Jan Coffey wrote:
>
> --- Jon Gabriel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > >From: Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > >Reply-To: Killer Bs Discussion <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > >To: Killer Bs Discussion <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > >Subject: Re: _Politics,_was_[L3]_Re:_fight_the_evil_of
> > _pricediscrimination
> > >Date: Thu, 07 Aug 2003 09:13:49 -0500
> > >
> > >Jan Coffey wrote:
> > > >
> > > > --- Doug Pensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > > > Then there is the matter of accidents.
> > > >
> > > > Simple solution, teach a class in gun safty in school. Replace the 10th
> >
> > >11th
> > > > or 12th year of "english" those clases are a waste.
> > >
> > >1) I didn't consider any of those classes I took those years to be a
> > >"waste", personally.
> >
> > Neither do I. In fact, the foundation of writing skills and language
> > analysis they established probably allow me to do my job effectively.
> >
> > An observation: Just because a required class may not help you personally
> > doesn't mean it's worthless. For example, I may never use the trigonometry
> >
> > that I learned about in HS in my daily life, but it's essential to
> > everything from construction to chemistry.
> >
>
> I wasn't saying to do away with all 3 years, just one. Besides no one made
> you take 12 years of triginomotry, or 12 years of art history. or 12 years of
> colour theory.
>
> Why do you think that 12 years of english is necisary? Did you really learn
> anything in 10th,11th or 12th grade you didn't already know in 9th?
>
> The only difference in these classes was the publisher of the book, and the
> words on the spelling tests. Granted for me, the spelling tests were like
> automatic Fs due to my genetics, which I did find teribly unfair. But still,
> for everyone else the rest of the information was 3 years of re-run. How many
> times can you be tought to diagram a sentence before you just don't care
> anymore. How many times can you go around a class reading shakespear aloud?
> Is it really necisary to subject students to Beowofe 3 years in a row? How
> many compare-contrast papers can one write?
I'm sorry that's how your high school English classes went.
I was studying very different things in 10th, 11th and 12th grades.
10th: Writing for half the year, followed the second half of the year
by a course on writing research papers, a skill I hadn't quite got down
pat -- but after that class, I did *very* well on research papers in
college.
11th: English was combined with American History in an honors course
that met for 2 periods a day. So everything we turned in was graded on
content by the history teacher, and on English by the English teacher.
Plus there were a lot of group projects; I learned a lot about working
in a group, one of my weak points then. I drew on skills learned in
that class very heavily in a couple of classes in college, most notably
a *fun* course offered in the English department at UT one semester,
"Artificial Intelligences in Literature". (Hey, _Neuromancer_ was on
the required reading list. How cool is *that*?)
12th: A full year course "Themes in Literature" where we did all that
compare/contrast stuff, but I honed my skills in writing papers, which
helped in college courses later on. *Plus* I took a half-year course in
"Speech and Communication", which at least got me over the panic I'd
been feeling for the past year when it was apparent that there was no
way I *wouldn't* be valedictorian. And I got exposed to a number of
cool things in that course that I wouldn't have otherwise been exposed
to, by other students picking topics interesting to them for various
assignments.
So, it wasn't 3 years of the same old thing for me, it was a lot of
variety. After fulfilling basic freshman English requirements in
college, I went for some eclectic courses *there*, as well.
Julia
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