K so
Sean Keenan
760 verbal.
Tolerable.
I'll be trying again soon.
--
What, you expected something relevant?
Nicholas Knight
> 800 math
> 760 verbal.
> Tolerable.
> I'll be trying again soon.
...
Can you add?
Nicholas Knight
> <insert cute attribution here> Nicholas Knight at
> Well enough that I got all math questions correct. 6 wrong on verbal
> though. I must remedy that. =/
I'm starting to doubt you can add.
Sean Keenan
<nkn...@pocketinet.com> said:
Well enough that I got all math questions correct. 6 wrong on verbal
though. I must remedy that. =/
--
Christopher Childs
131846.news.dfncis.de:
> 800 math
> 760 verbal.
I'm starting to feel worthless in comparison to everyone else. I think
I'll have to find a way to justify my existence soon.
Purple
the audacity to state the following:
Nah, Sean just cheated.
--
Purple
"Every normal man must be forced at times to spit on his hands, hoist
the black flag, and begin slitting throats." - H.L. Mencken
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Sean Keenan
news:Xns92BAE95...@130.133.1.4...
> On Sat 02 Nov 2002 10:54:38p, Christopher Childs <chr...@dubba.net>
had
> the audacity to state the following:
>
> > "Sean Keenan" <x4ya...@hotmail.com> wrote in
news:aq1soi$5ufjm$1@ID-
> > 131846.news.dfncis.de:
> >
> >> 800 math
> >> 760 verbal.
> >
> > I'm starting to feel worthless in comparison to everyone else. I
think
> > I'll have to find a way to justify my existence soon.
> >
>
> Nah, Sean just cheated.
Oh, your mom!
Sean Keenan
news:aq21jc$60fap$1...@ID-132594.news.dfncis.de...
><
Yet you admire 45 byte ELF executables.
Nicholas Knight
That's because I can add AND subtract.
Grand Fromage
>760 verbal.
>Tolerable.
>I'll be trying again soon
We can trade scores. I'll be content with a 1560.
--
Or, you're lying to get attention. Which is odd, because usually to get
attention Germans try to take over the world and fail. - "madkevin"
Purple
>> >> 760 verbal.
>> >
>> > I'm starting to feel worthless in comparison to everyone else. I
> think
>> > I'll have to find a way to justify my existence soon.
>> >
>>
>> Nah, Sean just cheated.
>
> Oh, your mom!
I don't think my mom cheated.
Sean Keenan
<nkn...@pocketinet.com> said:
> Sean Keenan wrote:
>
>> "Nicholas Knight" <nkn...@pocketinet.com> wrote in message
>> news:aq21jc$60fap$1...@ID-132594.news.dfncis.de...
>>> Sean Keenan wrote:
>>>
>>>> <insert cute attribution here> Nicholas Knight at
>>>> <nkn...@pocketinet.com> said:
>>>>
>>>>> Sean Keenan wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> 800 math
>>>>>> 760 verbal.
>>>>>> Tolerable.
>>>>>> I'll be trying again soon.
>>>>>
>>>>> ...
>>>>> Can you add?
>>>>
>>>> Well enough that I got all math questions correct. 6 wrong on
>>>> verbal though. I must remedy that. =/
>>>
>>> I'm starting to doubt you can add.
>>
>>> <
>>
>> Yet you admire 45 byte ELF executables.
>
> That's because I can add AND subtract.
Me too. 1600 -800 -760 = 40 more points of improvement left.
Rich G.
news:aq1soi$5ufjm$1...@ID-131846.news.dfncis.de...
kudos. What happened? You leave off with a preposition or something?
Oh wait. I got it. You used an internet abbreviation somewhere in there lol. Or
a smiley? ;)
--
Rich G. http://www.geocities.com/simplerichg/index.html
Rich G. http://simplerich.diaryland.com/
"You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people
can build a better world for people. Otherwise it's just a cage."
-- (Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad)
Rich G.
for every college I applied to. *shrug*
I've hired and fired people book-smarter than me that didn't have the walking
around sense it takes to do a clerk job. There's SO much more to life than those
scores, or IQ, or even intelligence if you get right down to it. I know some
really great dumb people... and I've been called an intellectual snob by some of
the best so if I can say smarts ain't all they're cracked up to be it must be
true. (Not to mention test scores being an inaccurate measure of intelligence of
potential or much of anything really other than how a person did on a given test
on a given day. *shrug*)
Don't sweat the numbers, they don't tell the whole story... and in the next post
I'm going to congratulate him on his numbers... thought I'd warn ya ahead of
time. LOL They seem to be important to him so for that they warrant a
congratulatory post. :)
"You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people
can build a better world for people. Otherwise it's just a cage."
-- (Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad)
"Christopher Childs" <chr...@dubba.net> wrote in message
news:Xns92BAE910...@199.45.49.11...
Christopher Childs
news:aq4naj$6jn1l$1...@ID-109196.news.dfncis.de:
> Don't sweat the numbers, they don't tell the whole story... and in the
> next post I'm going to congratulate him on his numbers... thought I'd
> warn ya ahead of time. LOL They seem to be important to him so for
> that they warrant a congratulatory post. :)
Yeah, those are pretty damn awesome scores, but stacked up against my
1250, I feel my accomplishment is rather meager -_-
The problem is, I have no idea what I'm going to do. Nothing interests
me. People already know me as a slacker, and I have no idea what
direction I'm going to take in my life. I know I have a lot of time left
and next to no time at all (as far as college) and I've got no idea how
things are going to end up in my future (not the way I like things to be)
For the short term, I believe I'm fine, but in the long run I'm probably
fucked. Hmm.
Rich G.
Nyah, I still periodically ask ppl around me what they're going to do when they
grow up. Haven't gotten an answer yet more convincing than "still looking"
The illusion of knowing what they're doing is the illusion of adulthood. When
you can pull that off you're in.
Sean Keenan
(Not to
> mention test scores being an inaccurate measure of intelligence of
> potential or much of anything really other than how a person did on a
> given test on a given day. *shrug*) Don't sweat the numbers, they
> don't tell the whole story...
They really don't, but it's the best way without individually testing
every person with a specially trained and qualified tester.
and in the next post I'm going to
> congratulate him on his numbers... thought I'd warn ya ahead of time.
> LOL They seem to be important to him so for that they warrant a
> congratulatory post. :)
Only important in the sense I can do it well, and it'll help me into
MIT. ^^
Sean Keenan
> "Sean Keenan" <x4ya...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:aq1soi$5ufjm$1...@ID-131846.news.dfncis.de...
>> 800 math
>> 760 verbal.
>> Tolerable.
>> I'll be trying again soon.
>
> kudos. What happened? You leave off with a preposition or something?
> Oh wait. I got it. You used an internet abbreviation somewhere in
> there lol. Or a smiley? ;)
They used these words like vignette. I don't like Shakespeare. ><
Lydri
"Sean Keenan" <x4ya...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:aq1soi$5ufjm$1...@ID-131846.news.dfncis.de...
> 760 verbal.
> Tolerable.
> I'll be trying again soon.
Mm, the sweet scent of another perfectionist.
I was so pissed off when I didn't get a perfect 1600.
Then I let my life go to waste and all was good. :)
Lydri the slacker
--
Handy Solo
<>
> For the short term, I believe I'm fine, but in the long run I'm probably
> fucked. Hmm.
Bah. Plan all you want. Bet your life don't go that way. Life is
good at throwing curves. I (personally) think the smart people are
the ones that can adapt. And I often struggle to convince myself I'm
even a half-wit. (shut up, Rich).
Lord knows, I never, EVER, planned to have the sort of career history
I've had up to this point (currently culminated as an independent
consultant). Heck, in college my goals were towards owning my own
service station...
--
Chris Kasten
7six0393six
http://www.kasten-family.com/chris/
When you don't know what to do, walk fast and look worried.
SilverRaven
pleaded:
>Christopher Childs <chr...@dubba.net> allegedly wrote:
>
><>
>
>> For the short term, I believe I'm fine, but in the long run I'm probably
>> fucked. Hmm.
>
>Bah. Plan all you want. Bet your life don't go that way. Life is
>good at throwing curves. I (personally) think the smart people are
>the ones that can adapt. And I often struggle to convince myself I'm
>even a half-wit. (shut up, Rich).
>
>Lord knows, I never, EVER, planned to have the sort of career history
>I've had up to this point (currently culminated as an independent
>consultant). Heck, in college my goals were towards owning my own
>service station...
Service station? As in fixing cars? The mind boogles.
--
SilverRaven
-
You're a chat addict - If you feel the need to talk in all caps
to certain people in real life.
Christopher Childs
news:lh1csu4ions7fq6bo...@4ax.com:
> Christopher Childs <chr...@dubba.net> allegedly wrote:
>
> <>
>
>> For the short term, I believe I'm fine, but in the long run I'm
>> probably fucked. Hmm.
>
> Bah. Plan all you want. Bet your life don't go that way. Life is
> good at throwing curves. I (personally) think the smart people are
> the ones that can adapt.
Heh, I'll definitely end up fine -- somehow. I just sometimes get weirded
out and start thinking crazy things.
Rob
And this is exactly why the tests are flawed. Sean hates Shakespeare,
a man who had mastered the craft of playwriting, and the blank verse and
english sonnet forms of poetry. Here was a guy that effortlessly weaved
high themes and beautiful poetry with violence, sex, and toliet humor. A
man who was capable of making a work that could satisfy the most genius
intellects of literature, while at the same time satisfying those who came
to see nothing more than a few good sword fights and some soft
pornography. And yet they gave him a 760 in verbal. He should've lost 200
points just for not liking Shakespeare.
Bulldog
Join the army.
They reject hardly anybody, if you don't have really bad food allergies or
disabilites (well that's how it is here).
--
I'm on a Highway to Hell!
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Rob
news:aq4ncu$6idhk$1...@ID-109196.news.dfncis.de...
> "Sean Keenan" <x4ya...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:aq1soi$5ufjm$1...@ID-131846.news.dfncis.de...
> > 800 math
> > 760 verbal.
> > Tolerable.
> > I'll be trying again soon.
> >
> > --
> > What, you expected something relevant?
> >
> >
>
> kudos. What happened? You leave off with a preposition or something?
> Oh wait. I got it. You used an internet abbreviation somewhere in there
lol. Or
> a smiley? ;)
My guess is that in all the anticipation, he spelled his name wrong.
:)
Nicholas Knight
You've developed the ability to insult me by proxy, of late.
--
"Create framework to effectively "disable" certain features. Think
kiosk-made, think "don't allow user to select custom wallpapers in public
places" -- From the KDE 3.1 Feature Plan
Handy Solo
> While kneeling at the altar of the alt.* hierarchy, Handy Solo
> pleaded:
>
> >Christopher Childs <chr...@dubba.net> allegedly wrote:
> >
> ><>
> >
> >> For the short term, I believe I'm fine, but in the long run I'm probably
> >> fucked. Hmm.
> >
> >Bah. Plan all you want. Bet your life don't go that way. Life is
> >good at throwing curves. I (personally) think the smart people are
> >the ones that can adapt. And I often struggle to convince myself I'm
> >even a half-wit. (shut up, Rich).
> >
> >Lord knows, I never, EVER, planned to have the sort of career history
> >I've had up to this point (currently culminated as an independent
> >consultant). Heck, in college my goals were towards owning my own
> >service station...
>
> Service station? As in fixing cars? The mind boogles.
Aye. I was a mechanic in high school and college.
--
Chris Kasten
7six0393six
http://www.kasten-family.com/chris/
If you drink, don't park; accidents cause people
Rob
> "Rich G." <simpl...@nsm.com> wrote in
> news:aq4naj$6jn1l$1...@ID-109196.news.dfncis.de:
>
> > Don't sweat the numbers, they don't tell the whole story... and in the
> > next post I'm going to congratulate him on his numbers... thought I'd
> > warn ya ahead of time. LOL They seem to be important to him so for
> > that they warrant a congratulatory post. :)
>
> Yeah, those are pretty damn awesome scores, but stacked up against my
> 1250, I feel my accomplishment is rather meager -_-
Hell, I never even took the SAT, and look where I am... Dear God
Chris! You need a 1600! Your whole life depends on it! Take it again!
> The problem is, I have no idea what I'm going to do. Nothing interests
> me.
Well, I'm sure some things interest you. It's just that things people
will pay you to do don't interest you (well, things that a respectable
person would expect to be paid for and still be respectable anyways). A
lot of people don't know what they want to do. There's a lot of
undeclared, or declared only to get a loan, type students in college. And
I know people with a masters who've quit a very well paying job because
they didn't like doing it afterwards.
The trick in life seems to be finding a job that you actually enjoy
going to. There's nothing better than getting up in the morning and not
dragging around because... YOU GET TO GO TO WORK TODAY! And considering
you'll spend at least 40 hrs a week there, probably more like 60+ once you
get going, (roughly 1/4 to 1/2 of your adult life, with another 1/3 spent
sleeping), it'll make you a lot happier to spend that much of your life
doing something fun. The problem is figuring out what that something is,
and you'll probably not know until doing it first.
The problem most people have is they go in for the money, or the sure
thing. Too many people pick a career because either the money's good, or
there's a lot of job security. Most of these people end up hating their
job, and if they don't burn out in school, they burn out at some later
point in life. It just doesn't work, and making a lot of money just isn't
a good substitute for liking your job.
Probably the best you can do now is get some jobs and see what areas
you like and dislike. Dealing with customers, not dealing with customers,
managing, answering phones, physical labor, dealing with cash, ect. are
all things you can test right now and will give you some clue as to where
you'll be happiest.
People already know me as a slacker,
Everybody's a slacker. Nobody likes to work. Nobody. The only people
that like their work either love their work and are so happy when they get
up because... THEY GET TO GO TO WORK TODAY!, or they're sadists. Given the
option between doing work, and not doing work, most people will pick the
later. Those the pick the former tend to have been psychologically
conditioned to be self-motivated in that area, and sometimes even suffer
from obsessive-compulsive disorders.
and I have no idea what
> direction I'm going to take in my life.
If you had a destination, you probably wouldn't end up there anyways.
I know I have a lot of time left
> and next to no time at all (as far as college) and I've got no idea how
> things are going to end up in my future (not the way I like things to
be)
If you could tell the future, you'd have a great career ahead of you
:). You don't need to go to college right away. It's much easier to be
accepted as a thirty, or even over-the-hillish undergraduate these day,
mainly because a good number of adults are signing up for courses. And as
long as you're managing to enjoy yourself in the meantime, it isn't really
waisted time. What you don't want to do is be pressured into going to
college right away, or picking a major before you're ready. What'll happen
is you'll probably hate college, hate the job the degree can get you, and
have waisted quite a few years and money.
