• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Homer meets Generation Z

Why place such emphasis on classical literature? Certainly there is more culturally relevant stuff they could read?

I fear you're a philistine. But if you're genuinely interested, I've just Googled and seen some provocative answers to your question, and you should Google too.
 
I fear you're a philistine. But if you're genuinely interested, I've just Googled and seen some provocative answers to your question, and you should Google too.

I am not a philistine but I feel that putting such emphasis on classical literature is generally a waste, far more culturally important, far more relevant, or just better retellings of these stories exist. There are much better stories to help children think critically about these stories and society, they are certainly more entertaining. Keep some but I think the emphasis should be put on 20th, 19th, and 21st century literature. Maybe even step away a bit from fiction and introduce children to reading non-fiction.

I did Google and first two pages are nothing but definitions of classical literature.
 
I am not a philistine but I feel that putting such emphasis on classical literature is generally a waste, far more culturally important, far more relevant, or just better retellings of these stories exist. There are much better stories to help children think critically about these stories and society, they are certainly more entertaining. Keep some but I think the emphasis should be put on 20th, 19th, and 21st century literature. Maybe even step away a bit from fiction and introduce children to reading non-fiction.

I did Google and first two pages are nothing but definitions of classical literature.

A guy by the name of Allan Bloom wrote about the world view you express back in the 80s. He was spot on.

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency - the belief that the here and now is all there is.
Allan Bloom
 
A guy by the name of Allan Bloom wrote about the world view you express back in the 80s. He was spot on.

When did I advocate ignoring good books? I am just arguing that more modern (19th to 21st century) should have more emphasis as a better tool to teach critical thinking instead of seemingly putting so much emphasis on classical Greek literature. If you don't put any emphasis on modern classics you miss much of the relevant morals,culture, and critical thinking that they teach.

When I took English Slaughter-house Five and Animal Farm were far better at teaching lessons with than Shakespeare or the Greeks ever could be.
 
Last edited:
I am not a philistine but I feel that putting such emphasis on classical literature is generally a waste, far more culturally important, far more relevant, or just better retellings of these stories exist. There are much better stories to help children think critically about these stories and society, they are certainly more entertaining. Keep some but I think the emphasis should be put on 20th, 19th, and 21st century literature. Maybe even step away a bit from fiction and introduce children to reading non-fiction.

I did Google and first two pages are nothing but definitions of classical literature.

Must not have been a good query. I pulled mine up from my browser history, so here you go: why read classical literature - Google Search
 
I am not a philistine but I feel that putting such emphasis on classical literature is generally a waste....

Oh, exactly. So very much is wasteful--classical art, classical music.... :roll:
 
They only support my case, they all mention classics from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Well, then, there you go. :roll:

But why "allow" 19th and 20th-century lit either? Let's limit students' exposure to literature of the 21st century. It's already stood the test of time and created our own Trojan horses and Achilles heels. :lol:
 
Oh, exactly. So very much is wasteful--classical art, classical music.... :roll:

I have never said to not learn about them. Classical music doesn't end at Mozart. Would you advocate that the study of classical music should place little emphasis on anything after 1700s?
 
I have never said to not learn about them. Classical music doesn't end at Mozart. Would you advocate that the study of classical music should place little emphasis on anything after 1700s?

No, I'd say stop at Chopin and Debussy. :lamo
 
From the article:
Caprock Academy, an academically accelerated charter school in Grand Junction, Colo., has the generous policy of giving every student in literature classes new copies of every text studied. (In neighboring public schools, the books are typically loaned to students and must be returned unmarked.)

??? -- Is Generation Z being taught how to minimize the effectiveness of the education they're given?
  • When did US schools stop giving kids texts?
  • Who the hell doesn't use their text's margins for annotations? That's what textbook margins are for. Doing so was even portrayed in "Harry Potter" book.



    When a student reads a passage that inspires a thought, s/he scribbles a note in the margin and uses that note to form an appropriate question or as a rubric for entreating further input from the teacher, be it in or outside of class. Are there actually parents who don't teach their kids that jotting notes in margins is one way to remind oneself of one's thoughts, to say nothing of writing it abetting one's remembering in the first place?
    Aside:
    I didn't have a textbook that didn't have all sorts of notes in the margins. Indeed, looking at the annotations in my high school/college homework notebooks and textbooks, I can, even now recall what my line of thought was and what feedback my instructors gave when I brought my thoughts to their attention. How is one to learn if one doesn't make notes about one's own thoughts and, in turn, solicit guidance about the nature and extent of their legitimacy?​

    When the school year is done, one puts one's texts on a shelf, and they form the second phase of one's library, the first being the "basic" books one read as a kindergartener, first, second, third, fourth grader and so on. When one has kids of one's own, one grabs the first books s/he read (or that one's parents read to him/her) off the shelf and reads them to one's own kids and later, directs ones kids to read them.

    y2yfkxnk



    OMG!!! When I wrote the above, I had only read to the closing paren of the sentences I pasted into this post. I returned to the rubric article and what did I find there? This: "The intent is that Caprock students, many of whom could not otherwise afford to buy the books, begin to build their own personal libraries of great literature and become lifelong readers. The policy also enables students to annotate the texts." And, yes, Mother Goose is great literature. It's great literature for very young readers, but great literature nonetheless.

I’ve overheard students bragging about how much time they devote to video games — one 17-year-old proudly calculated that he’d spent two years of his life playing one single game. Unsurprisingly, this student barely graduated from high school, despite being a conspicuously bright young man. How his parents couldn’t see that he was addicted to video games and intervene, I’ll never know.
I'm with Butcher there.
  • What kind of lame-ass parent disregards such behavior?
  • Have we created a society comprised of "conspicuously bright" people whose intellects are woefully underdeveloped as a result of perfunctory parenting?
  • Are such phenomena/trends, and similar insouciance toward mental mentoring, what elicits people who hold and utter notions like "the sound of windmills causes cancer?"
I don't know, but I know having been a single parent who worked mostly in a different country from the one in which my kids attended school, even I would have noticed my kids' misplaced focus and inapt asset allocation such as that described above. If the physical detachment my circumstances challenged me with in keeping apprised of my kids' comportment didn't keep me from being able to do so, there can be no excuse for such behavior and eliding collocated parents' notice.

Are there truly parents who abdicate their parental role to "the system," thinking they need only feed, shelter and clothe their kids, and "the system" will do the rest? "The system" was never meant nor designed to replace parents; moreover, it cannot, no matter how hard its practitioners try.


Very few high-school freshmen can grasp Homer’s depth or appreciate the scale and intricacy of his work....However, if one can bring them close enough to see a little bit of the reef clearly, then the hope is that one day they will return, older and wiser, with a clearer mask, and see the whole reef in its full majesty.

One hopes...Yet much we hear from modern interlocutors suggests few of them ever have transcended their adolescent comprehension of Homer's themes. Perhaps if they'd kept their annotated texts they would have had a better shot at doing so....
 
Back
Top Bottom