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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As an example - how many MCPS students read classic literature for English?  I remember reading the Odyssey and the Tempest in 7th grade. For the Tempest, we had a fieldtrip after we finished the play to watch a production of it at Arena Stage. I think for all of us, it was our first experience watching a play.[/quote]

Is classic lit not part of MCPS MS English?[/quote]

Well, define "classic". You can click on this link: http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/english/middle/grade7/ and then click on the individual units to find the lists of reading choices.

For the Odyssey, do you remember the part in the Odyssey where Odysseus tells Telemachus to go hack the bondswomen into pieces with his sword, and Telemachus says no, that's too good for them, so after they make the bondswomen clean up the mess from killing the suitors, they take the bondswomen into the courtyard and hang them?

[i]"Sobbing desperately, the girls came, weeping, clutching at each other. They carried out the bodies of the dead and piled them up on top of one another, under the roof outside. Odysseus instructed them and forced them to continue. And then they cleaned his lovely chairs and tables with wet absorbent sponges, while the prince and herdsmen with their shovels scraped away the mess to make the sturdy floor all clean. The girls picked up the trash and took it out. The men created order in the house and set it all to rights, then led the girls outside and trapped them - they could not escape - between the courtyard wall and the rotunda.

Showing initiative, Telemachus insisted, "I refuse to grant these girls a clean death, since they poured down shame on me and Mother, when they lay beside the suitors."

At that, he wound a piece of sailor's rope round the rotunda and round the mighty pillar, stretched up so high no foot could touch the ground. As doves or thrushes spread their wings to fly home to their nests, but someone sets a trap -- they crash into a net, a bitter bedtime; just so the girls, their heads all in a row, were strung up with the noose around their necks to make their death an agony. They gasped, feet twitching for a while, but not for long."[/i]

And then they rip off a man's genitals and feed them to the dogs. Just the thing for 12-year-olds!

If I were going to pick a Shakespeare play to assign to seventh-graders, it wouldn't be The Tempest.

[/quote]

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