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On topic:
To be honest, I don't see the issue in writing an exposition-type essay about e-Sports. The subject is equally as frivolous as most of the 'novels' taught in high school.
In any case, the specific style of essay espoused by high school teaching (e.g. AP test essays) is not so much good writing as much as speed-writing/speed content analysis, which isn't all that useful in most contexts. Technique and transitions are sacrificed for "put as much shit into your essay as possible".
Which leads into a slightly less on-topic rant:
A lot of the stuff you read in high school is crap, or (at the other end of the spectrum) you can't fully appreciate some of the stories until you get older anyway.
This is particularly obvious in 'Internationalized' IB curricula, where the primary criteria is not technical quality, but whether author is not white. Its absolutely silly to elevate something like Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart to something even close to Heart of Darkness, for example.
Its a sad day when authors like Toni Morrison get the nod over Dante's Inferno. Talking to high school students, I've noticed a consistent devaluation in the old (16th century classics and before) classics in reading curricula (and an increase in semi-functional illiterates in college students -- correlated? you decide).
Is someone really going all ~grammar-Nazi~ in the TL blogs section?
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On December 21 2010 14:17 ffdestiny wrote:First of all, Huckleberry Finn is the protagonist in a novel by Mark Twain, (Samuel Clemens nom de plume), entitled Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Second of all, you're using the semicolon the wrong way (it isn't used as a convenient way to string your sentences together), see: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/566/01/
This is an online blog / forum, not a dissertation. Please don't nitpick about whether I properly cited the title of the book, especially since you obviously understood my meaning. And I believe I am using the semicolon correctly. It separates two independent clauses, and my second clause is essentially restating the first (If I am wrong about this, then do point out where my mistake lies).
EDIT: Oh, I see. I used it a second time, I think that should be a dash...
On December 21 2010 14:17 ffdestiny wrote:
Third, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, that is the novel itself, is a racist one. I'd like to know who taught you otherwise and forgot to tell you that Twain focused on realism in his work. Additionally, you sound extremely naïve when you quote novels as having "deep, clandestine truths" and poets having "profound" and "entirely random words" that are strung together; in fact, you sound simply ignorant.
I have never stated my opinion on the issue, or even what I was taught. I have only said that there is dispute between literary critics about the matter. And thanks for your opinion, however irrelevant it is to the point I was trying to make.
On December 21 2010 14:17 ffdestiny wrote:
Tell me why Shakespeare invokes the beautiful boy in his sonnets, tell me what The Road Not Taken is, or tell me why Huckleberry's father is a drunk and a child abuser. Tell me why Jim is Huck's seemingly one true friend, and he's also the same who is seeking freedom? Tell me why Paradise Lost is sympathetic towards Satan. Tell me of the relationship to the story of the battle of troy in The Iliad to classic mythology? Why is it framed in dactylic hexameters?
You see, literature, poetry, and criticism isn't just what you make of it, it's what you get out of it. At the core, it's learning how to be smart, which is the most valuable possession.
I can't answer most of those questions (though it seems obvious that that was your intention). I also don't see how your last two sentences relate to each other, though that can be blamed on my not having "learned how to be smart," I guess.
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Wait, forget this post. I don't want to get involved in this topic.
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On December 21 2010 15:17 jon arbuckle wrote:
Wait, forget this post. I don't want to get involved in this topic.
k
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I can't answer most of those questions (though it seems obvious that that was your intention). I also don't see how your last two sentences relate to each other, though that can be blamed on my not having "learned how to be smart," I guess.
I don't get this either. Its like the whole point is so he can feel smug on an internet forum devoted to a computer game. Even more amusing is that the answers to those questions are, in any context outside of literary academia, useless. I kind of agree with what you're saying but there are plenty of other avenues to develop critical thinking besides literature analysis.
To each his own, I guess.
