Cultural Literacy Rant over at Excavating the Relic.
I
thought she made some very interesting points. I've always thought
that there's a powerful history component to high school English, but
it's definitely focused passing The Canon on to the next generation.
You get critical tools along the way, but it really leads you to believe
that those tools are only for use on The Canon. It wasn't till college
that I really learned a lot about how to approach any kind of
art/performance/media with an eye toward how it's constructed, and I
still wish I was better at it.
1 comment:
I think the reason middle schools and high schools read such *old* books isn't because they think nothing else is worthwhile, but because parents get in a tizzy whenever more modern books are introduced into a curriculum. If you assigned more modern books that are more relatable to kids, there would be more language, relationships, politics, or culture in it that at least one parent is going to complain to the school board over. That's why the reading list becomes so much broader in college—there are fewer parents who are going to complain that you're ruining the innocence of their poor child.
Same thing happens in history class. For all my high school curriculum had to say about it, the Vietnam War didn't even happen.
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