AP English teacher never read Orwell?

[Anonymous]

Warning: useless thread on a minor point:

We live outside the DC area. Yesterday the 11th grade AP Language teacher asked my son’s class for book recommendations for her next year’s 9th grade regular English class. My son suggested “Animal Farm,” which he loved, and then the teacher told his class that she had never read any George Orwell.

Maybe I’m out of touch, but I’m finding this such a wild thing for a high school English teacher to admit. She’s in her 30s, if that matters. But I thought everyone winds up reading Animal Farm or 1984 in high school, and then surely you’d read something or other by Orwell if you were an English major, or else during your career as a high school English teacher?

[Anonymous]

I think this is a bizarre thing to be upset about.

[Anonymous]

OMG. I would go into conniptions. I'm a scientist, but literature is very important. It's the cornerstone of our common cultural experience (and I say this as a foreigner).

I hope you're making this up, OP.

[Anonymous]

Everyone is going to have some gaps in what they've read, but Orwell is a weird one for someone who teaches high school English, yeah.

[Anonymous]

She probably was an education major NOT an English major.

[Anonymous]

I think it's more weird to proactively state that you haven't read it than to actually have not read it. Why not just not mention that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She probably was an education major NOT an English major.

Not if she's certified to teach in a public HS. That's not how education certification works in this country,

[Anonymous]

She was probably hoping for some "new" suggestions.
I had a list of books to check out for my elementary age kids and NONE of them were at the public library. The children's librarian said, and I am not making this up, "We try to stick to 21st-century books here."

[Anonymous]

I worry about what's happening to education in this country as older teachers retire. I worked in elementary schools, and many of the teachers can't even spell. I won't even get into the grammar mistakes.... It's embarrassing.

[Anonymous]

Animal Farm is such a short, easy read, too! Weird.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She was probably hoping for some "new" suggestions.
I had a list of books to check out for my elementary age kids and NONE of them were at the public library. The children's librarian said, and I am not making this up, "We try to stick to 21st-century books here."

That's just horribly sad. I'm assuming it's because classics - even children's classics - contain racist and misogynist language and the library doesn't want to fight people who don't understand that they still need to be read, because:
A. Apart from that, they usually have much richer vocabulary and more grammatical and sentence structure complexity, which is great for brain development.
B. They teach about bygone eras. History is always good to learn about, because that context helps to understand the modern world.
C. Passages and comments that are inappropriate must not be avoided, but explained by librarians and parents, in order for children not to grow up in vacuums that will then make them easy prey for our current crop of misogynists and xenophobes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She was probably hoping for some "new" suggestions.
I had a list of books to check out for my elementary age kids and NONE of them were at the public library. The children's librarian said, and I am not making this up, "We try to stick to 21st-century books here."

That's just horribly sad. I'm assuming it's because classics - even children's classics - contain racist and misogynist language and the library doesn't want to fight people who don't understand that they still need to be read, because:
A. Apart from that, they usually have much richer vocabulary and more grammatical and sentence structure complexity, which is great for brain development.
B. They teach about bygone eras. History is always good to learn about, because that context helps to understand the modern world.
C. Passages and comments that are inappropriate must not be avoided, but explained by librarians and parents, in order for children not to grow up in vacuums that will then make them easy prey for our current crop of misogynists and xenophobes.

There was zero racist misogynist language in any of the books I was looking for. I'm talking about "Dear Mr. Henshaw" by Beverly Cleary. Stuff like that.

[Anonymous]

I used the phrase “Ergo . . .” in a group chat at work, and neither of the two twenty-something’s on our team were familiar with the word at all. General literacy amongst young people is on a steep decline.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She probably was an education major NOT an English major.

Not if she's certified to teach in a public HS. That's not how education certification works in this country,

Actually, it is. I'm a certified math teacher but I wasn't a math major. Some states require you to major in the subject you teach (Maryland), but many do not (virginia), and once you have a license in one state it's relatively easy to transfer to another. I could transfer my license to Maryland with reciprocity and not have a math degree.

[Anonymous]

I read a lot of books in high school and college, but I've never read animal farm or 1984 either.

This really wouldn't bother me. Presumably she's read plenty of other books with big themes.