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 _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l