> For the short term, I believe I'm fine, but in the long run I'm probably
> fucked.
Now if you could just switch the long term with the short term, life
would be so wonderful :) But don't worry too much about the long term.
Generally it just stops people from doing shit they should be doing now
because there is a long term. I don't even think it exists, and it's
definitely too hard to predict in terms of life to make any sense out of
it. It can be good, or it can be bad, but right now you don't have enough
information to do anything about either case. In fact, every successful
company out there is pretty much entirely concerned with the short term.
They stop themselves from doing things that will turn out to be suicidal
in the long term, sometimes. But mainly they look at the next five years.
Even going that far ahead, they have trouble accurately predicting things
well enough to do anything about them. Thus they don't even worry about
things after that until the time's come.
SilverRaven
pleaded:
>SilverRaven <NOSP...@silverraven.com> allegedly wrote:
>
>> While kneeling at the altar of the alt.* hierarchy, Handy Solo
>> pleaded:
>>
>> >Christopher Childs <chr...@dubba.net> allegedly wrote:
>> >
>> ><>
>> >
>> >> For the short term, I believe I'm fine, but in the long run I'm probably
>> >> fucked. Hmm.
>> >
>> >Bah. Plan all you want. Bet your life don't go that way. Life is
>> >good at throwing curves. I (personally) think the smart people are
>> >the ones that can adapt. And I often struggle to convince myself I'm
>> >even a half-wit. (shut up, Rich).
>> >
>> >Lord knows, I never, EVER, planned to have the sort of career history
>> >I've had up to this point (currently culminated as an independent
>> >consultant). Heck, in college my goals were towards owning my own
>> >service station...
>>
>> Service station? As in fixing cars? The mind boogles.
>
>Aye. I was a mechanic in high school and college.
*twitchtwitch* Yeah.... ok.....
<walks off muttering>
--
SilverRaven
-
You're a chat addict - If you tell your real life friends you
have plans already on Saturday night when you don't.
Dalai Lama
<x4ya...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> kudos. What happened? You leave off with a preposition or something?
>> Oh wait. I got it. You used an internet abbreviation somewhere in
>> there lol. Or a smiley? ;)
>They used these words like vignette. I don't like Shakespeare. ><
What's wrong with vignette? It's just a mini vig isn't it?
--
Dalai Lama
> And this is exactly why the tests are flawed. Sean hates Shakespeare,
>a man who had mastered the craft of playwriting, and the blank verse
Blank verse? Like this great one:
Killer isn't it?
> and
>english sonnet forms of poetry. Here was a guy that effortlessly weaved
>high themes and beautiful poetry with violence, sex, and toliet humor. A
>man who was capable of making a work that could satisfy the most genius
>intellects of literature, while at the same time satisfying those who came
>to see nothing more than a few good sword fights and some soft
>pornography. And yet they gave him a 760 in verbal. He should've lost 200
>points just for not liking Shakespeare.
The language has changed so much that Shakespeare is no longer a
transparent read. His work's not quite a foreign film without
subtitles or dubbing, but it might as well be for many folks.
--
Sean Keenan
> "Sean Keenan" <x4ya...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:aq4peb$5pa5i$1...@ID-131846.news.dfncis.de...
>> <insert cute attribution here> Rich G. at <simpl...@nsm.com> said:
>>
>>> "Sean Keenan" <x4ya...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>>> news:aq1soi$5ufjm$1...@ID-131846.news.dfncis.de...
>>>> 800 math
>>>> 760 verbal.
>>>> Tolerable.
>>>> I'll be trying again soon.
>>>
>>> kudos. What happened? You leave off with a preposition or something?
>>> Oh wait. I got it. You used an internet abbreviation somewhere in
>>> there lol. Or a smiley? ;)
>>
>> They used these words like vignette. I don't like Shakespeare. ><
>
> And this is exactly why the tests are flawed. Sean hates
> Shakespeare, a man who had mastered the craft of playwriting, and the
> blank verse and english sonnet forms of poetry. Here was a guy that
> effortlessly weaved high themes and beautiful poetry with violence,
> sex, and toliet humor. A man who was capable of making a work that
> could satisfy the most genius intellects of literature, while at the
> same time satisfying those who came to see nothing more than a few
> good sword fights and some soft pornography. And yet they gave him a
> 760 in verbal. He should've lost 200 points just for not liking
> Shakespeare.
Wait, so did you like learning about the exact functions of the
excretory system? If not, you really didn't deserve the grade you got!
Like or dislike is _not_ a measure of knowledge. Tests measure
proficiency, not preference.
Purple
audacity to state the following:
>>english sonnet forms of poetry. Here was a guy that effortlessly
>>weaved high themes and beautiful poetry with violence, sex, and toliet
>>humor. A man who was capable of making a work that could satisfy the
>>most genius intellects of literature, while at the same time
>>satisfying those who came to see nothing more than a few good sword
>>fights and some soft pornography. And yet they gave him a 760 in
>>verbal. He should've lost 200 points just for not liking Shakespeare.
>
> The language has changed so much that Shakespeare is no longer a
> transparent read. His work's not quite a foreign film without
> subtitles or dubbing, but it might as well be for many folks.
Shakespeare makes far more sense when one is watching it being performed.
Christopher Childs
news:Dhvx9.366442$o.41...@news1.west.cox.net:
> "Christopher Childs" <chr...@dubba.net> wrote in message
> news:Xns92BBE25C...@199.45.49.11...
>> "Rich G." <simpl...@nsm.com> wrote in
>> news:aq4naj$6jn1l$1...@ID-109196.news.dfncis.de:
>>
>> > Don't sweat the numbers, they don't tell the whole story... and in
>> > the next post I'm going to congratulate him on his numbers...
>> > thought I'd warn ya ahead of time. LOL They seem to be important to
>> > him so for that they warrant a congratulatory post. :)
>>
>> Yeah, those are pretty damn awesome scores, but stacked up against my
>> 1250, I feel my accomplishment is rather meager -_-
>
> Hell, I never even took the SAT, and look where I am... Dear God
> Chris! You need a 1600! Your whole life depends on it! Take it again!
>
Well, I was somewhat looking forward to a shiny 1300 or 1400 for my
efforts, but it turns out my math skill wasn't...er...up to par. I'll just
stick with my 1250, focus a bit more on math, and see if I can take any SAT
II Subject Tests any time soon.
>
<holy crap, that's a lot and that's not even one of your longer posts -
snip>
Heh, thanks. I'll be sure to keep this all in mind when attempting to make
decisions. For now, I pretty much have a few things I'm going to try and
handle -- I "plan" on turning myself somewhat into Agelmar. Yes, you heard
me. Agelmar. I suspect this might need some clarification. I pretty much
consider him the ideal person since he gets everything done, and I'd love
to have that work ethic. From hereafter, that shall be known as "turning
slightly into Agelmar."
Now that I've probably scared you (or anyone following this thread), I'm at
least sure I want to go to college, but I don't know when, and I can't
exactly decide where. Our school counselors really suck. A friend of mine
had an appointment today to visit the counselor to talk about college, and
she wasn't even there. Apparently, she averages around 3 days missing a
week, so I figure she'll be rather useless for him to consult.
Anyway, back to me =) I've already met with my counselor (and the one I had
last year, who helped me get a few ideas of colleges within the region).
I've looked over the forms he's given me, and it seems that there's a very,
very large emphasis on extracurricular activities. I don't even know how
people have time for this stuff along with their jobs. I've mainly just
gone home after school every day to mess around with stuff on the computer,
as nothing's really interested me. Instead of boring my stuff at school, I
get to bore myself at home experimenting with different programming
languages, operating systems, etc. -- in other words, stuff my school can't
even begin to offer. I figure this is going to somehow look really bad on
any college application I fill out. It'd likely leave them rather puzzled
as to what I did with my time, unless they would naturally assume anyone
interested in IT or Computer Sciences spends a lot of time at home learning
stuff about those fields independently.
Now, just to jump off course for a moment, I don't work. You said I should
get a job just to get a feel for what I pretty much enjoy doing best. The
problem is somewhat twofold.
1. Transportation. I have my license. I don't have a car. My dad
has a pretty standard schedule (8-5 or 6 every day, except Wednesdays,
which is when he goes off to play pool -- in other words, forget seeing him
until about 11 pm) but my mom's is really screwed up. She gardens during
the day and bartends during the night (odd combination if you ask me)
except for Wednesday, where she bartends from around the afternoon to 6 pm.
So, Wednesday's not a work day, and I can't predict any of the other days.
This leaves a very annoying transportation problem -- how the fuck am I
supposed to get there? My brother's trying to deal with this right now,
and it's already a problem for him. I don't WANT to trouble anyone else
with transportation for my job, I'd rather just get there myself and never
require anyone else for this.
2. The job itself. Most of the jobs are err...well...for me, boring
and meaningless. Considering my interest (computers) I'd like to get a job
doing something involving that. I figure it'd be easy enough to find
something involving that.. right?...nope. Just to tie this in with other
stuff I've been writing here, I'm pretty much already dead set on what
field I'd like to go into, but I'm not sure on the specifics, and I'm not
sure what exactly is going to happen in between, nor do I have a clue where
I'm going to get a job (now or after college)
Now, about those colleges, just to maybe give you an idea of what's
available in the region, I live in Massachusetts, somewhat close to UMass-
Amherst. That's always an option. Other things I've been thinking about
include Northeastern University in Boston, RPI in Troy, NY, maybe WPI in
Worcester, MA, and Agelmar told me to go apply to Carnegie-Mellon anyway.
There are a few definite possibilities there, but I'm not even sure I'd
make it in.
As I said, I'll figure something out. I think there was more I wanted to
write, but I got sidetracked writing this post, and my thoughts aren't
exactly organized anyway. Thanks for responding.
Rob
news:u8adsucivtl97rp2o...@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 04 Nov 2002 13:53:36 GMT, "Rob" <r...@lvcm.com> wrote:
>
> > And this is exactly why the tests are flawed. Sean hates
Shakespeare,
> >a man who had mastered the craft of playwriting, and the blank verse
>
>
> Blank verse? Like this great one:
>
>
>
>
> Killer isn't it?
I think you know perfectly well what blank verse is, and you're just
fucking with me.
> > and
> >english sonnet forms of poetry. Here was a guy that effortlessly weaved
> >high themes and beautiful poetry with violence, sex, and toliet humor.
A
> >man who was capable of making a work that could satisfy the most genius
> >intellects of literature, while at the same time satisfying those who
came
> >to see nothing more than a few good sword fights and some soft
> >pornography. And yet they gave him a 760 in verbal. He should've lost
200
> >points just for not liking Shakespeare.
>
> The language has changed so much that Shakespeare is no longer a
> transparent read. His work's not quite a foreign film without
> subtitles or dubbing, but it might as well be for many folks.
And this is where the beauty of Shakespeare really shines.
Shakespeare's plays contain a vocabulary that was something like 4x that
of the average well educated aristocrat of his time. It's still something
like over twice as large as a very well educated English speaking person
today. The language of the plays were never really meant to be fully
understood, unless a person sat down with the text and spent a long time
studying it.
But Shakespeare's plays were aimed primarily at the common man. Back
in his day, the arts in England were still pretty much as they were during
the aristocracy. There were only three types of artists. Those who were
funded by the well educated wealthy aristocratic patrons as Shakespeare
was, those that were funded by the church for non-secular works, and those
that were themselves wealthy aristocrats.
As for those funded by the church, they put on plays to teach the
faith to people. That would've been unacceptable to Shakespeare though,
who had obvious problems with the state of Christianity, which was a
common theme in most of his plays. The wealthy aristocrats were usually
amateurish. They were well learned and practiced usually, but they still
seemed to lack a true ability to perform the craft. There were obviously
some exceptions with the great ones, but they were rare. Most every
aristocrat wrote poetry for fun, but the amount of great poets in the
class would definitely be less than 90%.
As for Shakespeare, his kind relied entirely on being funded by
patrons. And the patrons as they were liked a certain type of story.
Generally stuff that involved rich folk and the aristocracy, stuff that
didn't fight against the current government (Shakespeare never does this,
his plays are all historical, and for every aristocratic villain there is
an aristocratic hero), and things that were targeted at people that had a
very good education and were very cultured.
That's how the romantics came to be, and even in Shakespeare's time
the most prolific style was still romantic. Shakespeare however pleased
these people, with his plays about the aristocracy, with its vast
vocabulary, and poetic monologues. They ate it up.
But the plays had a flip side, as they were made to appeal to the
lower class. If you see a play performed by skilled and studied
Shakespearean actors (not that putz Gibson), they work. You probably won't
understand most of what is being said. But you never get lost. You always
know who the characters are, what's going on, what the relationships are,
and the emotional tensions of the scenes are there. When done correctly
there's hardly a scene in any movie as tense as the final courtroom battle
in "The Merchant of Venice", and the dramatic conclusion lives up to the
build up.
And the themes were generally simple and easily understood, revolving
around love, hate, lust, greed, passion, and virtue.
Shakespeare was one of the first, and the very few, that realized the
stage afforded him opportunities because it was a medium consisting of
sound and vision. He could write a play ten times more complex than the
average novel or poem, and yet by setting his scenes up right and using
his actors he could make it so that anyone could understand everything
important. This is where the real beauty of Shakespeare shines.
Easyprey
Dalai? You do realize your a snob. We dont all live in your world. I
like shakespeare, But I also like buffy. This doesn't make me weird,
the voices make me weird. Shakespeare is a fine writer but so was
heinlen. Both are now dead, but RAH is not on the sat is he? At one
time we measured the well educated by their ability to quote shakspeare
in latin but times have changed and now we dont. The times they are a
changing and alot of water has gone under the bridge since will
shakespeare put pen to paper.
Easyprey
Rich G.
Dalai Lama sneezed and it sounded like:
> On Mon, 04 Nov 2002 13:53:36 GMT, "Rob" <r...@lvcm.com> wrote:
>
>> And this is exactly why the tests are flawed. Sean hates
>> Shakespeare, a man who had mastered the craft of playwriting, and
>> the blank verse
>
>
> Blank verse? Like this great one:
>
>
>
>
> Killer isn't it?
LOL It didn't scan for me, and the meter didn't quite strike me as right, but
good for a first shot. :)
>> and
>> english sonnet forms of poetry. Here was a guy that effortlessly
>> weaved high themes and beautiful poetry with violence, sex, and
>> toliet humor. A man who was capable of making a work that could
>> satisfy the most genius intellects of literature, while at the same
>> time satisfying those who came to see nothing more than a few good
>> sword fights and some soft pornography. And yet they gave him a 760
>> in verbal. He should've lost 200 points just for not liking
>> Shakespeare.
