Creative writing - NLCS v HABS v SAHS v Channing v SHHS

[silverysea]

Wow I am learning such a lot - I left the US many years ago after attending what would be called sink schools here. I got very high scores on US sats (no one ever studied for them then) from lots of reading and some basic grammar lessons, lower level than DD2 s 11plus material. We got clear instructions on how to write factual essays, with proper references footnotes etc. most students ignored these instructions and smoked dope as far as I can see.

Mostly I am filled with admiration for the uk system i am experiencing thru my dds but I expect a nice middle class usa school might be similar nowadays.

My one bugbear is how they make kids here hate French. We loved foreign language- only the privileged more able readers were let start in my school. It was so fun with wine (kool aid) and French cheese parties, units on chateaux etc. both DDs moan endlessly about learning genders by rote for words they don't know the meaning of, or the Days of the Week, again, five years on. The Paris trip that previously happened in y 8 was cancelled-to add insult to injury they had to write an account of the trip they didn't get! The teacher at parents evening suggested we use flash cards to help with language study. That's pretty much it. I can dream up my own schemes to interest them, I guess. Maybe it doesn't matter...

[Kingfisher]

With exams board reintroducing closed book exams, there is no way that any child could get away with not knowing the entire text in detail. This is only really possible for Controlled Assessment tasks which might focus on a specific chapter and how mood and atmosphere or character is created in that section, for example. To do that on the whole text would be impossible.

There is so much that needs to be covered in the time allocated; in most schools departments are given as much time as other GCSE subjects when teachers are trying to teach 2 separate GCSES and everything is such a rush. I would suggest that this might be why your son was taught in the way he was, CarpeDiem. And of course there is the reality that in some schools there are students are have very poor reading skills. In the past I have taught 16 year olds with a reading age of 7 because of severe special needs; these students cannot read long sections of text.

This is clearly not the case in the aforementioned schools and I have been delighted with the text choices at my DD's school. She is now writing at the most amazing level after only a few months of superb teaching.

[Yummiemummie]

It sounds like there is a huge disparity in how the subject is approached and in the pressure that teachers are feeling to teach to the test. I was really surprised that some pupils are not being asked to read the entire text they are studying.
Shootmenow- my year 7 child studied Beowulf in English, so it can be done!

[Kingfisher]

Beowulf is a very long poem from the Anglo-Saxon period. The language bears very little relation to modern English. I know because I studied the whole of it at Uni.

I offer an example:

Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum

The version studied in schools is a retelling of the story for children and not a full translation of the original as this would still be too complex and not interesting for most of the population. Studying Beowulf this way is like studying an abridged version of Great Expectations; much is lost apart from plot and surely this was the original complaint. Heaney's translation of Beowulf is splendid, but not for anyone below A level. As Amber has already mentioned, this is too difficult for most children.

As for the Canterbury Tales; do you know how rude and bawdy these are? Everyone is getting off with everyone else behind other people's backs, there are numerous mentions of private parts and so on. Again, I studied the complete text at Uni. At A Level the prologue is studied or one tale is selected - the Pardoner's Tale, for example, but even that is very rude, with references to genitalia and so on. I taught this last Year to Year 13.

The language is complex and out of the reach of students below 6th form.
An example:

I rede that oure Hoost heere shal bigynne,
For he is moost envoluped in synne.
Com forth, sire Hoost, and offre first anon,
And thou shalt kisse my relikes everychon,
Ye, for a grote! unbokele anon thy purs.'
"Nay, nay," quod he, "thanne have I Cristes curs!
Lat be," quod he, "it shal nat be, so theech,
Thou woldest make me kisse thyn olde breech,
And swere it were a relyk of a seint,
Though it were with thy fundement depeint.
But by the croys which that Seint Eleyne fond,
I wolde I hadde thy coillons in myn hond
In stide of relikes or of seintuarie.
Lat kutte hem of, I wol thee helpe hem carie;
They shul be shryned in an hogges toord."

These are not sensible suggestions.

[Amber]

Chaucer can be great fun though- some of those tales have a wonderful bawdiness and sometimes downright coarseness which appeals to teenagers, who might otherwise labour under the illusion that their generation invented s ex. Shame that has gone IMHO.

[Kingfisher]

Chaucer can be great fun though- some of those tales have a wonderful bawdiness and sometimes downright coarseness which appeals to teenagers, who might otherwise labour under the illusion that their generation invented s ex. Shame that has gone IMHO.

Of course; but for the older ones. Would YOU want to deal with pubic hair mistaken for a beard?!

[Amber]

I think sadly the idea of pubic hair mistaken for anything is about to be lost. More likely to be mistaken for a 5 O clock shadow from what I gather these days.