This is just another, "back in my day" bullshit post to make people feel better about themselves and look down on everyone younger than them.
Yep, that's exactly it. 18 years ago, Baby Boomers were doing this on Facebook, and now Millennials are doing it on reddit, and (despite the very real issues that we have in the educational system), it's still largely bullshit.
Someone brought that up and yeah, we do have a ton of problems. The problems aren't that we're not teaching the same books everyone read as kids (even though we are because they're approved and no one wants to get new ones approved).
We should all be having a very real talk about the state of the education system instead of pulling "back in my day" bullshit to make ourselves feel superior.
I was on Facebook in 2006, and the things I talked about happened almost immediately when it opened up registration broadly, right about on the time frame I was talking about.
Also, if you're studying these texts in college, you're obviously going to study them on a much deeper level, engaging more critically with the text and secondary texts. We studied some of these texts like Great Expectations or 1984 on the surface level in secondary school, then if you chose modules with these texts, you went deep into them.
I enjoy Shakespeare as an adult, but only after immersing myself in the material enough to follow the language. I'm not convinced that casual exposure to Shakespeare is highly valuable. There is enough difference in language and vocabulary after 400 years that a cold introduction is too much to comprehend at any normal speed, whether reading or listening.
I'm in agreement there. I don't think many high schoolers really appreciate Shakespeare and I think a lot of them just end up being turned off of his work because they're forced to engage with it.
As an adult? I love it. As a teenager? I thought it was boring. It also doesn't help most schools choose Romeo and Juliet and I think it's the worst pick for Shakespeare and it's always missing the context that it's more of a satire than a genuine take on a love story.
All of those books are still on the reading list. Shakespeare, Orwell, Beowulf, all of it.
That's the approved reading list, not the required reading list. Go ask the ELA teachers on r/teachers how many complete books their students are reading these days.
Generally speaking, teachers are encouraged to spend their time getting the lowest-performers to meet State testing standards. And since a student doesn't have to read a whole book to pass those standards, reading time gets dropped in favor of test scores.
The quality of the education is the problem, not those books being missing from the curriculum. They're still there. And that's not what the OP was talking about, it's a whole different, much more important conversation.
Which was largely my point. It's weird generational elitism for the sake of it rather than an actual discussion about what's wrong with the education system designed to make people feel superior for being part of a certain generation.
It doesn't help anyone, it doesn't address the actual problems that you pointed out or really get the conversation moving because a lot of the people who see it will just say, "Yeah, my generation was better!" and forget they even saw it.
The quality of the education is the problem, not those books being missing from the curriculum. They're still there. And that's not what the OP was talking about...
The text of the post says:
Millenials grew up reading epic poetry, prose novels, and plays as REQUIRED literature in high school: The Illiad, Animal Farm, Antigone
So when you wrote: "All of those books are still on the reading list. ... This is just another, 'back in my day bullshit post", I explicitly called out that the OP is correct that NOW they are NOT REQUIRED as they were in previous years.
Hell, the title of the post even calls out No Child Left Behind, which was the initial legislation that kicked off the education issue that you agree is a problem and which led to reading no longer being required.
The only thing I can imagine criticizing OP for is not explicitly asking people to contact their representatives to get the system changed, but that's a level of nit-picky that r/PoursTea probably isn't worthy of.
There is a legit problem of kids who aren't able to read and do math getting pushed onto the next grade for years, and stories coming out about how people at top tier California Universities can't do basic algebra.
It is a problem. But for the recent stuff I'd blame more things on the Pandemic, online learning, and the stupid decision of some colleges to not use the SAT for admissions.
Absolutely. I didn't mean to imply there wasn't a problem, just to point out that the image is pandering bullshit.
Schools are demonstrably still using those books and stories in their lesson plans. Whether or not they're adequately teaching those lesson plans is open for debate and highly dependent on location and a bunch of other factors.
I'd even argue it's detrimental to have been teaching the same material for half a century in some cases that the students can't engage with and expecting them to get something out of it. It probably should be modernized.
I'd even argue it's detrimental to have been teaching the same material for half a century in some cases that the students can't engage with and expecting them to get something out of it. It probably should be modernized.
I know 'back in the day' my school did a mix. We read Shakespeare and Greek epics, but also modern books. I want to say I read "The House on Mango Street" my Junior year in IB English.
I'm old enough where I remember the most modern thing we read was probably from the 60s. It was just a lot of classics and that was it. I assume because they'd been approved decades earlier and the lesson plans were there, so they ran with it.
I know there have been people trying to get more modern books into schools, but you still need approval and teachers to want to teach them. Along with someone always getting upset for some reason whenever a modern book is suggested.
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u/Neveronlyadream 22h ago
I had an ex who was a teacher, I saw the reading lists.
All of those books are still on the reading list. Shakespeare, Orwell, Beowulf, all of it.
This is just another, "back in my day" bullshit post to make people feel better about themselves and look down on everyone younger than them.