>
> The language has changed so much that Shakespeare is no longer a
> transparent read. His work's not quite a foreign film without
> subtitles or dubbing, but it might as well be for many folks.
hehehe He was making words up when he was writing them so the folks at the time
didn't have a clue what he was saying either. :) I think it was part of that
whole 'I'll talk over their heads so they'll think I'm brilliant' line of
thinking that ya see so much of.
BTW: I've seen several of his plays done live in "Stratford wearing Avon" or
whatever, and they were great fun to watch, but to read them by themselves?
Plays really weren't meant to be read, and learned by rote by students, they
were meant to be seen in a performance, and as such I think a lot of ppl who do
the whole "Love skakeyspeare cuz he's brilliant" who haven't seen a goodly
number performed live on stage are talking about jell-o without having ever
really eaten it. *shrug* That's just me though, and I'm a snob that way.
Rich G.
Purple sneezed and it sounded like:
> On Mon 04 Nov 2002 12:09:54p, Dalai Lama <daiail...@aol.com> had
> the audacity to state the following:
>>> and
>>> english sonnet forms of poetry. Here was a guy that effortlessly
>>> weaved high themes and beautiful poetry with violence, sex, and
>>> toliet humor. A man who was capable of making a work that could
>>> satisfy the most genius intellects of literature, while at the same
>>> time satisfying those who came to see nothing more than a few good
>>> sword fights and some soft pornography. And yet they gave him a 760
>>> in verbal. He should've lost 200 points just for not liking
>>> Shakespeare.
>>
>> The language has changed so much that Shakespeare is no longer a
>> transparent read. His work's not quite a foreign film without
>> subtitles or dubbing, but it might as well be for many folks.
>
> Shakespeare makes far more sense when one is watching it being
> performed.
dittoed, but even then... sometimes... ppl do weird 'artsy' interpretations of
his stuff and end up doing the whole thing dressed as clowns and juggling or
somethign like that and it completly distracts from the thing.
Rich G.
Easyprey sneezed and it sounded like:
LOL What world exactly do you live in? HAHAHA
OK, I'm kidding. I don't think what he said was snobby though really... I mean,
it seemed almost the reverse didn't it? He claimed on of Literature's Greatest
blah blah blah was antiquated and tired and lost on a good deal of the
population who feel they have no common ground with which to connect with the
stories told back in the days of shit filled streets, in-bred royalty, and teen
lovers... we've still got all of those in parts of the South LOL. (I'm KIDDING!
those of you from Mississippi... as if you can read this. HAR HAR HAR)
But I think he's right to an extent. There's a lot of folks out there who think
the evening news is just too damned hard to understand to put in the effort.
Shakespear is certainly a case of pearls before swine to them, and as such lost
completely on them and a waste of time for all involved.
Rich G.
Dalai Lama sneezed and it sounded like:
I've got a whole series of pics along that theme. You interested? I've got some
great mini-chili peppers and cukes that'll curl your hair.
Tihstae
wrote:
>> What's wrong with vignette? It's just a mini vig isn't it?
>
>I've got a whole series of pics along that theme. You interested? I've got some
>great mini-chili peppers and cukes that'll curl your hair.
Your veggie porn is sooo old.
You need some Mac Pr0n to liven your day!
http://sleazy.macfreak.org/home.html
--
Tihstae
TCotBSig #74
"Free speech apparently only applies to liberals. God forbid a
conservative should say something that someone doesn't want to hear". (Gornul)
Dalai Lama
<causeandef...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>On Mon 04 Nov 2002 12:09:54p, Dalai Lama <daiail...@aol.com> had the
>audacity to state the following:
>>> and
>>>english sonnet forms of poetry. Here was a guy that effortlessly
>>>weaved high themes and beautiful poetry with violence, sex, and toliet
>>>humor. A man who was capable of making a work that could satisfy the
>>>most genius intellects of literature, while at the same time
>>>satisfying those who came to see nothing more than a few good sword
>>>fights and some soft pornography. And yet they gave him a 760 in
>>>verbal. He should've lost 200 points just for not liking Shakespeare.
>>
>> The language has changed so much that Shakespeare is no longer a
>> transparent read. His work's not quite a foreign film without
>> subtitles or dubbing, but it might as well be for many folks.
>
>Shakespeare makes far more sense when one is watching it being performed.
Some do, like Hamlet, or Twelfth Night, but others like Macbeth and
Romeo and Juliet don't, imo. YMMV.
--
Dalai Lama
wrote:
>Dalai? You do realize your a snob.
?
> We dont all live in your world. I like shakespeare, But I also like buffy.
Nothing wrong with that, or with preferring one over the other. It's
just like music- a person's tastes don't make someone bette or worse.
> This doesn't make me weird, the voices make me weird.
Wheee! Without weird, I don't think society would be much past
banging rocks to make axes.
>Shakespeare is a fine writer but so was heinlen.
I'd take RAH over Shakespeare any day.
>Both are now dead, but RAH is not on the sat is he?
"Grok" should certainly be in the vocab section every once in awhile
:-)
> At one time we measured the well educated by their ability to quote shakspeare
>in latin but times have changed and now we dont.
China's vaunted society collapsed from exactly that sort of testing
(tied in with the corruption that it allowed and fostered).
> The times they are a changing and alot of water has gone under the bridge since will
>shakespeare put pen to paper.
I agree completely. Though I am a bit confused as to the first part
of the post.
>Easyprey
--
Dalai Lama
wrote:
>BTW: I've seen several of his plays done live in "Stratford wearing Avon" or
>whatever, and they were great fun to watch,
I certainly didn't set out to see any of his plays, it was just part
of the class. Some of them turned out to be fun. Others? Well, we
got out of regular class for them, so it was a win-win for the
teacher and us :-)
>but to read them by themselves?
>Plays really weren't meant to be read, and learned by rote by students, they
>were meant to be seen in a performance, and as such I think a lot of ppl who do
>the whole "Love skakeyspeare cuz he's brilliant" who haven't seen a goodly
>number performed live on stage are talking about jell-o without having ever
>really eaten it.
Or have only eaten it with a fork, instead of seeing who can slorp
down the biggest chunk without needing CPR.
Dalai Lama
wrote:
>> What's wrong with vignette? It's just a mini vig isn't it?
>I've got a whole series of pics along that theme. You interested? I've got some
>great mini-chili peppers and cukes that'll curl your hair.
Not the mini-peppers, please! I've had a few of those flame
infested things possess me before. They were round, smaller than a
pea, but larger than a BB, and three of them torched my innards.
Now, before eating any unknown peppers, I have them around outside,
and see if any birds drop out of the sky with scorch marks.
Now, if you have some paparazzi shots of nectarines or navel tangelos
sunning themselves at Antigua, I'd be interested.
--
Dalai Lama
>> Blank verse? Like this great one:
>> Killer isn't it?
> I think you know perfectly well what blank verse is, and you're just
>fucking with me.
Never heard the term before. Though the comment was to pull your
leg.
>> The language has changed so much that Shakespeare is no longer a
>> transparent read. His work's not quite a foreign film without
>> subtitles or dubbing, but it might as well be for many folks.
> And this is where the beauty of Shakespeare really shines.
>Shakespeare's plays contain a vocabulary that was something like 4x that
>of the average well educated aristocrat of his time. It's still something
>like over twice as large as a very well educated English speaking person
>today. The language of the plays were never really meant to be fully
>understood, unless a person sat down with the text and spent a long time
>studying it.
Hmm, I don't know about the last part, but there's definitely a
truckload of art in the way Shakespeare uses every jot and mumble of
language. There's lots of hidden philosophic gems packed inside
riddles, coiled around guffaws that are slathered on top of tawdry
double entendres. What I meant by my comment, is that aside from all
of the actual complicatedness of the bard, there's an added burden of
language shift.
--
Rob
> On Mon, 04 Nov 2002 22:04:22 GMT, "Rob" <r...@lvcm.com> wrote:
>
> >> Blank verse? Like this great one:
>
> >> Killer isn't it?
>
> > I think you know perfectly well what blank verse is, and you're
just
> >fucking with me.
>
> Never heard the term before. Though the comment was to pull your
> leg.
Blank Verse is a form of poetry that is unrhymed and follows a beat
structure. Meaning that there is a constant form to the syllable accents
(such as iambic or tibrach) and in the amount of metrical feet
(pentemeter, heptameter, alexandrine). Shakespeare's plays are full of
blank verse poetry, especially the monologues. Most of Shakespeare's blank
verse's were structured in iamic pentemeter. This has causes some supposed
learned teachers to teach the assumption that blank verse must follow the
iambic pentemeter structure. That's an idiotic suggestion, and blank verse
can follow any structure, so long as it remains consistant through out the
poem. Many of the great blank verse poems out there are niether iambic or
pentemeter, including some of Shakespeare's.
The whole thing seems to be teachers who don't care much about poetry,
can't understand it, and have failed to learn much about it. It's sad that
secondary education degrees in English are given out without requiring any
special emphasis on poetry. And the same thing is common with the Hiaku,
of which there are two forms, and yet a third unused form is taught. The
original Japanese style which is very strict and based on certain theories
is not taught. Nor is the western style, which is very loose and isn't
limited to a 5-7-5 structure. Instead they teach the western style, but
impose on it the 5-7-5 structure which it doesn't have.
> > And this is where the beauty of Shakespeare really shines.
> >Shakespeare's plays contain a vocabulary that was something like 4x
that
> >of the average well educated aristocrat of his time. It's still
something
> >like over twice as large as a very well educated English speaking
person
> >today. The language of the plays were never really meant to be fully
> >understood, unless a person sat down with the text and spent a long
time
> >studying it.
>
> Hmm, I don't know about the last part, but there's definitely a
> truckload of art in the way Shakespeare uses every jot and mumble of
> language. There's lots of hidden philosophic gems packed inside
> riddles, coiled around guffaws that are slathered on top of tawdry
> double entendres. What I meant by my comment, is that aside from all
> of the actual complicatedness of the bard, there's an added burden of
> language shift.
But that's just the thing. Shakespeare never meant for most people to
understand most of the words he used. He did however manage to convey the
message despite that, which is the beauty of his plays. There's a lot of
the play that can be understood, and a lot that can be critically
analyzed, without a first degree education in English or some knowledge of
Middle English. Especially when the plays are performed, which was the
means Shakespeare expected the masses to receive the plays. The finer
points of the poetry may seem overly complex at times, but they were
intended to be read and pondered over by the higher highly educated
classes.
If you look at the sonnets, the language is much simpler and they are
not nearly as difficult to follow as the plays in text. The main problem
students have understanding the sonnets is that they are taught wrong.
They were written in a set, and were meant to be read in a set. Although
the exact order is unknown (we have some good guesses), the poems still
make more sense when they are read together, and it's very easy to
misinterpret one of the sonnets out of context when it's read alone. Take
for instance the famous "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day"
(officially numbered Sonnet 18), which is often taken as Shakespeare
fawning over some girl.
And yet that would go against Shakespeare's attack on that very form
of poetry in "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" (Officially
numbered 130). But when Sonnet 18 is taken in regard to the other sonnets,
it's clear what Shakespeare is doing. He has a patron, a man, who he deems
to be a beautiful creature (at times remarking he is a man with all the
good qualities of a man, but instead of the flaws of man has taken the
good qualities of a woman, with none of the bad ones), that Shakespeare
continually pleads with to procreate a son, lest the world be denied his
beauty after his death, despite the patron's ideas not to. Finally
Shakespeare compromises by immortalizing his patron in words, so the world
will forever know his beauty, because his patron won't immortalize himself
with a heir.
And yet Sonnet 18 is still taught in schools as being a love sonnet.
The sonnets themselves though are an easier read, and any person who's
graduated into the 11th grade should be able to get through them with
minimal effort. There are some big words now and then, and it is sometimes
hard to decipher the meaning of things since Shakespeare does use very
poetic language. But Shakespeare's genius is seen again, as in context the
poems usually explain themselves, and despite the complex language, are
able to be deciphered without aid. And the sonnets were made for an
audience that was more educated than the target audience of the plays, and
yet they are still made to be easily understood.
It'd be a contradiction to claim that Shakespeare wrote the sonnets to
be understood by such a large group of people, even though they required
literacy that not everyone in the 16th century had, and yet the plays,
which could be viewed by the masses, were intended only for the well
learned intellectual elite.
At some point in time, when Shakespeare was being named the greatest
English poet and playwright, a bunch of intellectual snobs got together
and declared Shakespeare unfit for the common man. It's a claim to put
Shakespeare out of reach of the common man, and something intended solely
for the intellectual pursuits of the highly educated intellectual elites.
It's an arrogant attitude that has tried to elevate Shakespeare to
something he's not, and has desecrated the genius of his plays and poetry.
And I've found more often than not the people who claim this, claiming
that by not being commoners they understand Shakespeare, don't have the
faintest grasp on Shakespeare's work.
The reason why Shakespeare tends to be so much trouble for the average
highschool student is because it's taught poorly. Many of the plays have
been butchered to a G rating, omitting all references to sex and religion,
in order to be taught in schools. There are versions of Romeo and Juliet
in highschool textbooks with almost 1/3 of the play missing, and when
parts are taken out, the plays start to become incomprehensible.
And many teachers think Shakespeare is something that should be
performed, not read. The solution is to have the students read the play
out loud, each taking a part, in the classroom. This is a horrible way to
teach Shakespeare. A highschool student sitting at a desk just being
introduced to Shakespeare can not begin to understand how the parts are
played, and with the fast pace of the reading, and the boredom of
listening to someone butcher a monologue that used to be a masterpiece,
it's incredibly hard to follow what's going on and to decipher the
meanings.
The other solution to the problem is to show the students Shakespeare
being 'professionally performed'. Unfortunately these professional
performances are no better than having the students read the parts.
Usually it's a rag-tag group of non-Shakespearean actors putting on a
stage play and butchering it, but they can be gotten cheap. Or it's a
poorly made movie version. Mel Gibson didn't do the best version of
Hamlet. That was a desecration of the play. There are better versions out
there.
OTOH, Lawrence Fishborne's 'Othello' (Admittedly I only saw part of
this), was a wonderful adaptation of the play, although the play was cut
to conform to a movie length. Yet Othello is generally considered to
risqué to be taught in highschools, and had Romeo and Juliet not been
wrongfully praised as Shakespeare's masterpiece, it too probably would
have been eliminated from the courses, instead of remaining as the
butchered version it is.
