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Joined: Jan 2002
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526 |
"The book. Oh, heaven, save us, the book! There were some fine examples of literature, but the short stories from other nations? Thin. Very. Infantile language. Too obvious moral points being made."
I'm a strong relativist, but one observation I've made is the tendency among the more shallow relativists to insist that somehow all cultures are equal or have made or are capable of making equal contributions. So any inane drivel is just as artistic as Shakespeare, any ignorant diatribe is just as important as Plato, any loose fancy is as important as Newton or Archimedes.
What a condescending bunch of yahoos it is who serves up a splatter of thin gruel and calls it dinner. I think some of these people through religious conviction that all cultures are equivalent assert that anything anyone has to say in those cultures is somehow equivalent - completely oblivious (even if one buys in to the current slogans that all are equal) that they don't share all of the same strengths. Discernment is equated with bigotry and ethnocentrism, judgement with prejudice.
k
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Joined: Sep 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296 |
For the record, I have learned that our county is culling out the anthology in question, thank goodness. The course built around that anthology is not being taught in all high schools, according to one English teacher with whom I spoke about the course.
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Joined: Jan 2002
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That's good.
Here's an idea, though, and it may be a lot more work than it's worth. I guess I thought you were mainly a music teacher, so maybe the teaching language business is a sideline and this is a little much to do for a sideline, but it's an idea.
When I was teaching advanced fortran in college, the book was really, really bad. In the advanced class one learned a lot of stuff, algorithms, methodologies, but also a lot of machine and compiler dependent stuff. Unfortunately, the textbook they were using was out of date - even on the old computer they had just ditched. The text was $80 (really a lot in those days when the average book was $20 to $30). I told the students they shouldn't buy it (this is an abbreviated version of this story). Instead I taught from my own notes that I culled from 1) my own texts and 2) my own coding experiences.
So if you have an interest in this sort of thing, you might consider going beyond the textbook, trying to find things that you personally enjoy. The web will surely make this a lot easier to look into. If you get sucked into doing that thing again, you'll have some broader base to draw upon. Anyway, that's what you could do if you had a lot of extra time on your hands and didn't have a different career in music to keep you occupied.
k
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