Reply to APS - 10th Grade English

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Did anyone go to Back To School Night last night at APS?  My child's 10th-grade English class back-to-school night was a little surprising.  Yes, it is an English class, but all lessons are focused on global communities, absolute power, and reading options based on POC struggles, etc...  There was a BLM fist in the presentation.  I had to reconfirm that the class was actually English, and not an elective or sociology.  A parent asked if this was the same for all Arlington 10th-grade English classes, and the response was yes.

Am I the only one concerned that English classes are now being hijacked to push social justice?  Not complaining about social justice per se, but seems like this really distracts from what most people think a student should learn in a traditional English class.  I am not a Younkin supporter, but I do feel this is over the top.
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What should a student learn in a traditional English class? I went to a terrible, underfunded, majority white (rural New England) public school in the 1980s, but we still read To Kill A Mockingbird, A Raisin In The Sun, The Pearl, The Grapes of Wrath, The Outsiders, The Crucible, Fahrenheit 451, Huckleberry Finn, The Scarlet Letter, Of Mice and Men, Lord of the Flies, and the Great Gatsby. Seems like kids today are just reading about the same themes with more modern/diverse characters and new authors, but many of the books I see on these lists are still award-winning, best-selling books that will be classics the The Kite Runner, Never Let Me Go, and The Color Purple. [/quote]

I, for one, don't mind the literature lists being updated to incorporate more modern and culturally diverse authors.  I DO mind doing this at the expense of traditional, "classic" literature.  I DO mind kids reading Shakespeare or Beowulf, etc. in modern vernacular rather than the old language.  Why do I mind these things?  Because I believe strongly that learning literature from the past - even if they have similar themes to today's modern literary works - greatly enhances the learning and understanding of history, the development of language and vocabulary, the evolution of social thought and customs, etc.  I also find it very disappointing that students are only required to read selected parts of these traditional works.  Why?  Because it limits the education.  It takes away from the full context and understanding of the author's message, technique, style, place in literature to only study parts of works and not the full context.  It shortchanges our students' education.  Ignorance of history lends itself to repeating of history; whereas knowledge and understanding increases the likelihood of not repeating and of continuing to evolve.
I don't expect everyone to read Cyrano de Bergerac in its original French; but when you translate things like Shakespeare and epic poems from English to updated English, you lose a great deal in the way of word use, euphemisms, references, poetic rhythm, rhyme, etc.[/quote]

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