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On December 21 2010 14:28 bbq ftw wrote:On topic: To be honest, I don't see the issue in writing an exposition-type essay about e-Sports. The subject is equally as frivolous as most of the 'novels' taught in high school. In any case, the specific style of essay espoused by high school teaching (e.g. AP test essays) is not so much good writing as much as speed-writing/speed content analysis, which isn't all that useful in most contexts. Technique and transitions are sacrificed for "put as much shit into your essay as possible". Which leads into a slightly less on-topic rant: Show nested quote +A lot of the stuff you read in high school is crap, or (at the other end of the spectrum) you can't fully appreciate some of the stories until you get older anyway. This is particularly obvious in 'Internationalized' IB curricula, where the primary criteria is not technical quality, but whether author is not white. Its absolutely silly to elevate something like Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart to something even close to Heart of Darkness, for example. Its a sad day when authors like Toni Morrison get the nod over Dante's Inferno. Talking to high school students, I've noticed a consistent devaluation in the old (16th century classics and before) classics in reading curricula (and an increase in semi-functional illiterates in college students -- correlated? you decide). Is someone really going all ~grammar-Nazi~ in the TL blogs section?
I am so very in agreement with you, so very in agreement. What is loved about classics is their amplification to the core values of learning: content, critical analyses and sophistication. With an exemplary professor backing such remarkable works like Heart of Darkness, Dante's Inferno or (my favorite) Paradise Lost, anyone is going to receive a cornucopia of learning and "smarts".
And do forgive my Nazi-grammar like tendencies. I've been a student for so long, and an instructor; therefore, I do evoke grammar as a tool for enforcing the triteness of its measurable influences, but the correctness in its usage—having been held at the doom of its power for so long.
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While I think ffdestiny has the right intent, he does it in a rather abrasive manner. There is definitely a value to courses on literature - whether the issue is within the quality of your school or your past teachers isn't really relevant.
Personally, my English classes all been amazing. Grammar, reading quizzes, vocab - yeah, it's all bullshit busy work. They're all things I already learned in middle school - they existed somewhat my freshman year (didn't like English much then), ones that started dying down in sophomore year (mostly just vocab quizzes), and altogether didn't exist my junior and senior years. Instead, my English AP and Faulkner classes flat-out ignored the AP, knowing we'd be smart enough to know the bullshit routines standardized curricula demanded of us, and instead focused all on our readings, essays, and ideas.
The posts condemning literature in these classes as "useless" are flat-out wrong. The value in such writing is what you as a person derive from them. If person chooses to numb himself, close his eyes, and ignore the writing, he creates his own self-fulfilling prophecy in the idea that "literature is useless [to said person]."
Nor is it really about "learning how to be smart" - "being smart" is way too subjective to make a claim like that. It's about looking at the big picture of the meaning of life, explaining/exploring emotions, reality, and searching for capital T "Truth." And please, spare the "derp the meaning of life is bullshit," because if you honestly believed that, you'd be a nihilist, and probably jumping off a bridge to join Quentin Compson.
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@ffdestiny show off! (it's a compliment)
@synapse Your attitude towards literature is a shame. It's really not about memorizing plotlines or anything of that sort, but more about learning empathy, getting a feel for social behaviors in a practical setting, placing historical events in personal context, and learning to analyse situations for their deeper meanings and undercurrents.
You're right that it doesn't matter to you whether or not Huck Finn was racist, but teaching it, the hope is that you will receive a better understanding of racism, why people are racist, the effects of racism on the victims, the subtleties of racism, and the self justifications of the racist. The idea is that with this practice, you will be able to better identify and deal with discrimination in your real life, however you encounter it.
Let me put it in StarCraft terms. If you make a blog post about how Starcraft is about memorizing Phoenixes > Overlords and Hydras > Phoenixes and just learning counters, that would be uh, laughable. In life there are trends, big pictures and smaller pictures, aspects of human nature that are consistent and aspects that are shifting. Literature is all about giving you a perspective to see them. Once you get into college, you'll learn about things like meta-narrative, and write angry blog posts about how that word is as overused as meta-game. But not learning those concepts will hurt you as a human being just as not knowing the meta game will hurt you as a SC player.
The most powerful people in modern society rules not with muscle or guns, but with words, the media, control over people by knowing what they want and manipulating it to what you want.
Literature is just one of the many tools to help make you better at it. Disrespecting it is just shooting yourself in the foot.
Your problem is that you had a fucking shitty teacher and a fucking shitty class. You're probably completely correct that your literature classes are a total waste of time for you, that's why you should probably read more outside of class.
