the stuff we read aint perfect, but imagine hs english now

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5820902&forum_id=2#49581980)

The only thing I took away from Ethan Frome was "wtf - why would they try to kill themselves by sledding? how stupid are these people that they thought this would work?"

What was the point of the average kids being forced to read this shit?

Wouldn't a Michael Chricton book capture their attention 10x more and present dramatic themes and philosophy in a much more understandable way?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5820902&forum_id=2#49582022)

And I'm sure your grades (and subsequent academic success) reflected this reality.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5820902&forum_id=2#49582333)

their teachers surely fuck up the discourse but mere exposure is at least a lifeline to the few intellects worth salvaging. the remaining 99% are just in virtual daycare anyways.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5820902&forum_id=2#49582078)

- the beneficial RIGOR of latin and greek grammar

the claim is that somehow the mere act of wrestling with strange grammatical inflections is itself a moral and intellectual discipline of sorts. there are plenty of other highly inflected languages other than latin and greek, and still many more with mind-bending grammar, if that's the goal. latin and greek are not unique grammatically. and anyway, greek and latin grammar are not sleek elegant internally coherent systems. they were messy languages spoken by real people and there are much more suitable subjects for training the mind. a tangential point, but approaching latin & greek by brute forcing grammatical "rigor" is poor pedagogy that puts already challenging languages completely out of a student's reach.

- to access pillars of western civilization in the original

while certainly a worthy goal, a vanishingly small number of high school students who study latin in high school engage with its literature at a meaningful level. so few kids learn greek, let alone master it, that it's not even part of the real conversation.

learning any language well, let alone latin and greek, requires some intelligence, but also desire and a massive time commitment that cannot be mandated into existence. schools cannot require the kind of seat time required for sufficient mastery of these tongues, and in absence of that, they cannot supply the motivation. forcing latin and greek on a million high school students every year with an average iq of 100 is burning an enormous amount of educational time and resources for something, that for nearly every student, never had a chance of working.

the dirty secret of classics is that most classics professors at the best schools themselves read these languages very haltingly, due in great part to the pedagogical practices mentioned earlier.

i am all for teaching these languages to bright and motivated law teens, but it cannot take place in the current system.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5820902&forum_id=2#49582749)

id have paul valery monsieur teste and the remains of the day

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5820902&forum_id=2#49582070)

in open session

and tell them the books they are going to require for each class

and why

before every school year, perhaps before every semester

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5820902&forum_id=2#49582254)

like why the fuck would I read something like that instead of just watching a tv show or something.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5820902&forum_id=2#49582758)