Literature in school

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Does anybody else find themselves looking back fondly on the literature you did in school, even though at the time you probably hated/disliked it?

Today, I came across a site that featured the poems from the Soundings book - http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~melmoth/soundings.htm and I looked through some of the poems I remember doing for my Leaving Cert. I found myself enjoying reading Austin Clarke, W.B. Yeats and Paddy Kavanagh again. I've also realised that I would like to read some of the novels I did in school too - The Merchant Of Venice, Macbeth and The Mayor Of Casterbridge.

At the time, they were just things that I had to learn in school, and I had no particular interest in them, though I did find Macbeth suitably gruesome.

Maybe, it's because since leaving school, I haven't been that big of a reader (I'm getting back into it now), or maybe it's something that all of us have noticed?

Dades

We had to do The Great Gatsby which I loved. Also Huckleberry Finn, and even the Jane Austin stuff wasn't too bad when you gave it a chance. And who didn't enjoy the talking pigs of Animal Farm?!

Of course for Irish they made us read Peig Sayers. Now there's one book I won't be in a hurry to re-read. And I've still no inclination toward poetry.

Eoin

We did Lord of the Flies which I thought was great, still have it at home. I think it was a leaving cert book, but not too sure?

Death of Salesman was also very good, I thought the script read like a novel with the detailed stage directions that Miller included.

We also did "portrait of the artist as a young man". I detested this with a passion.

John

I loved all the stuff our teacher picked for junior cert, the Merchant of Venice is still a favourite of mine. Of Mice and Men was great but I don't know if I'd re-read it any time soon. I remember the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon, it moved me then and it moves me now.

I remember we did Macbeth in transition year because our teacher was freaking that it wasn't on the leaving cert anymore so we'd be missing out. He was right. Instead of traditional poetry he played us Leonard Cohen songs which was cool.

For leaving cert it was more of a mixed bag. I loved Hamlet and the poetry of Seamus Heaney, Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson and Michael Longley. Philip Larkin and Elizabeth Bishop were good in places. Evan Boland however was the bane of my life. Truly awful poetry, it reminded me of poems that kids would write in primary school. We also did a novel called Reading in the Dark about the troubles which was a load of bollocks. Really pretentious but without any real power to back it up. I refused to do it and studied Remains of the Day on my own which was a fantastic book. We also did Antigone which was good too.

Dades

eoin_s wrote:

We did Lord of the Flies which I thought was great, still have it at home. I think it was a leaving cert book, but not too sure?

Yeah you're right. And a great book too.

OLP

We're doing To Kill A Mocking Bird for our junior cert fiction, and Journey's End for our drama, I tought TKAMB was fairly boring but it'll get me through the exam. I really like Journey's End.

Branoic

I always liked Soundings - i've still got it. I did Macbeth, which I also loved doing and i've still got that too...page margins covered in notes and all.

But the novel we did, "Hard Times", was crap - is crap - and will forever be crap. Oh the pain.

johnny_ultimate

Doing the LC now. King Lear - sleep inducing. Great Expectations - Great, far fetched but thouroughly readable. How Many Miles To Babylon - Utter Garbage. TS Eliot - Best. Poet. Ever. Only poet ive ever been awe struck by. Yeats - Meh. Plath - Very good. Longley - Okayish... Hardy - interesting.

Dagnir Glaurung

johnny_ultimate wrote:

Doing the LC now. King Lear - sleep inducing. Great Expectations - Great, far fetched but thouroughly readable. How Many Miles To Babylon - Utter Garbage. TS Eliot - Best. Poet. Ever. Only poet ive ever been awe struck by. Yeats - Meh. Plath - Very good. Longley - Okayish... Hardy - interesting.

Doing the LC as well and totally agree with the Eliot comment, though my English teacher has really got me interested in poetry and I don't actually dislike any of the others. Really like King Lear as well but not overfond of the texts we're doing for the compatative study: Death and Nightingales, How Many Miles to Babylon and A View from the Bridge. Not that they're crap; I'd just prefer if some of the other stuff had been chosen, Pride and Prejudice or Great Expectations or something.

ratboy

How Many Miles To Babylon is quite excellent. i'm doing it at the mo for my comparitive text.

