I value literature, but a lot of people don't. It's expected that people don't know Dickens. Move along.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Played Trivial Pursuit with some friends the other night and one (a 4th grade teacher) had no idea who wrote Great Expectations. I consider this essential knowledge, not trivia, especially for an educator. This person has a masters degree (in elementary education, I assume) and has 20 years of experience. Is there really any excuse for this?

Ridiculous. I could have told you Charles Dickens wrote Tale of Two Cities, but I've never read Great Expectations and don't even know what it was about. And I have a PhD. In literature. It's just not the important piece of information you seem to think it is.

This is like knowing that New York is in the US, but not knowing that Miami is too or Chicago or LA or DC. Why bother knowing anything about Dickens then. Ridiculous indeed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Played Trivial Pursuit with some friends the other night and one (a 4th grade teacher) had no idea who wrote Great Expectations. I consider this essential knowledge, not trivia, especially for an educator. This person has a masters degree (in elementary education, I assume) and has 20 years of experience. Is there really any excuse for this?

Ridiculous. I could have told you Charles Dickens wrote Tale of Two Cities, but I've never read Great Expectations and don't even know what it was about. And I have a PhD. In literature. It's just not the important piece of information you seem to think it is.

I found what you just said sad. This is, to the rest of the world, one of the better know Dickens' work. It just shows that the English department is full of the postmodern blah blah and no one is well versed in classic literature anymore.

This really struck my funny bone. I imagine Charles Dickens would have viewed classic literature as Ovid, Virgil, Homer, etc. Dickens's works would almost certainly have been viewed as frivolous.

Don't get me wrong, I think students should have exposure to Dickens (not necessarily Great Expectations).

Moreover, I'm not a huge fan of modern literature. I agree to much emphasis is put on it in schools today because they want it to be relevant to the kids. I was especially irked when throughout middle school most of the literature my kids read for school were depressing books with a main character (sometimes a child) dying. Death is not necessarily a requirement for literary merit and I don't know how they expect kids to get excited about reading if that's fed to them. If my kids hadn't already been big readers, I expect it would have turned them off.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Played Trivial Pursuit with some friends the other night and one (a 4th grade teacher) had no idea who wrote Great Expectations. I consider this essential knowledge, not trivia, especially for an educator. This person has a masters degree (in elementary education, I assume) and has 20 years of experience. Is there really any excuse for this?

Ridiculous. I could have told you Charles Dickens wrote Tale of Two Cities, but I've never read Great Expectations and don't even know what it was about. And I have a PhD. In literature. It's just not the important piece of information you seem to think it is.

I found what you just said sad. This is, to the rest of the world, one of the better know Dickens' work. It just shows that the English department is full of the postmodern blah blah and no one is well versed in classic literature anymore.

Anonymous wrote:Played Trivial Pursuit with some friends the other night and one (a 4th grade teacher) had no idea who wrote Great Expectations. I consider this essential knowledge, not trivia, especially for an educator. This person has a masters degree (in elementary education, I assume) and has 20 years of experience. Is there really any excuse for this?

Ridiculous. I could have told you Charles Dickens wrote Tale of Two Cities, but I've never read Great Expectations and don't even know what it was about. And I have a PhD. In literature. It's just not the important piece of information you seem to think it is.

Anonymous wrote:I'm the PP with an English degree who'd never read GE. I just finished it. AMAZING BOOK!! I'd forgotten how much I love literature. The story had everything...action, love, regret, horror...wow.

Thanks so much to the poster who enticed me with her description of Miss Havisham (even though there was a tiny 150-year-old spoiler).

Congratulations! You are now qualified to teach 9 year olds!

I'm the PP with an English degree who'd never read GE. I just finished it. AMAZING BOOK!! I'd forgotten how much I love literature. The story had everything...action, love, regret, horror...wow.

Thanks so much to the poster who enticed me with her description of Miss Havisham (even though there was a tiny 150-year-old spoiler).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is Brit Lit a required course in HS and college?

It was a required high school course in Texas when I was growing up. Junior year was a survey of American literature, Senior year was a survey of British literature. We read Great Expectations in the 9th grade. (I don't recall any mention of Dickens in college).

I am so grateful for this comprehensive, systematic approach to literature. We were able to follow the development of literature (and language) from Beowulf to modern literature. We were taught enough history to put the literature into context. I feel like my kids in MCPS have really missed out by having a haphazard approach to literature.

Incidentally, I'm one of the ones who thinks we need to give the teacher a break. While I know who wrote Great Expectations, I don't think it qualifies as required knowledge.

If America has a "canon", I would love to see it. I think the debate over common core illustrates the problem America has on agreeing what topics are necessary for our kids. Further, while I haven't searched the common core requirements for Great Expectations, my understanding is that they generally de-emphasize literature in favor of non-fiction. This would lead me to think that Great Expectations will be less likely to be taught in the future. In fact, as near as I can tell, the only required author is Shakespeare.

"America" doesn't "have" a canon. One country doesn't decide upon which works of literature are associated with the Western canon.

Anonymous wrote:

If America has a "canon", I would love to see it. I think the debate over common core illustrates the problem America has on agreeing what topics are necessary for our kids. Further, while I haven't searched the common core requirements for Great Expectations, my understanding is that they generally de-emphasize literature in favor of non-fiction. This would lead me to think that Great Expectations will be less likely to be taught in the future. In fact, as near as I can tell, the only required author is Shakespeare.

It was hard enough getting people in many different states to agree on common standards for math and the BASICS of reading and writing. I can't imagine we will ever have common core standards as to what kids should actually read, or learn about in politically charged subjects such as science and history.
There are text exemplars that are suggested, but not required.

Literature is not deemphasized, but the expectation is that students will also be reading critically in non literature classes. So text exemplars include lots of informational text in math, science, and technical subjects.


Common Core State Standards is not a curriculum, so it doesn't set out a body of literature that all students should read.

Core Knowledge DID did do that, but Core Knowledge WAS a curriculum and has nothing to do with Common Core. http://coreknowledge.org/curriculum-series

I think Core Knowledge is great, personally, as a curriculum, but when you consider how much backlash there has been against just all adopting the same math and reading and writing *standards*, imagine how much backlash there would be if states were all told to adopt the same curriculum, read the same books, learn the same version of history... and science!! Can you imagine people being told to teach the same set of facts? The country would have a conniption fit. Never ever going to happen. We can't even agree that kids should learn fractions.