The other problem in teaching comes from teacher interpretations as
being divine truth. And they are divine in the sense their truth lies
entirely in faith. Not to mention these interpretations are, from my
experiences, rarely original material, and usually taken from college
professors or the text itself. I seriously doubt four out of my five
highschool English teachers could do a critical analysis of a work without
referencing outside sources. This practice destroys the learning process,
as students are taught to memorize instead of being taught to interpret
works. It punishes intelligent students that do think for themselves. And
it takes away a good deal of the joy found in literature, and almost
everything literature has to offer education.
SilverRaven
>On Mon, 4 Nov 2002 19:22:22 -0600, "Rich G." <simpl...@nsm.com>
>wrote:
>
>
>>> What's wrong with vignette? It's just a mini vig isn't it?
>>
>>I've got a whole series of pics along that theme. You interested? I've got some
>>great mini-chili peppers and cukes that'll curl your hair.
>
>Your veggie porn is sooo old.
>
>You need some Mac Pr0n to liven your day!
>
>http://sleazy.macfreak.org/home.html
BWAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAA
--
SilverRaven
-
...How about never? Is never good for you?
Dalai Lama
> Blank Verse is a form of poetry that is unrhymed and follows a beat
>structure. Meaning that there is a constant form to the syllable accents
>(such as iambic or tibrach) and in the amount of metrical feet
>(pentemeter, heptameter, alexandrine).
OK. I never thought of poetry as requiring rhyming, just rhythm.
Shakespeare's plays are full of
>blank verse poetry, especially the monologues. Most of Shakespeare's blank
>verse's were structured in iamic pentemeter. This has causes some supposed
>learned teachers to teach the assumption that blank verse must follow the
>iambic pentemeter structure. That's an idiotic suggestion, and blank verse
>can follow any structure, so long as it remains consistant through out the
>poem.
You can intersperse them as well, (as Poe did with Raven for example,
in which the first and third lines are flawless trochaic octameter)
but it's much more difficult to pull off.
> Many of the great blank verse poems out there are niether iambic or
>pentemeter, including some of Shakespeare's.
> The whole thing seems to be teachers who don't care much about poetry,
>can't understand it, and have failed to learn much about it. It's sad that
>secondary education degrees in English are given out without requiring any
>special emphasis on poetry. And the same thing is common with the Hiaku,
>of which there are two forms, and yet a third unused form is taught. The
>original Japanese style which is very strict and based on certain theories
>is not taught. Nor is the western style, which is very loose and isn't
>limited to a 5-7-5 structure. Instead they teach the western style, but
>impose on it the 5-7-5 structure which it doesn't have.
I didn't know that about Haikus...
I'd think that a careful selection of poems -trying to find ones with
subjects that appeal to students- would be better than just ramming
the best known ones in front of their face.
> But that's just the thing. Shakespeare never meant for most people to
>understand most of the words he used.
I dunno about reading such motives in. He may have written in more
than one storyline, each for a different audience, but I'd think it'd
be more a matter of taste than of obscurity.
<snip>
I haven't delved into Shakespear enough to comment on this.
> The other problem in teaching comes from teacher interpretations as
>being divine truth.
That happens all over the place, in schools, labs, parliament etc.
--
Rob
> On Tue, 05 Nov 2002 14:12:07 GMT, "Rob" <r...@lvcm.com> wrote:
>
> > Blank Verse is a form of poetry that is unrhymed and follows a beat
> >structure. Meaning that there is a constant form to the syllable
accents
> >(such as iambic or tibrach) and in the amount of metrical feet
> >(pentemeter, heptameter, alexandrine).
>
> OK. I never thought of poetry as requiring rhyming, just rhythm.
What's needed depends on the form. Some, like the three sonnet forms,
have to rhyme. Others, like blank verse can't rhyme. And free verse not
only doesn't rhyme, but it doesn't have a strict rhythm either.
> Shakespeare's plays are full of
> >blank verse poetry, especially the monologues. Most of Shakespeare's
blank
> >verse's were structured in iamic pentemeter. This has causes some
supposed
> >learned teachers to teach the assumption that blank verse must follow
the
> >iambic pentemeter structure. That's an idiotic suggestion, and blank
verse
> >can follow any structure, so long as it remains consistant through out
the
> >poem.
>
> You can intersperse them as well, (as Poe did with Raven for example,
> in which the first and third lines are flawless trochaic octameter)
> but it's much more difficult to pull off.
Yeah, but the Raven isn't blank verse.
> I didn't know that about Haikus...
You didn't? There's two seperate types. The western Haiku is loose,
and just means the form was derived from the Japanese equievelent. There
are no real rules. It can be about anything. It can have however many
syllables, structured into the lines however a person wants. There are
even some made up of four or five lines.
The Japanese Hiaku however is very strict. Not only on the 5-7-5
thing. But the subject matter needs to be something from nature (like a
plant, or insect, or your girlfriend's foot), and it needs to be small (No
sun or sea or a lake, or argueably even trees). The poem can not rhyme or
be lyrical except by accident (which does happen now and then in
translation). And the poem itself can't carry a deeper theme or symbolism.
The theory behind it is that nature has its own natural symbolism and
themes in the things it creates. It'd be arrogant of a poet to try to
supercede nature's intended meaning with their own mortal meaning. So
rather than apply meaning, the idea is to fully capture a subject inside
of seventeen syllables. And that's all that the Japanese Haiku strives to
do, so that the audience can see this wonderment of nature in the words,
and derive from it nature's (not the author's) intended meanings.
Of course the Japanese style wasn't exceptable to western culture,
since the very minute a structure, however loose, is applied to an artform
a whole bunch of artists line up to prove they can break that structure
and create something as good as or better than everything else. And that's
exactly what happened, creating the western haiku.
Both forms have their merits and drawbacks. I prefer the western
style, but I'm not about to claim the Japanese style is inferior or
doesn't have its place. They've become to distinctly different forms of
poetry. And it's a shame that niether is taught in schools, and yet
somehow they manage to have the Haiku on their cirriculum. It'd definetly
be confusing as hell for a student to see a haiku structured 5-5-12, or
with four lines because it was a western style when they were taught it
had to be 5-7-5. In the same way they wouldn't understand the point of a
Japanese haiku without knowing the theory behind the structure.
> I'd think that a careful selection of poems -trying to find ones with
> subjects that appeal to students- would be better than just ramming
> the best known ones in front of their face.
Actually there's a lot of people upset with the best known deal. A lot
of the great poets have their best known works taught instead of their
best works taught. Poe usually gets the Raven somewhere in the four years
of highschool, and yet the Raven isn't considered his best work. Lyrically
it's a masterpiece, but by Poe's own criticism the poem is too long to be
a true masterpiece. And it's again marred by the fact that much of it was
intentionally written to be incomprehensable. Poems like The Conquerer
Worm and El Dorado are often considered better works, and yet they aren't
taught. In fact, with the exception of the first line, El Dorado is a very
easy read, and in terms of language is probably the simplist of all of
Poe's poems.
Part of the problem with education seems to be a need to 'relate' to
students. It's stupid, and if you ever read a text book and see the
suggested project involving 'rapping' about some historical event, you
should be able to see why it's stupid. All the students know the idea is
laughable. And it's this very idea that has students studying english by
drawing pictures of Grendal, or making Lord of the Flies board games, or
putting together posterboards with glitter to summarize The Great Gatsby,
none of which has a single thing to do with English.
If you want to get a student interested in English, let them learn how
to read. It's boring to have someone explain the themes and symbolism of a
book or a play or a poem to you. And it's probably wrong. It's interesting
to actually figure those things out for yourself though. It challanges a
person intellectually, and that gets them interested.
This is one area where math does well. It's managed to keep itself
sacred. You don't rap the laws of exponents. You don't draw a picture to
show the difference between an axiom and therom. You study the subject
matter. And after a few practice problems involving the lesson, you
usually have to take what you've learned before and apply it creatively to
solve the current problem. Math is the one subject that has survived baby
boomers attempting (and failing) to apply to the subject to generation X
culture.
Unfotunatly the one area of math that english doesn't need it gets
anyways. Educators tend to think that for a person to have a basic
education in literature they need to have read a set of certain authors.
Usually Shakespeare, Twain, Dickens, Hemmingway, Homer, Hawthorne, and
Fitzgerald make the list for sure (although in some regions Twain is
omitted 'cause he's a racist'), along with some others. But this isn't the
case, no more than solving the problem x squared = x + 2(5x) + 1 is
required to have mastered agelbra. The important thing is to be able to
solve the problem, not solving it.
The actual work read isn't as important as the complexity of the work
itself. And the main value of English lie in the skills of being able to
read an interpet a work. In that regard basics like plot, theme,
character, symbolism, ect. need to be taught well, which they usually
aren't. But you don't have to of read Shakespeare or Milton to get
everything there is to get from English.
Not to mention that the few things a student is exposed to that are
actual English is pointless busy work. In my reading, my writing, my
studying literature, and my multiple college English classes I haven't
once seen the need to chart the rising and falling action of a work. And
yet highschool English students are subjected to doing this time and again
when the subject of plot comes up.
And how exposed a person has been to literature seems to have a direct
relation to what literature they find enjoyable. I know several of the
authors I love now, like Cervantes and Chaucer, I would have hated had I
read them when I first started reading fiction stuff at seventeen. And yet
the authors I preferred then seem to be too shallow and pointless to offer
me anything, and I can't bare to finish their boring books anymore. A rare
few transcend and I've enjoyed at seventeen and twenty-two, such as Twain
and Frost.
> > But that's just the thing. Shakespeare never meant for most people
to
> >understand most of the words he used.
>
> I dunno about reading such motives in. He may have written in more
> than one storyline, each for a different audience, but I'd think it'd
> be more a matter of taste than of obscurity.
If you watch the plays performed by good Shakesparean actors the
language problem is entirely eliminated. The beauty of the work lies in
the fact it was created in a way that used the language, and yet
eliminated the obvious problem of no one knowing what was going on.
> > The other problem in teaching comes from teacher interpretations as
> >being divine truth.
>
> That happens all over the place, in schools, labs, parliament etc.
In highschool it tends to be overly prolific, and is a real problem.
It cheats the student of actually gaining an education, and punishes
anyone who actually can think for themselves despite the current
educational program.
Rich G.
Tihstae sneezed and it sounded like:
> On Mon, 4 Nov 2002 19:22:22 -0600, "Rich G." <simpl...@nsm.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>>> What's wrong with vignette? It's just a mini vig isn't it?
>>
>> I've got a whole series of pics along that theme. You interested?
>> I've got some great mini-chili peppers and cukes that'll curl your
>> hair.
>
> Your veggie porn is sooo old.
>
> You need some Mac Pr0n to liven your day!
>
> http://sleazy.macfreak.org/home.html
Woo hoo!! Mui Bueno! Sent it to lots of folks who are going to be SO mad when
it's puters hehe
Sean Keenan
> "Dalai Lama" <daiail...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:m19fsu8afjq7u46sf...@4ax.com...
>> On Mon, 04 Nov 2002 22:04:22 GMT, "Rob" <r...@lvcm.com> wrote:
>>
>>> And this is where the beauty of Shakespeare really shines.
>>> Shakespeare's plays contain a vocabulary that was something like 4x
>>> that of the average well educated aristocrat of his time. It's
>>> still something like over twice as large as a very well educated
>>> English speaking person today. The language of the plays were never
>>> really meant to be fully understood, unless a person sat down with
>>> the text and spent a long time studying it.
>>
>> Hmm, I don't know about the last part, but there's definitely a
>> truckload of art in the way Shakespeare uses every jot and mumble of
>> language. There's lots of hidden philosophic gems packed inside
>> riddles, coiled around guffaws that are slathered on top of tawdry
>> double entendres. What I meant by my comment, is that aside from
>> all of the actual complicatedness of the bard, there's an added
>> burden of language shift.
>
> But that's just the thing. Shakespeare never meant for most
> people to understand most of the words he used.
This is rather apparent when you take into consideration that many words
were first used in Shakespeare's plays. Buzzle lakes quim flo, eh?
He did however manage
> to convey the message despite that, which is the beauty of his plays.
You could watch a foreign film and figure out the 'bad thing' and 'good
thing' parts. I don't see how there is something special here.
> If you look at the sonnets, the language is much simpler and they
> are not nearly as difficult to follow as the plays in text. The main
> problem students have understanding the sonnets is that they are
> taught wrong. They were written in a set, and were meant to be read
> in a set. Although the exact order is unknown (we have some good
> guesses), the poems still make more sense when they are read
> together, and it's very easy to misinterpret one of the sonnets out
> of context when it's read alone.
This is not only a fault of faulty teachers, but the system as a whole.
If the course is British Literature, they end up covering everything
from Beowulf to Chaucer to Shakespeare and beyond. The teachers don't
have time to actually _do_ stuff with the stories. They just reiterate
what their college professors and their Cliffs Notes books tell them. My
teacher does it. I hate it.
Take for instance the famous "Shall
> I compare thee to a summer's day" (officially numbered Sonnet 18),
> which is often taken as Shakespeare fawning over some girl.
> And yet that would go against Shakespeare's attack on that very
> form of poetry in "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"
> (Officially numbered 130). But when Sonnet 18 is taken in regard to
> the other sonnets, it's clear what Shakespeare is doing. He has a
> patron, a man, who he deems to be a beautiful creature (at times
> remarking he is a man with all the good qualities of a man, but
> instead of the flaws of man has taken the good qualities of a woman,
> with none of the bad ones), that Shakespeare continually pleads with
> to procreate a son, lest the world be denied his beauty after his
> death, despite the patron's ideas not to. Finally Shakespeare
> compromises by immortalizing his patron in words, so the world will
> forever know his beauty, because his patron won't immortalize himself
> with a heir. And yet Sonnet 18 is still taught in schools as
> being a love sonnet.
Another thing is that every teacher sees a meaning in _everything_. The
use of the word red symbolizes the love apparent in the scene! Of
course. It's blood. You want it to be green? I seriously have had
teachers make everything symbolism. Why can't a writer just write
something and not have hidden messages?
At some point in time, when
> Shakespeare was being named the greatest English poet and playwright,
> a bunch of intellectual snobs got together and declared Shakespeare
> unfit for the common man.
I've not heard this one.
There are versions of
> Romeo and Juliet in highschool textbooks with almost 1/3 of the play
> missing, and when parts are taken out, the plays start to become
> incomprehensible.
This I hate. I hate edited versions. If the teachers want to find
messages in everything, yet they cut out a vital part of the play, they
eliminate part of the message. Hypocritical.
