Oh my, but this is actually rather fun. I've been keeping myself from geeking out for ages and now I have a captive audience who talks back on the subject
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Ok so lets start with high school: Freshmen year was an overview basically. We read Greek Mythology, All Quiet on the Western Front, To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Martian Chronicles, Of Mice and Men, and Romeo and Juliet. You know, sort of everything there is. It wasn't bad, it was an overview. Some classes didn't read The Martian Chronicles and instead read A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was a good introduction.
Sophmore year was the year of the crazy women. We read Medea, Antigone, Montana 1948, The Odyesses, MacBeth, and The Things They Carried. At least thats what I remember reading and I think that was it. We also read a lot of short stories. Anyway, a lot of the Greeks. But we did read the contemporary The Things They Carried, a collection of short stories about the Vietnam war. Plus we were the only class to read MacBeth, which I like better that Julius Ceaser which is what the other classes read. It was more advanced, and I liked it a lot. It was a wide range of books but they were good. I have no idea how they all fit together(they really didn't) but they were good.
Junior year we had the option of picking half the year of English if we didn't take Honors(I didn't read fast enough for Honors). So I took Visions of the Future. We read 1984, Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, and Burning Chrome. All showing dystopias. It was pretty cool and it made sense as to why we were in there reading them, which I liked. The second half of the year I had regular junior English. So that was The Grapes of Wrath and The Scarlet Letter. I hated GoW. Like with a fiery passion. Still do. I don't think it needed most of the year to work on it. I also think that its an overrated book. It was written for symbols sake at times. It wasn't a good book in my opinion. There are better books that are considered American Literature. Seriously.
Senior year I got to pick again because of the whole not taking AP thing. So I took Literature and the Arts. Which consisted of Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations, and Heart of Darkness. Honestly, one of the best English classes I took. For HoD we were given a specific image to follow. Then present it. It made the book so much easier to understand because you were responsisble for one rather than all of it. Second half was regular senior English were we read Hamlet, Frankenstien, and Cyrano de Burgerac. So it wasn't just British. It was kind of thrown together.
As for college: I've taken Major English Authors I, which was like Anglo-Saxons through Milton. I liked it. It was Major English Authors I. However, the next few add in Irish authors and Scottish authors. They need to change the title to Major British authors. And you know, thats fine. Keep those classes. Because if you are studying literature in English you need to study British Literature because its a major part of it.
The American overviews are a joke. They shouldn't be like that. Yes, maybe a survey is fine for a little, but what would be better are like specific classes in African American literature, specific classes in Early American literature, specific classes in contemporary American literature. You can't just make an overview for American. There are too many veriables.
I did take an interesting class that I liked a lot. Race and Identity in the American Culture was amazing. We read the essays of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois and related them to Invisible Man. After that we read The Joy Luck Club, then Carmelo which none of us liked, even the professor, and we kind of disregarded, and then we read Reservation Blues which was an amazing novel about life on a reservation. Real life. Not psudo-Twilight reservation life. We discussed the implications in each book. It was pretty amazing. We had to write responces that were ish bullshit but really made us think.
Freshmen year was an overview basically. We read Greek Mythology, All Quiet on the Western Front, To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Martian Chronicles, Of Mice and Men, and Romeo and Juliet. You know, sort of everything there is. It wasn't bad, it was an overview. Some classes didn't read The Martian Chronicles and instead read A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was a good introduction.
Sophmore year was the year of the crazy women. We read Medea, Antigone, Montana 1948, The Odyesses, MacBeth, and The Things They Carried. At least thats what I remember reading and I think that was it. We also read a lot of short stories. Anyway, a lot of the Greeks. But we did read the contemporary The Things They Carried, a collection of short stories about the Vietnam war. Plus we were the only class to read MacBeth, which I like better that Julius Ceaser which is what the other classes read. It was more advanced, and I liked it a lot. It was a wide range of books but they were good. I have no idea how they all fit together(they really didn't) but they were good.
Junior year we had the option of picking half the year of English if we didn't take Honors(I didn't read fast enough for Honors). So I took Visions of the Future. We read 1984, Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, and Burning Chrome. All showing dystopias. It was pretty cool and it made sense as to why we were in there reading them, which I liked. The second half of the year I had regular junior English. So that was The Grapes of Wrath and The Scarlet Letter. I hated GoW. Like with a fiery passion. Still do. I don't think it needed most of the year to work on it. I also think that its an overrated book. It was written for symbols sake at times. It wasn't a good book in my opinion. There are better books that are considered American Literature. Seriously.
Senior year I got to pick again because of the whole not taking AP thing. So I took Literature and the Arts. Which consisted of Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations, and Heart of Darkness. Honestly, one of the best English classes I took. For HoD we were given a specific image to follow. Then present it. It made the book so much easier to understand because you were responsisble for one rather than all of it. Second half was regular senior English were we read Hamlet, Frankenstien, and Cyrano de Burgerac. So it wasn't just British. It was kind of thrown together.
As for college: I've taken Major English Authors I, which was like Anglo-Saxons through Milton. I liked it. It was Major English Authors I. However, the next few add in Irish authors and Scottish authors. They need to change the title to Major British authors. And you know, thats fine. Keep those classes. Because if you are studying literature in English you need to study British Literature because its a major part of it.
The American overviews are a joke. They shouldn't be like that. Yes, maybe a survey is fine for a little, but what would be better are like specific classes in African American literature, specific classes in Early American literature, specific classes in contemporary American literature. You can't just make an overview for American. There are too many veriables.
I did take an interesting class that I liked a lot. Race and Identity in the American Culture was amazing. We read the essays of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois and related them to Invisible Man. After that we read The Joy Luck Club, then Carmelo which none of us liked, even the professor, and we kind of disregarded, and then we read Reservation Blues which was an amazing novel about life on a reservation. Real life. Not psudo-Twilight reservation life. We discussed the implications in each book. It was pretty amazing. We had to write responces that were ish bullshit but really made us think.
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