10-04-2012, 11:09 AM | #61 |
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Come on, that really is rather an exaggeration. The grammatical differences between Elizabethan English and English of the 21st century are minor (and primarily consist of things NOT present in Elizabethan times), and the vocabulary issues can be overstressed. There are relatively few words in Shakespeare that are totally unfamiliar to a modern reader. Words can be used in unfamiliar ways, true, but it's hardly "learning a second language".
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10-04-2012, 11:18 AM | #62 | |||
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It takes serious work to pound that out of children, until they think "education" means "doing really boring pointless crap just well enough to earn the right to run around at recess." They learn during recess. They learn social mores, applied physics, arbitrary rule sets, their own bodies' limits, emotional bonding, and time management. These are hardly insignificant skills, and they can't be learned by forced structured behavior. Some things can. But a lot of schools fail to match their structuring to the way kids learn, as opposed to the way kids *in a particularly cultural setting* have been taught to learn. Lesson plans are still devised around the notion that kids live in a nuclear family, with one parent always home and another who works full-time days and is available for help and guidance in the evenings. Both parents are assumed to be available on the weekends; the parents are presumed to speak English; the entire family is presumed to be able-bodied and have no specific dietary needs, and so on. The parents are presumed to be interested in and supportive of formal education. If any of these isn't true, the lesson plans have to be adjusted, or the kid runs a big chance of falling behind the kids who have those advantages. There is no such thing as a 10-year-old who doesn't like to learn. (A quick experiment involving grapes, liquid nitrogen, and a hammer will prove this. The entire class will demand to know "how'd you do that?") There are, however, plenty of 10-year-olds who have no affinity for learning by reading texts and writing essays based on them; that skillset has to be taught. If it's not taught, that's not a failure on the part of the child. If the *importance* of that skill isn't taught, that's not the fault of the child, either. Quote:
Teenagers have *started* to make their own decisions. They have to be allowed to make some mistakes, too. But any teacher who believes "I just teach; if they decide not to learn, that's up to them" is incompetent. They're weaseling around their inability to persuade kids that the topic is interesting and important. Quote:
While most children will not care for some classic literature, a child who dislikes *all* of it has been cheated by teachers and a school system that failed to show why these stories are still of value. |
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10-04-2012, 11:36 AM | #63 | ||
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There are relatively few words unfamiliar to an *adult* modern reader, and that's more true in the UK than in the US. Opening of "Midsummer Night's Dream," often taught in high schools as it's considered one of the more accessible stories--kids may not understand the politics of Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, but they're plenty familiar with "he likes her but she likes that other him, but now they're all confused." Quote:
Nuptial, apace, moon, wanes, step-dame, dowager. While the kid certainly knows the word "moon," she may never have heard it as a euphemism for "month." "Apace" is understandable... after a bit of thought. "Nuptial" is an uncommon term here; kids rarely hear it unless their parents are somehow involved in the wedding industry. My kids know what waxing and waning mean because we're Pagan; "wanes" not a grade-school vocab word here. "Step-dame" is clear enough once you know that a "dame" doesn't mean "any woman," which is how it's often used here. "Dowager" is likely to be entirely unknown. Six lines, six new words to learn. Combine those with the unusual structure of the sentences--great for memorization, weird for casual speech--and by page three of whatever book the play is printed in, 3/4 of the class is lost unless the language was taught before the story. |
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10-04-2012, 11:58 AM | #64 | |
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10-04-2012, 12:08 PM | #65 | |
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I just think that the "inaccessibility" of Shakespeare can be exaggerated. I'm not saying that there won't be some unfamiliar words - there will be, of course - but it's really not as fearsome as it's sometimes made out to be. |
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10-04-2012, 12:13 PM | #66 |
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@Elfwreck
We are discussing this from two very different cultural horizons. In Sweden everything after JHS is voluntary. I was not discussing the education of 10 year olds. Their education is compulsory. In Sweden 15 year olds are considered young adults, they are allowed to ride light motorcycles, have sex, choose the parent they prefer to live with etc. They are not required to move on to HS, although some 90 %+ do so, but this includes what in many other countries would be considered trade school. Since the norm today is single parent families, the curriculum reflects that. Schools are no longer allowed to set unreasonable demands on the students. Only long stretches of absence or truance will lead to their study allowances being reduced, but this isn't handled by the schools and teachers but by the Student Allowance Authority (CSN in Swedish). Hence, teachers have neither carrot nor whip. Thus, if students don't want to study, teachers have to accept that as a given fact. Trust me, if you think you have problems in the American education system, you will be very releived if you visit Sweden. |
10-04-2012, 12:48 PM | #67 | |
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10-04-2012, 01:01 PM | #68 |
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I vaguely remember that we had some dire set texts in English literature when I was at school. Thankfully, the names of the books and the authors have vanished from my memory.