John

TS Eliot is probably my favourite poet. I presume The Waste Land is too long for the LC?

Dagnir Glaurung

ratboy wrote:

How Many Miles To Babylon is quite excellent. i'm doing it at the mo for my comparitive text.

It is indeed. The only one out of my texts that I really like,

John2 wrote:

TS Eliot is probably my favourite poet. I presume The Waste Land is too long for the LC?

Yep, we only have Part II.

John

Dagnir Glaurung wrote:

Yep, we only have Part II.

That's too bad, I can't imagine it working as good broken up.

NoDayBut2Day

I've really gotten into Shakespeare from reading it at school. We've read Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, and 12th Night in high school and now in college I've also read The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice.

We've read other stuff too, but Shakespeare's works stands out most to me.

Closing Doors

John2 wrote:

I refused to do it and studied Remains of the Day on my own which was a fantastic book.

Strange...of all the books I've read - which is a lot - I can think of few books as god-awful as RoTD :eek:

We did Silas Marner for the Leaving Cert...wasn't overly impressed. We did The Pearl by Steinbeck for the Junior Cert, again wan't overly impressed. I do remember reading To Kill A Mockingbird during second year, which I thought was great...

John

Closing Doors wrote:

Strange...of all the books I've read - which is a lot - I can think of few books as god-awful as RoTD :eek:

I have to disagree with you totally, I found it a joy to read again and again for the leaving cert. The movie however was a load of toss.

w00t! 4000 posts!

Franky Boy

I did To Kill A Mocking Bird for the Junior Cert and I'm now doing How Many Miles to Babylon and Death of A Salesman.And That is the only intersted literary text.

johnny_ultimate

Come to think of it I very much enjoyed Romeo and Juliet for the JC. It is a classic, and the stories timeless. The thing the annoys me about King Lear is that other Shakespear ive read ive actually enjoyed - especially R&J and Othello. But King Lear just seems so outdated and irrelevant to a 21st century audience... And also I worked out that approximately 45-50% of the characters die (some in ridiculous ways - a heart "Txixt two extremes"?). I know its a tragedy but come on now, Will...

Nimrod's Son

I really enjoyed Lord Of The Flies, Animal Farm, To Kill A Mockingbird, Merchant Of Venice, Macbeth and Philadelphia, Here I Come at school.
Any mention of The Mayor Of Casterbridge still makes my skin crawl though.

Cake Fiend

I wasn't too fond of most of my required reading the first time around, but when I came to study them in my own time later on, I quite enjoyed Romeo and Juliet, Animal Farm, The Great Gatsby (and the movie), and MacBeth. Hard Times bored me to tears (I don't think I ever actually read it through), TKAMB was tough going at the time, but worth reading. I also read A Clockwork Orange from a recommended reading list and loved it (although wasn't too impressed with the movie).

I never liked poetry, and that hasn't changed.

Piste

I didn't think TKAM was brilliant. Racism isn't really an original topic for a novel but works if delivered imaginitavely and originally. TKAM was generally neither (imho) although some bits were thought provoking and interesting the novel on a whole was nothing new.


I may just be saying this because we read Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry in first year and it dealt with a similar subject, I was bored of studying prejudice by 2nd year.

R&J is a brilliant play, so many subtleties.