> The other problem in teaching comes from teacher interpretations
> as being divine truth. And they are divine in the sense their truth
> lies entirely in faith. Not to mention these interpretations are,
> from my experiences, rarely original material, and usually taken from
> college professors or the text itself. I seriously doubt four out of
> my five highschool English teachers could do a critical analysis of a
> work without referencing outside sources. This practice destroys the
> learning process, as students are taught to memorize instead of being
> taught to interpret works. It punishes intelligent students that do
> think for themselves. And it takes away a good deal of the joy found
> in literature, and almost everything literature has to offer
> education.
My teacher is exactly like this. If you differ in any way whatsoever
from her (college professors and books), you will get it wrong. It makes
books an awful pain, when I used to love them.
Currently, Wuthering Heights is being forced upon me. Why? ><
Also- it's not really that I hate Shakespeare, just the fact that it is
being crammed down my throat. I much prefer him to Bronte.
Sean Keenan
<lady...@jedimasterlittlegreenguy.com> said:
> On Tue, 05 Nov 2002 13:45:43 -0800, Dalai Lama <daiail...@aol.com>
> graced us with the following words of wisdom:
>
>> OK. I never thought of poetry as requiring rhyming, just rhythm.
>
> Poetry requires neither, actually. Check out some of e e cummings's
> stuff, for example, or the following.
>
> Today
> I sat down and
> thought I might write a
> poem
> but I couldn't think of a rhyme
> and I couldn't get the beat
> so here I am
> verseless.
There's also that leaf one, which involves heavy usage of { and } and 4
character lines.
Sean Keenan
> "Dalai Lama" <daiail...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:40fgsus3ue4j7huae...@4ax.com...
>> On Tue, 05 Nov 2002 14:12:07 GMT, "Rob" <r...@lvcm.com> wrote:
Part of the problem with education seems to be a need to
> 'relate' to students.
Considering that most explanations of early folk tales as a way to
relate various things (world, fire, etc.) to themselves, relating to the
relating is a bit of a stretch. It truly is useless, and a waste of
class time.
It's boring to have someone
> explain the themes and symbolism of a book or a play or a poem to
> you. And it's probably wrong. It's interesting to actually figure
> those things out for yourself though. It challanges a person
> intellectually, and that gets them interested.
This is true. It is flawed in the case that many 'classics' are
'romance' novels. This leaves the generally less intellectually inclined
sex in the dust besides their societally influenced shying away from
education. I'm sure if they had the choice between Herbert's 'Dune' and
'Wuthering Heights' I'd know what their choice would be.
This is one area
> where math does well. It's managed to keep itself sacred. You don't
> rap the laws of exponents.
There was the punctuation rap, in fourth grade. It didn't help me,
because I knew them, and I thought it was awfully stupid, pointless, and
immature. But the other kids liked it. Because little kids like that
stuff. Except me. When I was a little kid.
The actual work read isn't as important
> as the complexity of the work itself. And the main value of English
> lie in the skills of being able to read an interpet a work. In that
> regard basics like plot, theme, character, symbolism, ect. need to be
> taught well, which they usually aren't. But you don't have to of read
> Shakespeare or Milton to get everything there is to get from English.
I have a question for you. Who would you call a good modern author that
would be able to act as a good substitute for a Hemingway or a
Shakespeare?
I wonder if any humourous works would get in a list like that- the
closest has to be Twain. Arthurian adventures are also the rare
exception to the 'romance' novel that permeates high school english
classes.
> Not to mention that the few things a student is exposed to that
> are actual English is pointless busy work. In my reading, my writing,
> my studying literature, and my multiple college English classes I
> haven't once seen the need to chart the rising and falling action of
> a work. And yet highschool English students are subjected to doing
> this time and again when the subject of plot comes up.
And we are forced to do note cards, outlines, drafts, etc. as a teacher
sees fit. "It'll help you learn!". "You'll thank me in college!". I,
myself, intend to never use a notecard to write a paper, of my own
accord. I don't need them. I write down my own notes. A notecard is not
what I need. Outlines do help. I make them simple. Teachers need more. I
don't. My papers are well written, especially considering the 'help'
I've thus far been given by teachers. I still don't see the point to
having me do what the teacher was taught in college.
>>> The other problem in teaching comes from teacher interpretations
>>> as being divine truth.
>>
>> That happens all over the place, in schools, labs, parliament etc.
>
> In highschool it tends to be overly prolific, and is a real
> problem. It cheats the student of actually gaining an education, and
> punishes anyone who actually can think for themselves despite the
> current educational program.
In literature, interpretation is subjective. In high school english
class, interpretation is the teacher's professor's book's
interpretation. Meaning it's like a history test, but your answers are
different.
Rich G.
Rob sneezed and it sounded like:
> poems. Part of the problem with education seems to be a need to
> 'relate' to students. It's stupid, and if you ever read a text book
> and see the suggested project involving 'rapping' about some
> historical event, you should be able to see why it's stupid. All the
> students know the idea is laughable. And it's this very idea that has
> students studying english by drawing pictures of Grendal, or making
> Lord of the Flies board games, or putting together posterboards with
> glitter to summarize The Great Gatsby, none of which has a single
> thing to do with English. If you want to get a student interested
To play devil's advocate for a second here. Making a project with something can
be part of the learning process. The more involved a person is with the work the
more thought they will have to put into it. To draw a picture of Grendal you'd
have to read enough of the descriptions to make sure you didn't draw a lion or a
frog. There are hints in stories, things that different ppl will pick up on and
do their interpretation of when they do something creative with the work being
studied. I'm a proponent of making learning interactive, Lord of the Flies
collages or board games, or whatever... they involve the person in the work more
than simply sitting in an easy chair and turning pages. If your goal is to get
someone to think about the book, to do something with the book then you have to
come up with SOMETHING for them to do with it. Just asking a 13 year old "You
read Lord of the Flies last night?" is going to get you a "Yup." "What'd you
think." "It's a'ight." Not terribly helpful.
Might not like the rapping history bit, but how many ppl to this day sing the
alphabet? Lots... Rote isn't the most effective method of learning and songs,
rhymes, mneumonics, they all help.
> in English, let them learn how to read. It's boring to have someone
> explain the themes and symbolism of a book or a play or a poem to
> you. And it's probably wrong. It's interesting to actually figure
> those things out for yourself though. It challanges a person
That's easy to do once you've seen it done a couple times. But people need to be
shown how to do something first. When we train people at work we show them how
to do it SEVERAL times, have them show US how to do it a couple times, let them
do it while we watch, and then FINALLY let them do it on their own. People can't
just 'figure out' some things.
> intellectually, and that gets them interested. This is one area
> where math does well. It's managed to keep itself sacred. You don't
> rap the laws of exponents. You don't draw a picture to show the
> difference between an axiom and therom. You study the subject matter.
The Rule of Three? I believe Lewis Carroll talked about it quite a lot. :)
> And after a few practice problems involving the lesson, you usually
> have to take what you've learned before and apply it creatively to
> solve the current problem. Math is the one subject that has survived
> baby boomers attempting (and failing) to apply to the subject to
> generation X culture. Unfotunatly the one area of math that
> english doesn't need it gets anyways. Educators tend to think that
> for a person to have a basic education in literature they need to
> have read a set of certain authors. Usually Shakespeare, Twain,
> Dickens, Hemmingway, Homer, Hawthorne, and Fitzgerald make the list
> for sure (although in some regions Twain is omitted 'cause he's a
> racist'), along with some others. But this isn't the case, no more
> than solving the problem x squared = x + 2(5x) + 1 is required to
> have mastered agelbra. The important thing is to be able to solve the
> problem, not solving it. The actual work read isn't as important
> as the complexity of the work itself. And the main value of English
I disagree. Unless you want everyone to sound like Dennis Miller on one of his
esoteric rants you need to have in common with them the things they're talking
about. Some things are part of the culture. Mark Twain is. Shakespeare is. Homer
is. There are others, but if you, in a conversation with someone reference these
works you can typically do so with confidence they'll understand you. Heck. Even
some of Uncle Remus' Brer Rabbit are universal and more recent. I've never seen
the cartoons. We had the stories read to us as kids over and over. If I put a
stricken look on my face and wail "Please don't throw me in the briar patch." 9
times out of 10 people know what I'm talking about. Those are cultural
touchstones, and if a person is ignorant of them, regardless of their native
intelligence, they're not fully functional in the society they're going to be
living their life in.
> lie in the skills of being able to read an interpet a work. In that
> regard basics like plot, theme, character, symbolism, ect. need to be
> taught well, which they usually aren't. But you don't have to of read
> Shakespeare or Milton to get everything there is to get from English.
> Not to mention that the few things a student is exposed to that
> are actual English is pointless busy work. In my reading, my writing,
> my studying literature, and my multiple college English classes I
> haven't once seen the need to chart the rising and falling action of
> a work. And yet highschool English students are subjected to doing
> this time and again when the subject of plot comes up.
Every movie made in america today follows the same pattern though, They may as
well be familiar with it. That way when you see the Denouement you know credits
are about to roll. Yah, I remember that word from 10th grade with the lady with
the breasts that taught it to me. :)
> If you watch the plays performed by good Shakesparean actors the
> language problem is entirely eliminated. The beauty of the work lies
> in the fact it was created in a way that used the language, and yet
> eliminated the obvious problem of no one knowing what was going on.
I so disagree. One may forget later on that they had no clue what the hell
someone said, but that doesn't mean they ever know what they said.
> In highschool it tends to be overly prolific, and is a real
> problem. It cheats the student of actually gaining an education, and
> punishes anyone who actually can think for themselves despite the
> current educational program.
And in real life people need to learn to subjugate themselves to a boss or
authority figure of some sort. It's easier to learn that in school (well, home
really) than later on when you think your whiney ass opinion (to quote a shirt I
wore today) actually matters to me when I'm two levels over you and you're
telling me how we REALLY ought to do rentals.
Craig
> > >> For the short term, I believe I'm fine, but in the long run I'm
probably
> > >> fucked. Hmm.
> > >
> > >Bah. Plan all you want. Bet your life don't go that way. Life is
> > >good at throwing curves. I (personally) think the smart people are
> > >the ones that can adapt. And I often struggle to convince myself I'm
> > >even a half-wit. (shut up, Rich).
> > >
> > >Lord knows, I never, EVER, planned to have the sort of career history
> > >I've had up to this point (currently culminated as an independent
> > >consultant). Heck, in college my goals were towards owning my own
> > >service station...
> >
> > Service station? As in fixing cars? The mind boogles.
>
> Aye. I was a mechanic in high school and college.
>
Hey, I resemble that remark ;)
and look where it got me, some rather fast vehicles and more speeding fines
than you can poke a stick at
vroom vroom'ed
Craig
Dalai Lama
lady...@jedimasterlittlegreenguy.com (LadyJack V.) wrote:
>On Tue, 05 Nov 2002 13:45:43 -0800, Dalai Lama <daiail...@aol.com>
>graced us with the following words of wisdom:
>
>>OK. I never thought of poetry as requiring rhyming, just rhythm.
>
>Poetry requires neither, actually. Check out some of e e cummings's
>stuff, for example, or the following.
>Today
>I sat down and
>thought I might write a
>poem
>but I couldn't think of a rhyme
>and I couldn't get the beat
>so here I am
>verseless.
Hehe, reminds me of Steve Martin in the jerk where he dances without
rhythm.
I think I'd call the above anti-poetry, or whimsical prose.
--
Dalai Lama
> The Japanese Hiaku however is very strict. Not only on the 5-7-5
>thing.
That's the form I was familiar with.
> But the subject matter needs to be something from nature (like a
>plant, or insect, or your girlfriend's foot), and it needs to be small (No
>sun or sea or a lake, or argueably even trees).
Er, that doesn't jibe with history. Haiku is descended from the
Haikai (light verse), which is directly derived from the opening lines
(5-7-5) of the old thirty one syllable Tankas. If you look at the
early Haiku, you will find all manner of subjects, from farting to
begging. If there's a distinction other than form to be made it
would be for what the haiku says implicitly, yet not explicitly.
Although this is true of all good poetry, the haiku is a traditional
formalized manner of connecting a few scenes briefly described by a
single stroke of the painters brush into one theme.
> The poem can not rhyme or be lyrical except by accident (which does happen now and then in
>translation).
Considering the nature of the Japanese language, there would be much
more chance for rhyming than the English language.
>And the poem itself can't carry a deeper theme or symbolism.
? A haiku *MUST* carry some deeper meaning, or it isn't a haiku at
all, just a word pattern.
> The theory behind it is that nature has its own natural symbolism and
>themes in the things it creates. It'd be arrogant of a poet to try to
>supercede nature's intended meaning with their own mortal meaning. So
>rather than apply meaning, the idea is to fully capture a subject inside
>of seventeen syllables. And that's all that the Japanese Haiku strives to
>do, so that the audience can see this wonderment of nature in the words,
>and derive from it nature's (not the author's) intended meanings.
Ok, although the syllables don't match when translated into English,
here's an old Haiku.
Bitter, bitter it was and yet somehow funny.
Even when my father lay dying
I went on farting.
> This is one area where math does well. It's managed to keep itself
>sacred. You don't rap the laws of exponents. You don't draw a picture to
>show the difference between an axiom and therom.
Ah well, the times they are a changing, and they do use pictures and
games to teach kids math and teach them mini rule sets.
> Math is the one subject that has survived baby
>boomers attempting (and failing) to apply to the subject to generation X
>culture.
Not anymore it hasn't. Hehe, I know this first hand from what they
are teaching first and second graders at this very moment.
> The actual work read isn't as important as the complexity of the work
>itself. And the main value of English lie in the skills of being able to
>read an interpet a work.
I think interpretation is far less necessary today than it was in the
past. I'd say the key is not so much to spend a semester on 2 or 3
books, but have the kids read a lot of books, in a lot of different
styles. A broad exposure is better than an in depth understanding of
a few works, although I wouldn't be against one in depth exploration
of a good novel, just so that students know what it is in case they
are interested in it later.
--
Dalai Lama
wrote:
>Every movie made in america today follows the same pattern though, They may as
>well be familiar with it. That way when you see the Denouement you know credits
>are about to roll.
When my niece was four she started pointing out when movies (that she
hadn't seen before) were about to wrap up. They are predictable.
>And in real life people need to learn to subjugate themselves to a boss or
>authority figure of some sort.
hehe, I think the school system undid that part, though order was
properly restored when we got home.
--
Rich G.
