture a love of reading, why require every kid to read the same boring book? I
I get it, Tommy, but no Tolkien?
Oh, this made me laugh and flinch at the same time. When I was in college, I took a seminar on Thomas Hardy and let me tell you, I kept waiting for things to get better. We were supposed to read every book he wrote and sit around talking about it. I have no idea what lies I told at the end about Jude the Obscure or others I may have skimmed. Tolkien was something else again - his world captured me in paperbook when I was living in Boston after college and had a long commute.
Junior high and high school: Lorna Doone, Silas Marner, Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates, The Mill on the Floss, among others now forgotten by me. Not to mention those novels themselves now largely forgotten. I attribute this to the teachers having the same novels inflicted on them in the 1930's when they were students and those teachers the same down through the decades.
What is it about senior English courses, apparently world-wide,* that they seem designed to kill off any fledgling English majors? My AP English class at Terry Sanford High in Fayetteville, circa 1973, included Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, from which we had to read in the Middle- (Olde-?) English dialect, that our formidable and intimidating teacher, Mrs. Wilma Godwin, had mastered. We, sadly, never did, and are scarred to this day. It took me 10 years in the Air Force before I was able overcome that trauma and go get my English degree.
* An assumption derived from a sample pool of two.
2 things: I love Emma Straub (This Time Tomorrow is a joy, especially if you liked her dad's writing, or if you miss your own dad and wish you could time travel and do things different with him.) And a Zojirushi rice cooker is expensive and absolutely worth it. (It does play a delightful little tune when the rice is ready.)
PTSD from the mention of Drieser's "An American Tragedy." Long story short, my daughter's AP English assignment years ago was to summarize EACH chapter and to DRAW a map where the action occurs and write a brief description of each location's relation to the action. NO TYPING - for a student with, among other things, dysgraphia. And the learning objective? Nobody knows. Was Dreiser even on the list of the AP curriculum? No, he was not. I, the commercial litigator (at the time) was told to 'modify the assignment however I wanted.' Seriously? Uch. 800 pages. Thanks for the memory!
In my senior year of high school, in a small cowtown in the Texas Panhandle, in 1965 (how’s that for dating myself) my English teacher was Miss Douglas. She was small and prim and dressed rather like I imagine she thought an English teacher should dress. Her entire persona fairly screamed “I am yet a virgin.”
But she was wicked smart and sassy and tossed the entire excruciating high school lit class canon aside in favor of Mice and Men, A Farewell to Arms, Jane Eyre, The Stranger, Crime and Punishment (for extra credit), Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Tom Sawyer, and To Kill a Mockingbird. The kids who could think did so. We argued. We dug deep. She just guided us.
I had a terrible crush on Miss Douglas. Thanks in large part to her I’ve been a passionate reader all my life. Somewhere along the line someone had forced me to read Silas Marner. She undid the damage.
By the time I graduated I’d read every word that Camus had published and described myself as an existentialist.
I went on to college and double-majored in Philosophy and Classics.
The motif of my home decor to this day is “Books,” everywhere.
It really does appear that psilocybin could be effective in treating mental illness, and I hope that it will be studied more rigorously. At the same time, I’m somewhat concerned that with the growing trend of legalizing marijuana, medical and otherwise, we are discovering that it’s not a panacea for all of life’s problems and may in fact make some underlying health conditions worse. I’d like to see it studied more rigorously, too, and not just with the relatively low THC marijuana Ole Miss is allowed to grow for scientific research. Don’t get me wrong - I think there may very well be an appropriate medical role for marijuana in addition to recreational use just for fun - but, I believe it might be smarter to slow the train down a bit and gain an even better understanding of marijuana’s long-term effects on people, and see if the anecdotal evidence about its utility in treating medical conditions is backed up by solid science. I hope it is. I hope it can be an alternative to opioids, for instance, but let’s see what, if any, downsides there may be to its use.
Preach it, Tommy! As a school librarian this is my pet peeve. When there are so many wonderful books that will nurture a love of reading, why require every kid to read the same boring book? I