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I think we're all missing the important thing here:
On December 21 2010 12:07 synapse wrote:
Apparently these two Korean girls are getting SCII and playing Terran.. not that that would help
Oh it will help OP, maybe not in the way you were originally thinking though 
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On December 21 2010 15:21 bbq ftw wrote:Show nested quote +I can't answer most of those questions (though it seems obvious that that was your intention). I also don't see how your last two sentences relate to each other, though that can be blamed on my not having "learned how to be smart," I guess. I don't get this either. Its like the whole point is so he can feel smug on an internet forum devoted to a computer game. Even more amusing is that the answers to those questions are, in any context outside of literary academia, useless. To each his own, I guess.
But a dissertation on the theory behind mineral collection is not useless, nor realizing what "strategies" work and what do not. If you change your perspective, you'll realize that the key to information here on Team Liquid, or anywhere else (your job for example) depends on your ability to be smart enough to interpret the information that you're given.
Just let it be known, in college, in life, you may not easily be given a way out and be allowed to have a little laugh about it afterwards. I also welcome your perspective on my questions about literature; in fact, the most valuable responses are ones outside of "literary academia". Individual interpretations like that offer a truly invaluable look into the core meanings of life itself. I'll have you know that's what any college course grades you on; that is, your ability to explain and interpret the information being provided, even in Mathematics!
And excuse my smug behavior. Those questions are very basic ones in terms of literature and they are supposed to make someone want to probe into the deeper implications. I find that it is typical of many individuals (emphasis on younger ones) to not have enough attention or capacity to want to find out more. That, or they are being motivated in a similar way with free grades of an A.
EDIT: @gen.Sun - I agree wholeheartedly with your post! Thank you.
@LlamaNamedOsama - I'm such a foaming nihilist anymore, especially after that Mark Twain seminar. I felt compelled so much so that I wrote two critical essays on Twain and nihilism.
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I guess I was overly harsh too, but TL Blog Whiteknight mode kicked in.
While you ask a lot of interesting questions, they aren't the only ones worth asking. And to say they are "basic", necessary foundations for being:
smart enough to interpret the information that you're given.
Is really quite a narrow way to put it.
There are many ways you can interrogate a piece of literature, and to say that the way current high school education does it is the only way, or the best way, is pretty unwarranted.
I'd almost say that since the high school/undergraduate approach highly values insincerity (its often not about what you truly believe about the piece, but what you believe the evidence should point towards, if that makes any sense) its really not the best way to go about actually appreciating literature.
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@bbq ftw
sry Inferno is no longer relevant in American youth society. I'd rather they teach Harry Potter than that shit.
I totally agree on the part about speed and stuff though. Imagine if the final mission of SC2 is testing whether or not you have 200 APM. Would be a terrible game.
The public education system is all fucked up, and I feel sorry for everyone who had to suffer through it without the resources to do self study.
One of the main problems with the current literature classes is that many of the books people study don't feel relevant.
IMO most decent / big published books are extremely fertile ground for analysis by students. The selection of books that are taught in school should be a LOT bigger imo. This is something that internet startup people I'm familiar with are solving as we speak.
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On December 21 2010 15:21 bbq ftw wrote:Show nested quote +I can't answer most of those questions (though it seems obvious that that was your intention). I also don't see how your last two sentences relate to each other, though that can be blamed on my not having "learned how to be smart," I guess. I don't get this either. Its like the whole point is so he can feel smug on an internet forum devoted to a computer game. Even more amusing is that the answers to those questions are, in any context outside of literary academia, useless. To each his own, I guess.
You're kidding me, right. You don't know the answers to those questions, yet you're automatically assuming that those answers are "useless"? Well, for one thing, literature is great at teaching people to draw logical conclusions  .
But in seriousness:
Jim is Huck's true friend because, along with other characters in the story (for ex, the grangerfords and shepherdsons), he proves that white does not make right, and that socially accepted norms do not make them good norms. Yeah, not like we need to know that, heh oh by the way there's some issue with homosexual marriage, eww society says that's gross, let's not let them marry.
Paradise Lost is sympathetic to Satan because Satan is an underdog, displaying that undying spirit of resistance, which is of course strange that we would be sympathetic to a figure so detested. This exposes and deconstructs the whole puritanical codes that people might ordinarily assume from religion - the ideas that hedonism is bad, or that submissiveness is always good. Note that it is not a flatout condemnation of religion, as Satan does still want to fuck up humanity, but it exposes an ambiguity in our values, that it's not good guys and bad guys, because sometimes the bad guys have some things that you may empathize with.
