To want DD to actually read literature in literature lessons?

[buttonmoon78]

DD1 is in year 9. In English they are just starting Macbeth. Last Thursday she missed a lesson as she had a hospital appointment and this morning informed me that she'd missed some of the dvd they'd been watching. When I said it didn't matter as they'd be surely reading it she said no, they were just watching the dvd. I was a little bit .

I did Macbeth in year 7 - and we read it all. And this was in 1989/90 so not millenia ago.

What makes it worse is that her teacher said that they wouldn't read it because they wouldn't understand it. I mean, what? How to put a student off Shakespeare in one easy step!

AIBU or is this why the Daily Fail goes on about slipping standards in education?

No lequeen you didn't.

It's nothing personal, but if you are going to set yourself up as an expert in English language and worse, criticise others, you really ought to try harder.

And while you're at it you could watch your use of capital letters. And punctuation. And grammar.

I'm no expert either, as we've discussed. So when you stop pontificating, I'll stop pulling you up.

That's "continuum", LeQueen.

I was at secondary school from 1984/1989 and we didn't even touch on Shakespear!

As you can probably tell as I can't even spell his name.

It's not a typo with you lequeen. It's typical.

Anyway, rest assured I will be on hand to assist you, but only every now and then.

Frankly, limited I think, as parents, we can have very robust views on what our DC are learning in school, and what teachers in certain subjects should know withoiut some twat picking up on our spellings!!!!

We are not setting ourselves up as experts, we are having an opinion.

I am dyslexic. I also had a very very poor education. Does that mean you can try to belittle my views? Or try to undermine them with petty snipes?

Word. I'm with you, I want my children to have a better education than me because I haven't the foggiest what a pants meter (my phone did that) is. Actually I lie I have a foggy but only because of my own curiosity as an adult from threads like these. Am I not allowed to argue for their right to being taught English properly just because I wasn't? Surely it's the other way round.

I also want my children to have a better education than I received, in fact I've yet to meet anybody who received such appalling secondary schooling. I think it's very important that children are taught to read and interpret Shakespeare, as I said in my earlier post I didn't even touch on any of his work at school.

I do think some people get hung up about subjects that are taught in in the independent sector but not as widely in state schools. Latin for example is not taught in our local comp nor is it covered at the grammars in the neighbouring county. I'm not fussed about that, there are budget restrictions and more important subjects to cover, but I know from MN that lots of people see Latin as essential. There is an open learning course on Latin if people really want to study it.

Or is it, as it was for me 15 years ago, that there are good teachers and crap teachers and some of us got the rubbish ones.

Form, metre etc is all fundamental and taught at GCSE and A level and also further down the school-in every school I've ever taught in. I am quite devastated that in some schools it's not the case...I just can't imagine it. I can't imagine a HOD allowing it!

Of course we 'know' each other lequeen.

Are you trying to suggest we don't? In case you've forgotten, we had a friendly discussion about the reason why I learned never to boast about my so-called superior facility with the English language.

I told you that years ago I wrote a pompous why-oh-why? column about declining standards of English. My editor pinned it on the office wall with every single mistake circled in red pen. It was a painful but valuable lesson.

I said that you obviously had a great deal of knowledge about English literature and valid views on education but that they would carry more weight if you resisted the temptation to pretend to have knowledge that you don't have because then your howlers wouldn't matter.

That still stands.

word now you've read that this is not just nitpicking over spellings perhaps you might want to withdraw the word 'twat'.

Haziedoll - Shakespeare didn't spell his name Shakespeare so you haven't made a mistake. Spellings weren't definitive until well after he died - 18th Century, if I recall correctly? He signed his name in several different ways but oddly enough the one version he never used was the modern spelling... (although there's a caveat that judging someone's spelling on their signature is fraught with danger. Mine would be 'squiggle'.)

Nope. Sorry.
I think the word aptly desribes those who pick up typos/spelling errors/slips of grammar when they have nowt to do with the case in point.

And the point here is that teachers should bloody well know what metre is used (however it is spelled) and should not that middle english is not used. As I say, I am both dyslexic and badly ( school ) educated and I know that. There is no excuse from teachers of english literature.

Typo.

Yes, you keep stroking yourself with that word lequeen

Fuck me, the Frothing's taking over here too. :(

FWIW DD2 (Year 9 also) is doing Wuthering Heights. They have watched the film, twice. They have the book. She has read it.

They will not be reading it in class. Or as homework. Apparently, they will just study the characters and 'bits' of the text.

They've watched the film so obviously that'll do.

Good on your daughter for actually reading it SS.