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Too many 80s and 90s kids into goth when they went to college but came out as English majors. I think for the most part however instructors just follow a templa

Too many 80s and 90s kids into goth when they went to college but came out as English majors. I think for the most part however instructors just follow a template teaching method and don't change it. I mean, why the hell else do we still make kids read Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn? They are some of the most boring pieces of American literature to date, not even good historical novels. To Kill A Mockingbird does a better job and even that goes way over kids heads.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
As a Russian, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were an important part of my childhood, just as "To kill a mockingbird".
- stephenhuey 5y ago
  Thank you. The 2 parent comments seem to misunderstand a couple things. Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s profound, and vice versa. Also, just because something goes over many students’ heads doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth trying.
  - handrous 5y ago
    I'd go farther—probably too mean for HN, but this kind of attitude gets a pass on here in part because people are too restrained in slapping down painfully-bad opinions that aren't about technology—and point to the above two comments as illustrating the difference between "literate" as in "can read words" and "literate" as in "at least knows what actually reading looks like, even if not fully capable of it oneself". It's the equivalent of "classical music sucks, it all all sounds the same to me and is really boring" or "jazz sucks, it's all just random noise" or "hip-hop sucks, it's all just angry yelling". No, you're bad at listening to music, broadly, and are so bad that you don't even realize how bad you are. This is different from just happening not to care for a given piece or artist, but understanding why the work may be considered good, or at least important.
    - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
      Is art important because someone tells us it's important, did something different, or is it up to the beholder? I'd wager the average american if asked throughout there life would reconcile the fact that EAP was not worth learning about.
      - handrous 5y ago
        Sure, but you'd get the same distribution of answers for 90% of the mathematics anyone learns past about 7th grade. Or almost any other topic in school. The good things we use to introduce kids to good things get shit on a lot, but that's because most people go on not to ever engage with them or anything like them ever again, not because they're bad. We do that so the kids who catch on and pay attention can understand what good things are, and maybe some of them go on to really dig deep on one or two fields so they can learn more about those good things, and hopefully they paid enough attention during their education that they at least don't think everything else is bad just because they never bothered to follow up on it or engage deeply or because they struggled with it (unlike [thing they think is good]) in school.
        MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
        You can apply that same logic towards teaching kids trades or skills. Like forcibly telling kids to learn how to drive a semi because it's the backbone of our infrastructure. Doesn't mean they're gonna do it, but they should be exposed to it. What I'm talking about is that our education system teaches kids a lot of pointless things, especially in the arts for the sake of thinking it is going to achieve some "third eye" opening greater good somehow. And people like me who decry it as some utter waste of time nonsense end up getting bashed because we should do it. It's just nonsense that does not need to be taught. If a shop-class kid is forced to read Poe, are we really helping him? Forcing him to stay back a semester to write a report on Poe when he is destined to be a welder, is that really necessary? Human civilization has done it for millennia, but now all of a sudden in this modern era students need a broad understanding of the world through the sub-par education system that is in the US? I'm not buying it. If you can call the US education system "education." More like glorified taxpayer funded babysitting with some basic instructional stuff in between.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

As a Russian, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were an important part of my childhood, just as "To kill a mockingbird".

stephenhuey 5y ago
Thank you. The 2 parent comments seem to misunderstand a couple things. Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s profound, and vice versa. Also, just because something goes over many students’ heads doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth trying.
- handrous 5y ago
  I'd go farther—probably too mean for HN, but this kind of attitude gets a pass on here in part because people are too restrained in slapping down painfully-bad opinions that aren't about technology—and point to the above two comments as illustrating the difference between "literate" as in "can read words" and "literate" as in "at least knows what actually reading looks like, even if not fully capable of it oneself". It's the equivalent of "classical music sucks, it all all sounds the same to me and is really boring" or "jazz sucks, it's all just random noise" or "hip-hop sucks, it's all just angry yelling". No, you're bad at listening to music, broadly, and are so bad that you don't even realize how bad you are. This is different from just happening not to care for a given piece or artist, but understanding why the work may be considered good, or at least important.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    Is art important because someone tells us it's important, did something different, or is it up to the beholder? I'd wager the average american if asked throughout there life would reconcile the fact that EAP was not worth learning about.
    - handrous 5y ago
      Sure, but you'd get the same distribution of answers for 90% of the mathematics anyone learns past about 7th grade. Or almost any other topic in school. The good things we use to introduce kids to good things get shit on a lot, but that's because most people go on not to ever engage with them or anything like them ever again, not because they're bad. We do that so the kids who catch on and pay attention can understand what good things are, and maybe some of them go on to really dig deep on one or two fields so they can learn more about those good things, and hopefully they paid enough attention during their education that they at least don't think everything else is bad just because they never bothered to follow up on it or engage deeply or because they struggled with it (unlike [thing they think is good]) in school.
      - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
        You can apply that same logic towards teaching kids trades or skills. Like forcibly telling kids to learn how to drive a semi because it's the backbone of our infrastructure. Doesn't mean they're gonna do it, but they should be exposed to it. What I'm talking about is that our education system teaches kids a lot of pointless things, especially in the arts for the sake of thinking it is going to achieve some "third eye" opening greater good somehow. And people like me who decry it as some utter waste of time nonsense end up getting bashed because we should do it. It's just nonsense that does not need to be taught. If a shop-class kid is forced to read Poe, are we really helping him? Forcing him to stay back a semester to write a report on Poe when he is destined to be a welder, is that really necessary? Human civilization has done it for millennia, but now all of a sudden in this modern era students need a broad understanding of the world through the sub-par education system that is in the US? I'm not buying it. If you can call the US education system "education." More like glorified taxpayer funded babysitting with some basic instructional stuff in between.