Dalai Lama sneezed and it sounded like:
> On Tue, 5 Nov 2002 21:27:01 -0600, "Rich G." <simpl...@nsm.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Every movie made in america today follows the same pattern though,
>> They may as well be familiar with it. That way when you see the
>> Denouement you know credits are about to roll.
>
> When my niece was four she started pointing out when movies (that she
> hadn't seen before) were about to wrap up. They are predictable.
Yah, it's one reason I enjoy movies made in Europe for European audiences.
They're SO different from US films.
>> And in real life people need to learn to subjugate themselves to a
>> boss or authority figure of some sort.
>
> hehe, I think the school system undid that part, though order was
> properly restored when we got home.
My parents were far stricter than school was. :)
Ghāshūl
>
>Yah, it's one reason I enjoy movies made in Europe for European audiences.
>They're SO different from US films.
It's incredible, even Denmark have been producing some good movies in
the last 5 years or so.
--
Regards Ghāshūl <JCHC><
For e-mail replace "spamfilter" with my nick.
ART Gallery: http://art.ghashul.dk/
"Through the destruction came a single quiet voice and the breath of His
words consumed the night and brought strenght I have never felt on my
own and He held me up until I could walk again and promised to stay by
my side forever." Zao - March
Rob
news:aq9tj7$6n2k2$1...@ID-131846.news.dfncis.de...
> <insert cute attribution here> Rob at <r...@lvcm.com> said:
> It's boring to have someone
> > explain the themes and symbolism of a book or a play or a poem to
> > you. And it's probably wrong. It's interesting to actually figure
> > those things out for yourself though. It challanges a person
> > intellectually, and that gets them interested.
>
> This is true. It is flawed in the case that many 'classics' are
> 'romance' novels.
Romance novels in the sense of Danialle Steel and not a romantic
author like Lord Byron or Sir Thomas Malory, right? The idea of the
relationship is something that ends up central to almost all works of any
type. Songs, novels, movies, plays, poetry, ect. The romantics like to
turn it into something surreal and imaginary, the exostentialists like to
make everyone miserable because of it. Only the very rescent books of
modern literature seem to be ditching the idea of romance, and I'd guess
that has something to do with the relatively new feminist critical
perspective.
It's just that for most people, relationships with significant others
end up being one of the most important aspects of their life, and it tends
to be a constant among everyone. So books tend to portray this aspect of
life. Of course that doesn't make all books strictly romance novels. You'd
be hard to justify Great Expectations as being a romance novel even though
male-female relationships are an aspect of it.
This leaves the generally less intellectually inclined
> sex in the dust besides their societally influenced shying away from
> education.
Well, take a look at Dracula. Despite being considered one of the
classic horror novels, it's basically an exploration into the many various
forms of love. I can't imagine a person saying you're feminine for liking
Dracula.
I'm sure if they had the choice between Herbert's 'Dune' and
> 'Wuthering Heights' I'd know what their choice would be.
Well, I tend to think Wuthering Heights is the better of the two, from
what I've read of Dune.
> This is one area
> > where math does well. It's managed to keep itself sacred. You don't
> > rap the laws of exponents.
>
> There was the punctuation rap, in fourth grade. It didn't help me,
> because I knew them, and I thought it was awfully stupid, pointless, and
> immature. But the other kids liked it. Because little kids like that
> stuff. Except me. When I was a little kid.
They do this stuff in highschool. They expect sixteen year olds to get
into this.
> The actual work read isn't as important
> > as the complexity of the work itself. And the main value of English
> > lie in the skills of being able to read an interpet a work. In that
> > regard basics like plot, theme, character, symbolism, ect. need to be
> > taught well, which they usually aren't. But you don't have to of read
> > Shakespeare or Milton to get everything there is to get from English.
>
> I have a question for you. Who would you call a good modern author that
> would be able to act as a good substitute for a Hemingway or a
> Shakespeare?
I don't read many current authors. It's usually just a waste of my
money, because it's too hard to figure out who's good, when I can just get
someone who's been tested over time. And I consider Hemmingway modern, but
I consider everything in like the last 150 years modern.
Anyways, for Hemmingway, check out H. Lee Barnes. He has some short
stories and an anthology now, and he's always talking about having a novel
on the way. He's a student of Hemmingway, and I'm probably biased about
this since he was my professor, several times now. Like Hemmingway, the
heavy minimilistic style does dry him out a bit, but I find his stuff to
be more enjoyable than Hemmingway's.
Also in that same vain, you might want to check out Andre Dubius III.
I read his house of Sand and Fog, and enjoyed it, although I did think it
had some serious flaws and wasn't up to calibur with the likes of
Hemmingway. The style was different from Hemmingway's, but the book itself
seemed to remind me of Hemmingway's voice, sort of.
As for Shakespeare, if you want a poetic novel, check out Lolita by
Nobokov (published in the 50s). It's an in depth study of a pedophile, so
it'll never appear in classrooms. But it remains as one of the great
lyrical works of the English language.
If you're looking for a good playwrite that had Shakespeare's nack for
the dramatic, try Sam Shepard, who's still alive and acting today, but did
most of his best work during the off-off-broadway boom a few decades back.
You really aren't going to find a playwrite like Shakespeare anymore,
because they just don't exist. His poetic style isn't common in plays
anymore, and the best you can find is a modern adaptation of his work.
> I wonder if any humourous works would get in a list like that- the
> closest has to be Twain.
I also think Shakespeare is a good humorist. Kubrick is another up to
par with those two. The problem is that the ability to write humor and the
ability to write seem to seperate things, and it's a rarity when the two
meet.
Many of the great classic authors tried to write humor at some point,
and fell flat on their face. In the same vain, most of the great humorists
tend to fall short in the actual story. If you take Douglas Adams, he's
probably on equal grounds with Twain as far as humor goes. But when the
story is taken without the humor, it doesn't have much to be offered.
Even in Hollywood where they try to discourage everyone from looking
for a job, they're in desperate need of people who can write a story well,
and write humor well. And they constantly pillage the Sunday comics and
the stand up circiuts looking for talent.
Arthurian adventures are also the rare
> exception to the 'romance' novel that permeates high school english
> classes.
The Authurian stuff is the quintessential romantic work :) Most of the
great authors have dealt with romance in some form. Even the Authurian
legends had the love affair of Queniverre and Lancelot as a central theme.
> And we are forced to do note cards, outlines, drafts, etc. as a teacher
> sees fit. "It'll help you learn!". "You'll thank me in college!". I,
> myself, intend to never use a notecard to write a paper, of my own
> accord. I don't need them. I write down my own notes. A notecard is not
> what I need. Outlines do help. I make them simple. Teachers need more. I
> don't. My papers are well written, especially considering the 'help'
> I've thus far been given by teachers. I still don't see the point to
> having me do what the teacher was taught in college.
The other thing you'll never need to do is have an organized binder.
No one does a binder check in college. In my entire life I've never
managed to keep an organized binder. I still don't think I'm handicapped
because of it.
As for drafts, they'll help. I really need them with English papers
otherwise I'll make far too many simple errors. Still 90% of my college
papers have been done in the twelve hours preceding class (and I can
average, when I need to, over two pages an hour).
As far as multiple drafts, outlines, notecards, ect., what each
person needs will differ between people. Personally if I keep notecards,
I'm just going to lose them. I stopped buying notecards for everything
except for giving speeches, because I just lose what I write on them.
> In literature, interpretation is subjective. In high school english
> class, interpretation is the teacher's professor's book's
> interpretation. Meaning it's like a history test, but your answers are
> different.
In literature interpretation is also dependent on logical arguments.
Everything is not so subjective, because points can be argued and proofs
can be found. There is a subjective influence, but there's a very
objective influence too. After all, the first critic was also the founder
of the logical rules of arguments. Most teacher interpretations don't come
with the necessary critical proofs.
Rob
news:aqa21n$7v05t$1...@ID-109196.news.dfncis.de...
something can
> be part of the learning process. The more involved a person is with the
work the
> more thought they will have to put into it. To draw a picture of Grendal
you'd
> have to read enough of the descriptions to make sure you didn't draw a
lion or a
> frog. There are hints in stories, things that different ppl will pick up
on and
> do their interpretation of when they do something creative with the work
being
> studied.
Drawing a picture of Grendel involves no ability beyond reading the
words on the page. Granted their is an artistic side to drawing him, but
that would be something better left to art classes as opposed to English
classes. It amounts to nothing more than busy work. Although it may allow
a student to remember who Grendel is, simply knowing who Grendel is isn't
going to amount to much in life. Being able to give a critical analysis on
the themes of Beowulf does.
I'm a proponent of making learning interactive, Lord of the Flies
> collages or board games, or whatever... they involve the person in the
work more
> than simply sitting in an easy chair and turning pages.
Literature isn't about sitting down and reading. There's a very
interactive side in work itself. If a student had to decipher themes and
symbolisms on their own, and find the proofs to back up their arguement,
then what they're doing is interactive, and it involves a great deal more
thought than creating a Lord of the Flies board game. There is of course a
place for learning strictly reading ability. But by the time a child is
thirteen, they should be able to read a modern adult novel fairly well,
and by the time they're eighteen they should be able to read the classical
novels.
One of the other shortcomings of the English system is they feel a
need to teach things in chronillogical order. Start with Shakespeare,
Homer, and Mallory. Move up to Dickens, and Hawthorne, and Twain. And then
look at Fitzgerald and Hemmingway. Finally the likes of Grisham and King
appear at the end. That's not the way to teach literature. The books are
becoming easier to read as the teaching continues. Grisham and King should
be first, and once a student has developed through those works, then the
likes of Fitzgerald and Hemmingway should be brought up. In that way a
student develops more as the work becomes more difficult to read.
If your goal is to get
> someone to think about the book, to do something with the book then you
have to
> come up with SOMETHING for them to do with it.
Talk about the relationship of a character. Ask what the theme of the
book was, then ask why. Ask if anyone found any symbolism. Ask why that
was symbolic. Have them write a critical analysis on an area of their
choosing in the book. These are all things you can do with a book that
actually require English skills.
Just asking a 13 year old "You
> read Lord of the Flies last night?" is going to get you a "Yup." "What'd
you
> think." "It's a'ight." Not terribly helpful.
Don't ask them just what they think. Ask them what they think about
things. And encourage them to come up with original ideas, instead of
repeating something. The only English teacher I ever liked in my entire
highschool (I had five), I unfortunatly didn't get a class with until I
was seventeen. He used to stand up at the class screaming at students as
we told him he was wrong. He wasn't trying to make his point clear, he was
egging us on to fight him as best we could. The tests covered plot points
to prove we actually read the text, and that was all. Every once in a
while there was a question on theme or symbolism, but if it was answered
it was correct. And unlike my friends who were building scale models of
Jurrasic Park, there wasn't one stupid project to be done.
The class ended up being the very first where I had read all of the
assigned texts. The only other books I read were The Great Gatsby and half
of Huckleberry Fin. It was also the first time I started buying and
reading fiction books.
Did the class have it's shortcomings? Yeah. I think it would've had a
greater impact had we studied critical theory a bit more. Unfortunatly
though that wasn't going to happen. I'm still sure had I not had the
teacher I had, I never would've pursued fiction to the point that I have.
> Might not like the rapping history bit, but how many ppl to this day
sing the
> alphabet? Lots... Rote isn't the most effective method of learning and
songs,
> rhymes, mneumonics, they all help.
You need mesmorization to become literate and read words. You need it
to do certian math, especially the basics. It's needed in learning new
languages, and in some areas of science. That's about it.
The point of English is to learn how to critically analyze a piece
logically, and to improve writing skills through practice. The point of
history is to teach cultural awareness, and to teach students to evaluate
and identify false information and true information. The point of math is
to show someone how to think creatively in a set of boundries to find a
solution to a problem. The point of science is to use the lessons of
English and Math in the real world. These are the lessons that should be
taught.
> That's easy to do once you've seen it done a couple times. But people
need to be
> shown how to do something first. When we train people at work we show
them how
> to do it SEVERAL times, have them show US how to do it a couple times,
let them
> do it while we watch, and then FINALLY let them do it on their own.
People can't
> just 'figure out' some things.
I'm not against showing someone how to do a critical analysis. To go
through a work, pick out important details, show the line of reasoning and
the proofs, and eventually form a hypothesis as to a theme or symbolism.
I've had this done in college classes. It took the professor an hour and a
half to show how a simple theme was derived from a nine page story. When
done that way it's very effective. It of course assumes the teacher is
capable of doing a critical anaylsis.
The method used in school today is the equivelent of training someone
to cook a Pizza buy telling them the Pizza comes out of the oven, and then
having them draw a picture of the oven, and bitching anytime they ask or
say anything but "The Pizza comes out of the oven", even though they've
never once seen a Pizza come out of the oven in over a year. You've taught
them nothing, and they don't know how to cook a Pizza, just that the Pizza
comes out of the oven, or at least you say it does.
> I disagree. Unless you want everyone to sound like Dennis Miller on one
of his
> esoteric rants you need to have in common with them the things they're
talking
> about. Some things are part of the culture. Mark Twain is. Shakespeare
is. Homer
> is. There are others, but if you, in a conversation with someone
reference these
> works you can typically do so with confidence they'll understand you.
Heck. Even
> some of Uncle Remus' Brer Rabbit are universal and more recent. I've
never seen
> the cartoons. We had the stories read to us as kids over and over. If I
put a
> stricken look on my face and wail "Please don't throw me in the briar
patch." 9
> times out of 10 people know what I'm talking about. Those are cultural
> touchstones, and if a person is ignorant of them, regardless of their
native
> intelligence, they're not fully functional in the society they're going
to be
> living their life in.
So we should use education to assimulate culture to our ideals?
It wouldn't matter if you didn't read a word of Shakespeare in high
school. You'd still do just as fine. There are so many works that are
considered essential, that you could get a doctrine in English and
combined with your personal reading, you still wouldn't have read them
all. You'd need probably ten collage courses just to be completely
familiar with all the works of Shakespeare, not including disputed works
like Edward III.
Even when people analyze works and cite refrences, it's never done by
one person. It's done by a whole bunch of people with different areas of
expertise. There are scholars who focus their study on a single
Shakesperean play. With more complex works like The Divine Comedy, the
scholars focus on one portion of the work. Their are old testemant Dante
Scholars, Koran Dante Scholars, new testemant Dante Scholars, Florentine
history Dante Scholars, and many other types. In fact, it'd seem that no
single person could manage to analyze the entirety of The Divine Comedy
entirely on their own even after a lifetime studying it. The work just
becomes too complicated.