But I never confused the books I was set in English Literature with the books that I enjoyed reading! It seems very odd to me that anyone could be put off reading by studying books at school. To me it's as if people could be put off eating by taking cookery (home economics) classes. But I do recognise that it does happen. |
10-04-2012, 01:13 PM | #69 | ||
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The kids usually don't have enough understanding of the story themes and background details to gloss over the unfamiliar words and sort out exact meanings later. The rhythm of the speech is like nothing they've heard, so they have to struggle to sort out the basic meanings even of the parts where they know all the words. And, of course, the literary themes are usually new and confusing--because we don't teach literature based on concepts the kids are assumed to understand well; they're supposed to learn new things. That's three areas of unfamiliarity to wade through. Add, potentially, unfamiliarity with play format; characters with hard-to-pronounce names and meaningless titles; the hassles of learning something new in a class of 30 people who all have slightly different difficulties with it. A good teacher, of course, can guide the kids through that, but that's because a good teacher can teach anything, not because Shakespeare is notably accessible. It's not incomprehensible, but it's also very much not a matter of "just put the texts in front of the students and make them read, maybe aloud, and they'll understand it if they're paying attention." There are just too many disconnects between a lot of classics and the lives of modern teenagers for that to be reasonable. |
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10-04-2012, 01:31 PM | #70 |
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My daughter isn't a great reader. She's got a good vocabulary, because her dad and I do, and we've never talked down to the kids. Her drama group in high school did Midsummer Night's Dream, and she's been in love with Shakespeare ever since. She took a challenging course on Shakespeare in junior college, and enjoyed every minute of it - she now reads Shakespeare for fun. Of course, it doesn't hurt that her dad's a fan too, and has all the major films of the plays on DVD, so in addition to reading the plays, she can (and has) watched them.
Shakespeare doesn't have to be incomprehensible, but I agree that they were written to be performed, and not just read. If classes that studied the plays in high school also showed the videos, I think kids would get a great deal more out of them, and enjoy them more. |
10-04-2012, 01:38 PM | #71 |
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Everyone has to eat, but people don't have to read. Many people are put off off vegetables by being served bad vegetables. Brussels sprouts boiled into a stinking mess. Canned peas. Mushy canned asparagus.
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10-04-2012, 01:46 PM | #72 |
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10-04-2012, 02:05 PM | #73 |
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10-04-2012, 02:29 PM | #74 |
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Have you ever actually read untranslated (ie, exactly as it's written in the original manuscripts - no updating the spelling or grammar to modern norms, as you find in many texts, especially those aimed at English class) Shakespeare? Not an easy task, for most people. It's not nearly as bad as untranslated Chaucer, of course, but still bad enough.
Last edited by JD Gumby; 10-04-2012 at 02:33 PM. |
10-04-2012, 02:40 PM | #75 | |
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I consider myself now a good reader but that was something that developed over time, and largely independent of classes before university. I really don't think I had the intellectual maturity when I was a teenager to appreciate what was put in front of me. Perhaps this is true of others. I had a mix of good and bad teachers. All of them put in the effort but some people are just more gifted at teaching. The best teacher I had used films of Shakespeare, with subtitles on, to help acclimate us with the language and plots. We also acted out parts as we read through the plays. |
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