Little Giant

I'm doing the leaving at the moment.
King Lear- I liked only after studying it a good few times and getting to grips with some of the intricacies...madness and blindness are really interesting to study, they can be read on so many levels
Silas Marner- most of my class really didn't like it. I didn't mind it but it's definitely not George Eliot's best. I prefer Adam Bede, and much prefer The Mill on the Floss
Of Mice and Men- Love, but it's so shocking
T.S Eliot- Wow.
Plath- Really like, especially all the hidden meanings
Bishop- not so much
Longley- less again- I didnt like the way it was taught and I feel his poetry has less richness of themes
Yeats- quite liked, but not in the same league as Eliot, and a couple of the poems I had already done for junior cert seem a bit too easy.
Donne- I really, really like- totally differs to all the other poems on the course and the metaphysical references are really interesting

odhran

i did my leaving cert. last year and hated a lot of what we did. we studied amongst women by mcgahern (a sure-fire cure for insomnia), juno and the paycock by o'casey (nothing special) and huck finn (average, but ruined by a terrrible ending) in comparitive. we did hamlet as a single text which was rather good. the poetry was all awful save ts eliot (genius). she wasn't on my course but i read plath anyway and loved her- the bell jar is now at the top of my "books to read" list.

Dave3x

I did my leaving last year, and got an A1 in English. I'm doing English in TCD at the mo, and the stuff I did in school just doesn't compare to the standard of literaure here in college.

Hamlet was an overly-long, poorly-written play by Shakespeare's standards, the comparaitive study is a ridiculous farce that has no real purpose (surely everyone can already say 'that's like that'? - an excuse to read into texts things that aren't there), and the poetry course was, by and large, great, except for the crap they expeced you to write about. In paricular, one supposedly 'ideal' essay ended with "I like what Longley has to say and the way he says it and I am proud that he is part of my Irish heritage". What tripe. It souns like it came from the mouth of a five-year old. And the system rewards it!

So, basically, I reckon that the texts were, by and large, pretty good (excepting 'Witness'), but the entire system of teaching and rewarding conformity was stifling and frustrating.

odhran

i actually have to agree. i also got an A1 in english and i know for a fact that my paper 2 was an unmitigated disaster. it was truly awful- i wrote a few pages of asinine rubbish for eliot (along the lines of "i relate to eliot's poetry because i see problems in today's world, blah blah blah- inane), i got completely lost in my hamlet question, due to its enormity and i didn't really get the unseen poem (mostly because it was a pile of nonsense). my paper is proof that the leaving cert. english course is a joke. i would love to study english as part of my course, but unfortunately it's not possible because i'm doing pharmacy and inter-faculty studies are not permitted in ucc.

Eoin

Dave3x wrote:

I did my leaving last year, and got an A1 in English. I'm doing English in TCD at the mo, and the stuff I did in school just doesn't compare to the standard of literaure here in college

I don't think you could expect the same standard to be taught between a mandatory subject in school, and a specialised subject one has chosen to do in a arts-renowned University!

John

odhran wrote:

i actually have to agree. i also got an A1 in english and i know for a fact that my paper 2 was an unmitigated disaster. it was truly awful- i wrote a few pages of asinine rubbish for eliot (along the lines of "i relate to eliot's poetry because i see problems in today's world, blah blah blah- inane), i got completely lost in my hamlet question, due to its enormity and i didn't really get the unseen poem (mostly because it was a pile of nonsense). my paper is proof that the leaving cert. english course is a joke. i would love to study english as part of my course, but unfortunately it's not possible because i'm doing pharmacy and inter-faculty studies are not permitted in ucc.

Sounds like the year I did my LC. I was quite sick so I left English paper 2 after 45 minutes after fluffing through the whole thing (none of the poets I studied came up). Got an A2.

Dave3x

eoin_s wrote:

I don't think you could expect the same standard to be taught between a mandatory subject in school, and a specialised subject one has chosen to do in a arts-renowned University!

Well, I'm not talking about the standard of teaching, more about the standard of the texts and the way they're approached. Instead of telling young students to recite some makey-uppy tripe, let them think about stuff themselves. For example, I don't like a lack of structure in poetry ("Scorn the sort now growing up, All out of shape from toe to top"......ah, Yeats....), but I always felt it was expected of me to pretend I liked all the poetry on the course. It's easier to get good marks that way.

pbsuxok1znja4r

My english LC teacher got me addicted to George Eliot, God bless 'er, through Silas Marner. Great book, will always be one of my faveourites.
TBH I couldn't stay awake during MacBeth...