Teaching 11 Regents, Shakespeare, AP Language & Composition

Thank you so much, ANTHONY!!  At first I groaned:  25 pages on math?  Shoot me now!  But then, since I respect your taste in writing, I had to at least sample it.  Whew.  It blew me away.  Here are two sentences that deserve to join our discussion about the goals of a true education:

“There is surely no more reliable way to kill enthusiasm and interest in a subject than to make it a mandatory part of the school curriculum.   Include it as a major component of standardized testing and you virtually guarantee that the education establishment will suck the life out of it.”

Them’s fighting words, all right!  I can hear both John Holt and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the background applauding Lockhart’s sentiments.  We simply have to return to this topic and wrestle our way to consensus:  what ARE the goals of a true education?

Listen to this four-minute reading by the famous Science Fiction/Fantasy author . . . a modern-day Swift.  Click on mp3 to play, or you can download it.

See this color-coded rhetorical analysis of Dr. King’s letter.  If you have a color copier, print it out & bring in.

Watch this video, then decide.

The first one, Ch. 22 p. 191, talks about Charles’s uncle’s summons of him to visit him at the family manor. The passage is filled with foreshadowing and, looking back on it, with a fair amount of irony. However, his word choices and descriptions of details really reveal much about Charles, as well as the author. Especially noteworthy are some of the vibrant adjectives the author uses.

The second one, Ch. 48 p. 360, begins the conversation Charles has with himself in the church. It reveals much of the self-doubt and other emotions that have been raging within Charles ever since he met Sarah. The most important part is the self-conflict going on inside Charles, and the author enhances the effect with the symbol he uses to describe his various persona.

The first one, Ch. 22 p. 191, talks about Charles’s uncle’s summons of him to visit him at the family manor. The passage is filled with foreshadowing and, looking back on it, with a fair amount of irony. However, his word choices and descriptions of details really reveal much about Charles, as well as the author. Especially noteworthy are some of the vibrant adjectives the author uses.

The second one, Ch. 48 p. 360, begins the conversation Charles has with himself in the church. It reveals much of the self-doubt and other emotions that have been raging within Charles ever since he met Sarah. The most important part is the self-conflict going on inside Charles, and the author enhances the effect with the symbol he uses to describe his various persona.

In the February 26th New York Review of Books, Zadie Smith, a biracial British woman and author most recently of On Beauty, discusses the multitude of voices which President Obama accesses in his writing.  Her piece, “Speaking in Tongues ,” is well worth a read.

In the February 26th New York Review of Books, Zadie Smith, a biracial British woman and author most recently of On Beauty, discusses the multitude of voices which President Obama accesses in his writing.  Her piece, “Speaking in Tongues ,” is well worth a read.

Shalini, a former Lang student, dropped me a line with this link.  It’s full of surprises about what is still–technically–colloquial language, even when it appears in the Times.  Check it out!  (Or is that colloquial?)

Write a response in which you support, refute, or qualify Prose’s claim:  that far too often, high school English teachers fail to give their students an appreciation for and an understanding of the best literature by either selecting poor works for students to read, or neglecting close reading skills in favor of bland lessons in morality, or both.

Include a specific example or two–in terms of books or instruction, not teacher names–from your own high school experience with literature instruction.

Due by midnight Tuesday.