DDs teacher giving serious misinformation WWYD?

[phantomnamechanger]

How to deal with this please......

DD has recently got a new English teacher. They are reading Pride & Prejudice (just started). Today in the lesson, the teacher has on several occasions referred to it being set in "the Victorian era"
that's a massive error to make, right? how do we point this out? DD was like when she told me, but there will be other kids who believe the teacher and for whom that will stick.
DD did not want to correct the teacher for fear of being reprimanded/thought rude.
WWYD?

Don't know it (though I like the sound of Antigone lost in Austen).

Mr Collins eh? Yikes.

Colonel Brandon is my Austen hero of choice.

Didn't it have Gemma Arterton in it? I enjoyed it

I'm glad I'm not the only person who doesn't like Austen. She's so lifeless compared to say Smollet or Fielding or Dickens or Thackeray. It's all the same story basically.

The only one I like is Northanger Abbey which is the one the Janeites hate as it's not Janey enough much as Dickens' fans dislike A Tale of two Cities for not being Dickensian.

Apologies if I've posted this twice.

So Death Comes to Pemberley has been made into a TV series? I wonder if we will get to see it in the States. I haven't read the book, although I am a huge PD James fan.

Well, I am a Janeite who loves NA. Loathe Dickens.

I couldn't read, 'Death Comes to Pemberley." Thought it was awful.

Don't mind Jane Eyre. Tess of the D'urbervilles makes me want to slit my wrists. Silas Marner is enjoyable.

The bits with Rochester in are brilliant - the rest = soul destroyingly boring.

I like epistolary novels.

Jane Eyre,the person rather than the book, is terrifically dull.

My favourite fictional character is Tom Jones. I always see him as a young Keanu Reeves, very pretty, very likeable and dim.

Yes, it was on the beeb, scone.

I haven't read the book though.

I don't think I like novels much. I read modern novels but I can't be doing with anything from before about Dorothy Sayers' time.

The architecture and setting of all the films quite clearly show when it was set. - Yes! I have been reading this thread, in between diving off to indulge my obsession with fashion history and doing a quick check on social context ... I loathe Austen's novels & have carefully avoided knowing anything about her, but I could have told you she was Regency from brief, accidental viewings of the TV series!

Yes, but you have to know something about architecture and fashion history to know what they're clearly showing about the period, and unless someone of GCSE age has a particular interest in either of those things, I wouldn't expect them to know by default. (I had books on the history of costume, and had a good idea of different styles of dress through the 19th century from my early teenage years, but I wasn't always normal.)

My English teacher once referred to Seamus Heaney as being 'a Scottish poet'. She even asked us to put on a Scottish accent when reading Death of a Naturalist

Just as a point of order, it is perfectly possible to have a degree which is not in English Literature, but to nonetheless teach English well, to be very knowledgable about texts, authors, contexts et al (and to be bloody good at doing your research if you aren't sure beforehand).

I might have a wee axe to grind, being an American Studies graduate, and all...

This teacher sounds at best careless, and at worst incompetent. And wrong, of course. Well done for sending the email. I'd be interested to hear what transpires.

LeBear, Ibsen is national romantic. Definitely not Victorian.

No Norwegian would refer to anything related to their 19th century as Victorian. In my experience only those who have studied history or English literature are aware of what Victorian refers to. It isn't part of the common vocabulary.

OMG at the scots accent in Death of a Naturalist...all those creaking frogs.... That's an unforgivable mistake!

Anyone else imagining Heaney poems in a Sean Connery accent now?

How about Blackberry Picking - "handsh shticky ashh Bluebeardsh?"

It would be brilliant.

Easily avoided,

I always start every lesson (adults or children), with something along the lines of , listen up, today I will be giving you information some of it correct, some of it incorrect, pay attention, take notes, your homework is to identify and correct, please reference your work. additional points for three new bits of relivant of information.

This leads to accurate note taking and detailed cross referencing.

It also has the great side effect of me never being wrong, and covering anything I miss.

No child or person should feel they can't question their teacher, and no teacher should take offence at being caught out on a mistake.

“Don’t just teach your children to read…
Teach them to question what they read.
Teach them to question everything.”

George Carlin,

If the people who you are teaching aren't questioning you, then you are not a good teacher.

Poor Heaney.

Maybe the teacher was thinking in Gaelic terms ... or summit.

Now I have Connery reading it in my head, too. It makes weird sense.

I couldn't read, 'Death Comes to Pemberley." Thought it was awful.

I watched the first part of Death Comes to Pemberley' after hearing it was a murder mystery and the fact that Anna Maxwell Martin was in it (she is our history department's resident Girl done good).

It lwas utter mince.

If you are going to make it a murder mystery, why not spice it up a bit?

Why not make Elizabeth a maverick chain smoking cop who doesn't play by the rules, but gets results goddammit! She could be teamed up with an older more conventional African-American cop, who has got one more case to do before he retires.

It's a fairly glaring mistake, best dealt with by an email direct to the teacher.

The task to find differing etiquette etc is fine in itself, if you've got the period right in first place! Context is one of the assessment objectives of the Eng Lit syllabus.

Having said that, peculiar choice of text, anyway. Austen works best as a quiet chuckle, rather than as a GCSE novel to be chopped about for analysis. I'd've picked a nice robust Dickens.