And the one work which, in western culture, will be refrenced the most
isn't taught in schools. Over half of the refrences in literature refer to
the Holy Bible. It's been assumed through most of history that most
everyone's read it. It's still somewhat assumed today. If you read every
book of the last 1000 years but that one, you'd still be at a major
handicap to someone who just read that one, in terms of finding refrences.
The main point of teaching literature is to equip a student to
understand literature, how to analyze it, and how to be able to read more
complicated works. In that regard, it doesn't matter which authors you
study, so long as they are equal in calibur, and possibly from the same
time periods or in the same style.
> Every movie made in america today follows the same pattern though, They
may as
> well be familiar with it. That way when you see the Denouement you know
credits
> are about to roll. Yah, I remember that word from 10th grade with the
lady with
> the breasts that taught it to me. :)
90% of the commercially released American films follow a similiar
structure, slight variations of the three act structure. If you take a
screenwriting class, you should be taught what that is.
There are however films that don't follow that structure, and since
the ninties independent revolution, which is now dying down, films have
been trying to break away more and more from it.
You may have something though. Topless teachers may be the key to
getting students to pay attention.
> I so disagree. One may forget later on that they had no clue what the
hell
> someone said, but that doesn't mean they ever know what they said.
They may not know exactly what was said, but they'd be able to tell
you the plot, who the characters were, what relationships the characters
had, where the tension built up, and all sorts of other parts of the
story. Of course this assumes it's a performance by good Shakesperean
actors.
> And in real life people need to learn to subjugate themselves to a boss
or
> authority figure of some sort.
Do they really? What about someone who doesn't want to subjugate
themselves to a boss. There are still opportunities out there. The whole
subjugation thing is one of the things that's ruining various art forms
like film.
A person needs to understand that when someone is paying them to do
something, they're expected to do it to the best of their abilities and
follow orders. That's a good work ethic. You don't need to follow your
employers religion though, or agree with him on what films are good, or
share his taste in women. Most people feel that when their work is done,
it's done and they are free to do and feel how they will. One of the major
problems with education is it tries to brainwash people into mindlessly
following authority figures instead of thinking for themselves and forming
conclusions.
It's easier to learn that in school (well, home
> really) than later on when you think your whiney ass opinion (to quote a
shirt I
> wore today) actually matters to me when I'm two levels over you and
you're
> telling me how we REALLY ought to do rentals.
I've seen people who have ideas how to do something, and I've never
minded them bringing them up. If I tell them not to do something their way
though, and they do it anyways, then I get pissed at them. The fact is
they're paid to do what I tell them to do, but not to limit themselves to
what I've said.
The problem with people who mindlessly follow orders and do what
they're told is they usually can't be promoted to far. I've seen these
people become managers, and all of a sudden they have no idea what to do
once problems occur and they have to figure out how to solve them. Without
someone to tell them what to do, they're useless.
And most DMs I met trust their store manager's opinions when deciding
who to hire and who to let go. Most store managers I've met put at least
some relevance in deciding those things in their assistant managers.
Of course there is a difference between making a different opinion
vocal, and willingly defying an order given by a superior, or openly
defying it once an order has been given. And I've yet to meet a store
manager who thought he was up to the challenge of thinking for everyone in
the store at all times :)
Rich G.
OK, you're right all the way 'round, I was just being stupid I guess... too many
pictures of Gatsby's car I reckon. Off to color (colour for some of you folks) a
diorama backdrop for A Tail and Two T*tt**s now for another project for work.
Sean Keenan
> "Sean Keenan" <x4ya...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:aq9tj7$6n2k2$1...@ID-131846.news.dfncis.de...
>> <insert cute attribution here> Rob at <r...@lvcm.com> said:
>
>> It's boring to have someone
>>> explain the themes and symbolism of a book or a play or a poem to
>>> you. And it's probably wrong. It's interesting to actually figure
>>> those things out for yourself though. It challanges a person
>>> intellectually, and that gets them interested.
>>
>> This is true. It is flawed in the case that many 'classics' are
>> 'romance' novels.
>
> Romance novels in the sense of Danialle Steel and not a romantic
> author like Lord Byron or Sir Thomas Malory, right? The idea of the
> relationship is something that ends up central to almost all works of
> any type. Songs, novels, movies, plays, poetry, ect. The romantics
> like to turn it into something surreal and imaginary, the
> exostentialists like to make everyone miserable because of it. Only
> the very rescent books of modern literature seem to be ditching the
> idea of romance, and I'd guess that has something to do with the
> relatively new feminist critical perspective.
Romance in the sense that the major story floats along the 'boy meets
girl, girl separated from boy, they die trying to get back together,
blah blah blah' type stuff. Dracula, Arthurian adventures, etc. have
other main action. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight- yes, there is a
romantic relationship that develops, but it isn't the whole point of the
book. With Jane Eyre, you get a lengthy book about love. That doesn't
appeal to many people.
> It's just that for most people, relationships with significant
> others end up being one of the most important aspects of their life,
> and it tends to be a constant among everyone. So books tend to
> portray this aspect of life. Of course that doesn't make all books
> strictly romance novels. You'd be hard to justify Great Expectations
> as being a romance novel even though male-female relationships are an
> aspect of it.
Exactly. The romance is fine- it's when it is the biggest part of the
story when I don't like it. I loved Great Expectations, personally.
> This leaves the generally less intellectually inclined
>> sex in the dust besides their societally influenced shying away from
>> education.
>
> Well, take a look at Dracula. Despite being considered one of the
> classic horror novels, it's basically an exploration into the many
> various forms of love. I can't imagine a person saying you're
> feminine for liking Dracula.
>
> I'm sure if they had the choice between Herbert's 'Dune' and
>> 'Wuthering Heights' I'd know what their choice would be.
>
> Well, I tend to think Wuthering Heights is the better of the two,
> from what I've read of Dune.
I haven't yet read Wuthering Heights, but I'm about to, for school. Dune
is an adventure though, and has a storyline with events more exciting
than 'He looked at me! OMG! My <3 is fluttery!'.
>> This is one area
>>> where math does well. It's managed to keep itself sacred. You don't
>>> rap the laws of exponents.
>>
>> There was the punctuation rap, in fourth grade. It didn't help me,
>> because I knew them, and I thought it was awfully stupid, pointless,
>> and immature. But the other kids liked it. Because little kids like
>> that stuff. Except me. When I was a little kid.
>
> They do this stuff in highschool. They expect sixteen year olds
> to get into this.
Yeah. Group work == good. Group projects == bad.
Math projects aren't bad, though. They actually focus on the material
(at least, good ones do).
>> The actual work read isn't as important
>>> as the complexity of the work itself. And the main value of English
>>> lie in the skills of being able to read an interpet a work. In that
>>> regard basics like plot, theme, character, symbolism, ect. need to
>>> be taught well, which they usually aren't. But you don't have to of
>>> read Shakespeare or Milton to get everything there is to get from
>>> English.
>>
>> I have a question for you. Who would you call a good modern author
>> that would be able to act as a good substitute for a Hemingway or a
>> Shakespeare?
>
> I don't read many current authors. It's usually just a waste of my
> money, because it's too hard to figure out who's good, when I can
> just get someone who's been tested over time.
That just made me think of something. They never tell us about the scads
and hordes of authors and playwrights that didn't make it during
Shakespeare's time. They didn't give us the alternative to Beowulf- 'Ugh
ugh grunt ork!'. I seriously doubt any of todays authors (Past 10 years,
maybe further) that make the 'New York Best Sellers List' will be
studied at any point in the future.
And I consider
> Hemmingway modern, but I consider everything in like the last 150
> years modern. Anyways, for Hemmingway, check out H. Lee Barnes.
> He has some short stories and an anthology now, and he's always
> talking about having a novel on the way. He's a student of
> Hemmingway, and I'm probably biased about this since he was my
> professor, several times now. Like Hemmingway, the heavy minimilistic
> style does dry him out a bit, but I find his stuff to be more
> enjoyable than Hemmingway's. Also in that same vain, you might
> want to check out Andre Dubius III. I read his house of Sand and Fog,
> and enjoyed it, although I did think it had some serious flaws and
> wasn't up to calibur with the likes of Hemmingway. The style was
> different from Hemmingway's, but the book itself seemed to remind me
> of Hemmingway's voice, sort of. As for Shakespeare, if you want a
> poetic novel, check out Lolita by Nobokov (published in the 50s).
> It's an in depth study of a pedophile, so it'll never appear in
> classrooms. But it remains as one of the great lyrical works of the
> English language.
These all seem interesting. Especially the pedophile one. It's so off
the wall and unordinary that I have to read it.
>> I wonder if any humourous works would get in a list like that- the
>> closest has to be Twain.
>
> I also think Shakespeare is a good humorist. Kubrick is another
> up to par with those two. The problem is that the ability to write
> humor and the ability to write seem to seperate things, and it's a
> rarity when the two meet.
It seems that most things written as humour- Douglas Adams- aren't
hidden. They don't let English teachers analyze them to death.
> Many of the great classic authors tried to write humor at some
> point, and fell flat on their face. In the same vain, most of the
> great humorists tend to fall short in the actual story. If you take
> Douglas Adams, he's probably on equal grounds with Twain as far as
> humor goes. But when the story is taken without the humor, it doesn't
> have much to be offered.
But the story revolves around the humour. The story is written for the
humour- not as a science fiction novel. The Pangalactic Gargle Blaster
really isn't something you'd fit into a standard science fiction novel.
As far as his nonfiction- Last Chance to See was a nice read.
I don't see what you'd have if you took 'The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
Calaveras County' and drained all the humour. Some stories are just
written to be humourous, and others aren't. I don't know what else to
say. =/
> Arthurian adventures are also the rare
>> exception to the 'romance' novel that permeates high school english
>> classes.
>
> The Authurian stuff is the quintessential romantic work :) Most
> of the great authors have dealt with romance in some form. Even the
> Authurian legends had the love affair of Queniverre and Lancelot as a
> central theme.
It's romantic, yes, but it doesn't focus on the romance. Eowyn's
presence in LotR doesn't make it a romance novel, but there is a romance
aspect to it. Arthurian adventures are like that. Romance parsley, if
you will.
>> And we are forced to do note cards, outlines, drafts, etc. as a
>> teacher sees fit. "It'll help you learn!". "You'll thank me in
>> college!". I, myself, intend to never use a notecard to write a
>> paper, of my own accord. I don't need them. I write down my own
>> notes. A notecard is not what I need. Outlines do help. I make them
>> simple. Teachers need more. I don't. My papers are well written,
>> especially considering the 'help' I've thus far been given by
>> teachers. I still don't see the point to having me do what the
>> teacher was taught in college.
>
> The other thing you'll never need to do is have an organized
> binder. No one does a binder check in college. In my entire life I've
> never managed to keep an organized binder. I still don't think I'm
> handicapped because of it.
Luckily, I'm not forced to do this. I don't know what makes teachers
think these foolish inventions help us.
Drafts help, to an extent. Forcing students to do things is not the way
to help them develop, though.
>> In literature, interpretation is subjective. In high school english
>> class, interpretation is the teacher's professor's book's
>> interpretation. Meaning it's like a history test, but your answers
>> are different.
>
> In literature interpretation is also dependent on logical
> arguments. Everything is not so subjective, because points can be
> argued and proofs can be found. There is a subjective influence, but
> there's a very objective influence too. After all, the first critic
> was also the founder of the logical rules of arguments. Most teacher
> interpretations don't come with the necessary critical proofs.
'What does <insert character here> do <insert event here> for?'
I can't think of a proper example here, but many times there are
questionable motives, and it all depends on perspective. My teacher
allows for her (pro... etc.) opinion as gospel. All others are wrong.
Even if you can prove it.
Some can be proven. But if they can't, there is the subjective view. ><
Dalai Lama
> Literature isn't about sitting down and reading.
Trying to make it more than that is much like demanding that sex
involve marriage, and only in the missionary position.
>There's a very interactive side in work itself. If a student had to decipher themes and
>symbolisms on their own, and find the proofs to back up their arguement,
>then what they're doing is interactive,
So is making a poster of the book. Interactive isn't always or
inherently better. When I ride a roller coaster, I don't need to
consider the symbolism of it to fully enjoy the ride.
> and it involves a great deal more
>thought than creating a Lord of the Flies board game.
Is such thought useful, or is it mere self-aggrandizing chicanery by
the intelligentsia?
> One of the other shortcomings of the English system is they feel a
>need to teach things in chronillogical order. Start with Shakespeare,
>Homer, and Mallory. Move up to Dickens, and Hawthorne, and Twain. And then
>look at Fitzgerald and Hemmingway. Finally the likes of Grisham and King
>appear at the end. That's not the way to teach literature. The books are
>becoming easier to read as the teaching continues. Grisham and King should
>be first, and once a student has developed through those works, then the
>likes of Fitzgerald and Hemmingway should be brought up. In that way a
>student develops more as the work becomes more difficult to read.
I'd agree they should start with easier authors, but I'd also think
they should look for novels with more appeal to the students. If the
students find reading enjoyable, and you give them a brief
introduction to the classics, they will find their way from there if
they choose.
> Talk about the relationship of a character. Ask what the theme of the
>book was, then ask why. Ask if anyone found any symbolism. Ask why that
>was symbolic. Have them write a critical analysis on an area of their
>choosing in the book.
The Special Effects of Early Science Fiction: The Iliad
>These are all things you can do with a book that
>actually require English skills.
Read and understand
Write and communicate.
Anything else is superfluous.
>> alphabet? Lots... Rote isn't the most effective method of learning and
>songs,
>> rhymes, mneumonics, they all help.
> You need mesmorization to become literate and read words. You need it
>to do certian math, especially the basics.
Rote isn't the only way, nor is it the most effective way for
everyone. The brain is structured around associations. How is such
and such like or different from everything else in memory?
Enthusiasm plays a big part in learning as well. If the students are
excited about something, they will learn it faster and more
thoroughly.
> It's needed in learning new
>languages,
Only when the new language has no comparison points. For example
how hard is it to remember the Russian: Idiot -(pronounced
Eee-dee-ote) versus the Russian Igraite (pronounced Eee-Grai-Ett-Tay
the second syllable rhymes with high)
When learning Chinese, the pictographs have a verbal component for
pronunciation and a component which gives their meaning- once you
start associating the pictographs with trees, knives, doors, moons,
etc, it becomes much easier to remember them.
--
Rich G.
Dalai Lama sneezed and it sounded like:
> When learning Chinese, the pictographs have a verbal component for
> pronunciation and a component which gives their meaning- once you
> start associating the pictographs with trees, knives, doors, moons,
> etc, it becomes much easier to remember them.
AND they're magically delicious.
