fifty frenchmen can't be wrong (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
some_stars) wrote2011-02-21 08:30 am
some_stars) wrote2011-02-21 08:30 am
books in HS (or the local equivalent)
So a couple discussions I've stumbled across recently got me curious about this--in your high school (or equivalent schooling that covers the mid-teens) English class(es)*, what books did you read, and about what year was it? Also, what kind of school did you go to? (Public/private/religious if you're in the U.S., any special programs, single-gender, etc.) Oh, and the city or region you were living in at the time, if you don't mind sharing. I'm very curious about the current state of the high school canon and how it's been evolving.
*poll only for people who took literature classes in English, since it is to satisfy my curiosity and I...don't know pretty much any non-English literature by name/reputation. Although I would be interested to hear about how the secondary-level education canon is or isn't shifting in other countries.
My list, all in Houston:
1. 8th grade, 98-99, public school with vanguard program: The Scarlet Letter, Twelfth Night, A Separate Peace, other stuff I don't remember
2. 9th grade, 99-00, private secular school on the IB curriculum(or pre-IB for first and second-year students): Julius Caesar, A Tale of Two Cities, other stuff I don't remember
3. 10th grade, 00-01, same: this was a weird year. We did Macbeth--and, for some reason, a boring translation of Antigone--but the rest was all ~cool~ modern-ish stuff. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Shoeless Joe, more along those veins that I can't remember. They had nothing in common except being from the sixties or later. It was fun, but kind of unsettling.
(This was a peculiar school, honestly, though mostly in awesome ways. It was so, so, so tiny--my would-have-been graduating class had about forty people--and with a K-12 program so a lot of kids had grown up there, and it specialized in international students so like a quarter of the kids had been in the U.S. for less than five years, and the whole culture was just really different from anything I'd ever encountered.)
There was definitely no 19th century stuff in 9th or 10th grade except some poetry. I would have been ridiculously bitter and sulky if I'd had to read something that bored me and I'd remember it.
...and then I quit school a couple months into 11th grade, so I never learned what the actual IB English curriculum is like. Or any high school curriculum. Hence, curiosity.
*poll only for people who took literature classes in English, since it is to satisfy my curiosity and I...don't know pretty much any non-English literature by name/reputation. Although I would be interested to hear about how the secondary-level education canon is or isn't shifting in other countries.
My list, all in Houston:
1. 8th grade, 98-99, public school with vanguard program: The Scarlet Letter, Twelfth Night, A Separate Peace, other stuff I don't remember
2. 9th grade, 99-00, private secular school on the IB curriculum(or pre-IB for first and second-year students): Julius Caesar, A Tale of Two Cities, other stuff I don't remember
3. 10th grade, 00-01, same: this was a weird year. We did Macbeth--and, for some reason, a boring translation of Antigone--but the rest was all ~cool~ modern-ish stuff. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Shoeless Joe, more along those veins that I can't remember. They had nothing in common except being from the sixties or later. It was fun, but kind of unsettling.
(This was a peculiar school, honestly, though mostly in awesome ways. It was so, so, so tiny--my would-have-been graduating class had about forty people--and with a K-12 program so a lot of kids had grown up there, and it specialized in international students so like a quarter of the kids had been in the U.S. for less than five years, and the whole culture was just really different from anything I'd ever encountered.)
There was definitely no 19th century stuff in 9th or 10th grade except some poetry. I would have been ridiculously bitter and sulky if I'd had to read something that bored me and I'd remember it.
...and then I quit school a couple months into 11th grade, so I never learned what the actual IB English curriculum is like. Or any high school curriculum. Hence, curiosity.