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sry Inferno is no longer relevant in American youth society. I'd rather they teach Harry Potter than that shit.
It turns out that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is on my local junior high's reading curricula. You may have gotten your wish!
IMO most decent / big published books are extremely fertile ground for analysis by students.
They are, but the analysis would center more around technical flaws of the books than thematic elements. Not saying that's a bad thing.
You're kidding me, right. You don't know the answers to those questions, yet you're automatically assuming that those answers are "useless"? Well, for one thing, literature is great at teaching people to draw logical conclusions .
Viewed in a vacuum, yes. Knowing the answers doesn't mean anything (except outside lit. academia, I guess), how you got there is the key.
But I know I'm prone to streaks of science-elitism, so take my statements with a grain of salt.
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I'm in disagreement with how we "do" high school here in America. We should ultimately make it much more like college and "up" the value of learning over the banality of it. Of course my bitterness is usually eternal.
However, it is reverberated in many college professors when they say that when they receive students from high school they have to suffer with teaching them "the basics" because of the entirely inadequate public education system. Also, I'm not a high school instructor.
EDIT: The Harry Potter series is a great example of a contemporary piece that lends itself exceptionally well to current educational curriculum.
@LlamaNamedOsama - Some great insights, I've went ahead and saved them. It's not everyday that one gets literary analysis at Team Liquid. I like your interpretation about Satan the best.
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On December 21 2010 14:10 synapse wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 14:05 TheCabDriver wrote:
I can't believe people would come in this thread and argue about the quality of your school or about how you should be angry that a teacher gave you a break.
HOLY FUCK. Yeah, I kind of just wanted to give some context as to why my teacher let me write about SC (and not have this blog be a one-liner).
WOOSH
On December 21 2010 14:19 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 14:05 TheCabDriver wrote:
I can't believe people would come in this thread and argue about the quality of your school or about how you should be angry that a teacher gave you a break.
HOLY FUCK. Did you read the OP? His teacher doesn't *give the class breaks*. She gives them free As when they earned Fs, and she pushes essays back for weeks on end. She also has no control of the classroom. The fact that this teacher isn't keeping the students responsible probably relates to the reason why synapse doesn't give a shit about his English class. But yeah, the StarCraft thing is cool too. He just prefaced it with something that some of us considered worthwhile to talk about.
DOUBLE WOOSH
+ Show Spoiler +Come on guys, let's turn on our sarcasm detectors, alright?
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However, it is reverberated in many college professors when they say that when they receive students from high school they have to suffer with teaching them "the basics" because of the entirely inadequate public education system.
What your saying is right, but I think you're conflating the inability to understand literature with the technical inability to write correctly (proper grammar, essay structure, etc.).
The two, while correlated, are not directly linked.
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I totally thought this was gonna be a brag blog on getting with a hot student teacher.. Oh well good luck with the essay =.=
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imo the standards of grammar are held too rigidly, and secondly people are not reading enough. If students can be encouraged to really enjoy literature without being pressured to learn the finer points of grammar, they will read more, and their grammar and natural understanding of language will improve alongside it.
Language is ever changing. I don't see why we can figure out your/you're verbally from context but suddenly find ourselves in a titter just because this was written on a blog. People should be allowed to experiment with language. That means everyone, not just the Colombia english alums who produce new york 'art'.
But then again maybe that's why I have such shitty grammar.
I also had a final point but I forgot.
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On December 21 2010 15:59 bbq ftw wrote:Show nested quote +However, it is reverberated in many college professors when they say that when they receive students from high school they have to suffer with teaching them "the basics" because of the entirely inadequate public education system. What your saying is right, but I think you're conflating the inability to understand literature with the technical inability to write correctly (proper grammar, essay structure, etc.). The two, while correlated, are not directly linked.
However, teachers in high school definitely do not teach us how to write essays properly. Pretty much stick with the 5 paragraph structure until you finish high school.
Then, first day of college "yeah forget all that bullshit they tought you. That was just to make it easier to grade".
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EPT