Dalai Lama
wrote:
>OK, you're right all the way 'round, I was just being stupid I guess... too many
>pictures of Gatsby's car I reckon. Off to color (colour for some of you folks) a
>diorama backdrop for A Tail and Two T*tt**s now for another project for work.
Ooh, can I volunteer for the papier mache part?
--
Dalai Lama
wrote:
>In news:mdsjsukha4ss81a5d...@4ax.com,
>Dalai Lama sneezed and it sounded like:
>
>> When learning Chinese, the pictographs have a verbal component for
>> pronunciation and a component which gives their meaning- once you
>> start associating the pictographs with trees, knives, doors, moons,
>> etc, it becomes much easier to remember them.
>
>AND they're magically delicious.
Well, bootylicious at least from some of the er, eye catching places
they are tattooed.
--
Easyprey
>
>
> LOL What world exactly do you live in? HAHAHA
> OK, I'm kidding. I don't think what he said was snobby though really... I mean,
> it seemed almost the reverse didn't it? He claimed on of Literature's Greatest
> blah blah blah was antiquated and tired and lost on a good deal of the
> population who feel they have no common ground with which to connect with the
> stories told back in the days of shit filled streets, in-bred royalty, and teen
> lovers... we've still got all of those in parts of the South LOL. (I'm KIDDING!
> those of you from Mississippi... as if you can read this. HAR HAR HAR)
> But I think he's right to an extent. There's a lot of folks out there who think
> the evening news is just too damned hard to understand to put in the effort.
> Shakespear is certainly a case of pearls before swine to them, and as such lost
> completely on them and a waste of time for all involved.
>
I live in a world of my own. No one else here! I am not saying he was
snobby, I am saying that the world changes. The "greatest" is a matter
of opinion. A lot of folks? That we disagree with you doesn't mean we
dont understand the news, We understand it too well... Shakespear was a
great writer. There have been alot of great writers. If we can't teach
them all to our students, which should we teach? Those that make this
decission are the thought police that run the goverment. While I salute
your well thought out good intentioned if faulty anaylsis of this
subject, I just meant that WS is not the only great writer and while he
may be popular with some, other choices are valid as well.
Easyprey
>
>
> I agree completely. Though I am a bit confused as to the first part
> of the post.
>
>
My apoligies for calling you a snob. Although you do come off as way
over my head intellectualy speaking. New writers come out every day
and the thought police are working hard to set the young minds of our
socity on the proper path for success as they define it. Sometimes WS
works for this, sometimes he don't.
I've lost track on what this thread is about. Someone want to fill me
in please? Is this an analysis of the education system? Shakespear or
not? Great writers in general? Or is this just more blank verse?
Big Bird
> The problem is, I have no idea what I'm going to do. Nothing interests
> me. People already know me as a slacker, and I have no idea what
> direction I'm going to take in my life.
Speaking as some apparently infinitely old 35-year-old, I am still not
sure what I want to do with my life. It seems at all times so far I've
always just done what seemed the most interesting to me. I guess
there's the choice between "easy" and "interesting" that you have to
make at some point: I have no quarrels putting in some real work if I
find the matter at hand interesting. But if I'm bored by something, I
might as well slack off.
So I chose "interesting", turned my hobby into a profession and things
worked out miraculously...
Dalai Lama
lady...@jedimasterlittlegreenguy.com (LadyJack V.) wrote:
>ObOddThought: Reading is "good," right? While TV "rots your brain"
>and video games are "bad?"
So *they* say.
> What if some teenager who goes on a
>violent rampage blames it on something he's read?
You mean like the Turner Diaries *supposedly* being responsible for
Columbine and the Oklahoma City Bombing?
In the recent murders at the University of Arizona, the killer
postmortemly blamed haughty uncaring attitudes, but I doubt we'll see
any legislation against them.
> Do we get the same kind of crackdown on what books are accessible to teenagers we've seen
>with music, movies and video games? Just a TV/Movies-like ratings
>system?
Hardly. There are school districts where the teachers won't release
the books they use for teaching, even when ordered to do so by a
court. They are terrified that parents will not like their choices.
Further, if so many people will unashamedly support public funding of
Robert Mappelthorpe's shtick, they won't back down from books.
Facts are not important, only holding the mental agenda as set forth
by Barbara Streisand. (There's an opposite far right side almost
exactly like these folks, they just don't control the educational
system, or have a stranglehold on the media as the liberal side does).
> Or something else? Any thoughts?
Nothing would happen unless it was a very conservative book written by
a talk show host- in which case Oprah's Army, Rosie's Recruits and all
others afraid to think for themselves would come marching out of the
woodwork to put an end to political talk shows. They would do so,
because they fervently desire to do this anyways, and this would just
be their excuse.
> Or should I take my
>what-if to SHWI?
I honestly don't think much would come of it. The media would gloss
over it like they would discovering Bill Clinton with another floozie.
> It's sort of too current a thought to be on-topic
>there, and nothing is off-topic here, so what do y'all think?
>ObProudMomWhileWe'reOnTheSubject: My kid can read! OK, he can only
>read, like, ten words. But he's not even two, and he can demonstrably
>read those and knows the meanings, and he keeps picking up new ones.
Darn good job! Reading is freedom.
--
Dalai Lama
wrote:
>I live in a world of my own. No one else here!
I saw two sizes of snowsuits when I last stopped by the secret ice
hut, so unless you're polymorphing...
> I am not saying he was snobby,
Hmm, I wasn't the one suggesting Shakespeare had to be a part of the
curriculum, or was necessary on SAT tests.
> I am saying that the world changes. The "greatest" is a matter
>of opinion.
Agreed.
A lot of folks? That we disagree with you doesn't mean we
>dont understand the news, We understand it too well... Shakespear was a
>great writer. There have been alot of great writers. If we can't teach
>them all to our students, which should we teach? Those that make this
>decission are the thought police that run the goverment.
Why not let the kids, parents and local school districts choose, and
have a suggested reading list?
> While I salute your well thought out good intentioned if faulty anaylsis of this
>subject, I just meant that WS is not the only great writer and while he
>may be popular with some, other choices are valid as well.
Most certainly.
--
Dalai Lama
wrote:
>Dalai Lama wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> I agree completely. Though I am a bit confused as to the first part
>> of the post.
>>
>>
>
>My apoligies for calling you a snob. Although you do come off as way
>over my head intellectualy speaking.
I'm a lazy poster, and instead of sitting down and really choosing
what and how I want to say carefully, I just sort of blurt out what
I'm thinking. It makes my sentences awkward and my message harder
to decipher. It's plain old bad writing half the time.
> New writers come out every day and the thought police are working hard to set the young minds of our
>socity on the proper path for success as they define it.
Exactly. I'd much rather have kids that can read well and think for
themselves than a freshly indoctrinated squad of sheep.
> Sometimes WS
>works for this, sometimes he don't.
>I've lost track on what this thread is about. Someone want to fill me
>in please? Is this an analysis of the education system? Shakespear or
>not? Great writers in general? Or is this just more blank verse?
It's one big happy dysfunctional thread. We can fix it, but we need
government funding, hehe :-)
--
Rich G.
LadyJack V. sneezed and it sounded like:
> ObOddThought: Reading is "good," right? While TV "rots your brain"
> and video games are "bad?" What if some teenager who goes on a
> violent rampage blames it on something he's read? Do we get the same
> kind of crackdown on what books are accessible to teenagers we've seen
> with music, movies and video games? Just a TV/Movies-like ratings
> system? Or something else? Any thoughts? Or should I take my
> what-if to SHWI? It's sort of too current a thought to be on-topic
> there, and nothing is off-topic here, so what do y'all think?
I engaged in some shenanigans when I was a youngster (8th grade) and got busted.
I was asked why I'd done them by the principal and the first thought that went
through my head was screw them! I got the idea from TV but wasn't about to give
ppl evidence to use against TV so I said, "I read it somewhere in a book from
the library here." LOL It didn't lessen my punishment at all, but at least I
didn't end up a statistic used to blame TV for something hehehe.
> ObProudMomWhileWe'reOnTheSubject: My kid can read! OK, he can only
> read, like, ten words. But he's not even two, and he can demonstrably
> read those and knows the meanings, and he keeps picking up new ones
Grats!
Rich G.
Dalai Lama sneezed and it sounded like:
> On Thu, 07 Nov 2002 03:37:27 -0800, Easyprey <Easy...@mindspring.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Dalai Lama wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I agree completely. Though I am a bit confused as to the first
>>> part of the post.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> My apoligies for calling you a snob. Although you do come off as way
>> over my head intellectualy speaking.
>
> I'm a lazy poster, and instead of sitting down and really choosing
> what and how I want to say carefully, I just sort of blurt out what
> I'm thinking. It makes my sentences awkward and my message harder
> to decipher. It's plain old bad writing half the time.
Well, that and the snobbery of course. ROFL. Sorry, just struck me funny. :)
>> New writers come out every day and the thought police are working
>> hard to set the young minds of our socity on the proper path for
>> success as they define it.
>
> Exactly. I'd much rather have kids that can read well and think for
> themselves than a freshly indoctrinated squad of sheep.
What if they're the gay sheep from Montana or where ever it was? Those could be
a hoot to watch if you'd had enough to drink.
>> Sometimes WS
>> works for this, sometimes he don't.
>
>> I've lost track on what this thread is about. Someone want to fill
>> me in please? Is this an analysis of the education system?
>> Shakespear or not? Great writers in general? Or is this just more
>> blank verse?
>
> It's one big happy dysfunctional thread. We can fix it, but we need
> government funding, hehe :-)
Loads and loads of it. :) /e extends his hand greedily.
Handy Solo
Starring on Sesame Street with an imaginary friend "Snuffy"?
/em seems confused
--
Chris Kasten
7six0393six
http://www.kasten-family.com/chris/
Don't you guys get tired to typing stuff after your name all the time?
Oh well, when in Rome...
SilverRaven
pleaded:
>con...@biosys.net (Big Bird) allegedly wrote:
>
>> Christopher Childs <chr...@dubba.net> wrote in message news:<Xns92BBE25C...@199.45.49.11>...
>>
>> > The problem is, I have no idea what I'm going to do. Nothing interests
>> > me. People already know me as a slacker, and I have no idea what
>> > direction I'm going to take in my life.
>>
>> Speaking as some apparently infinitely old 35-year-old, I am still not
>> sure what I want to do with my life. It seems at all times so far I've
>> always just done what seemed the most interesting to me. I guess
>> there's the choice between "easy" and "interesting" that you have to
>> make at some point: I have no quarrels putting in some real work if I
>> find the matter at hand interesting. But if I'm bored by something, I
>> might as well slack off.
>>
>> So I chose "interesting", turned my hobby into a profession and things
>> worked out miraculously...
>
>Starring on Sesame Street with an imaginary friend "Snuffy"?
You called him Snuffy cause you couldn't spell snuffalupagus.
Heh heh heh heh
--
SilverRaven
-
If I throw a stick, will you leave?
Easyprey
>
>
> It's one big happy dysfunctional thread. We can fix it, but we need
> government funding, hehe :-)
>
except weapons and pay raises for the rich!
--
Easyprey
A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right
not only to be right but also to be wrong."
-Thomas Szasz
Easyprey
>
>
> I saw two sizes of snowsuits when I last stopped by the secret ice
> hut, so unless you're polymorphing...
I never use the plase. Too many people know about it! It's just a ploy
too keep them from finding out where I am.
>
>
> Why not let the kids, parents and local school districts choose, and
> have a suggested reading list?
They do in some places. But it doesn't matter. The only people who get
involved in those thing are secret members of the thought police anyway.
The elections are all rigged you see.
> Most certainly.
Hunh?
Rich G.
Easyprey sneezed and it sounded like:
> Dalai Lama wrote:
>>
>>
>> It's one big happy dysfunctional thread. We can fix it, but we
>> need government funding, hehe :-)
>>
> With this goverment? I don't think they will be investing into
> anything except weapons and pay raises for Rich!
and I'm all for that. :)
*grin* 'specially the money bit. hehehe
Handy Solo
Well duh!
--
Chris Kasten
7six0393six
http://www.kasten-family.com/chris/
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not
for you
SilverRaven
pleaded:
>SilverRaven <NOSP...@silverraven.com> allegedly wrote:
>
>> While kneeling at the altar of the alt.* hierarchy, Handy Solo
>> pleaded:
>>
>> >con...@biosys.net (Big Bird) allegedly wrote:
>> >
>> >> Christopher Childs <chr...@dubba.net> wrote in message news:<Xns92BBE25C...@199.45.49.11>...
>> >>
>> >> > The problem is, I have no idea what I'm going to do. Nothing interests
>> >> > me. People already know me as a slacker, and I have no idea what
>> >> > direction I'm going to take in my life.
>> >>
>> >> Speaking as some apparently infinitely old 35-year-old, I am still not
>> >> sure what I want to do with my life. It seems at all times so far I've
>> >> always just done what seemed the most interesting to me. I guess
>> >> there's the choice between "easy" and "interesting" that you have to
>> >> make at some point: I have no quarrels putting in some real work if I
>> >> find the matter at hand interesting. But if I'm bored by something, I
>> >> might as well slack off.
>> >>
>> >> So I chose "interesting", turned my hobby into a profession and things
>> >> worked out miraculously...
>> >
>> >Starring on Sesame Street with an imaginary friend "Snuffy"?
>>
>> You called him Snuffy cause you couldn't spell snuffalupagus.
>>
>> Heh heh heh heh
>
>Well duh!
You know, you can take all the fun out of picking on you :(
--
SilverRaven
-
Ethernet: Something used to catch the EtherBunny.
Handy Solo
<>
> >> >Starring on Sesame Street with an imaginary friend "Snuffy"?
> >>
> >> You called him Snuffy cause you couldn't spell snuffalupagus.
> >>
> >> Heh heh heh heh
> >
> >Well duh!
>
> You know, you can take all the fun out of picking on you :(
Well D^h^h
yep. ;-)
--
Chris Kasten
7six0393six
http://www.kasten-family.com/chris/
If you drink, don't park; accidents cause people
SilverRaven
pleaded:
>SilverRaven <NOSP...@silverraven.com> allegedly wrote:
>
><>
>
>> >> >Starring on Sesame Street with an imaginary friend "Snuffy"?
>> >>
>> >> You called him Snuffy cause you couldn't spell snuffalupagus.
>> >>
>> >> Heh heh heh heh
>> >
>> >Well duh!
>>
>> You know, you can take all the fun out of picking on you :(
>
>Well D^h^h
>
>yep. ;-)
I am so going to hurt you. ;p
--
SilverRaven
-
Don't torture yourself...that's my job.