<p>what i really dont like is how many of my english teachers don't understand math very well, so when they give arbitrary points and arbitrary weights, funky things happen to grades. ;)</p>
<p>Literature is not for everbody, and the things it offers me can be found in countless other endeavors, I'm sure. I'm not here to defend literature, just to share my experience. </p>
<p>For me, great literature offers what all great art can--beauty and truth, a depth of feeling, understanding, and perception that reminds me to wake up from the routine of my day-to-day existence and to see more in my world than I otherwise would have. Can I live without these things? Sure. Would my life be as rich? No. Someone much smarter than I am put it best: "It is difficult to get the news from poems, but men die miserable every day for lack of what is found there."</p>
<p>I agree that it's not bad for everybody. People have their own likes and dislikes and that's the way it should be. I was angry more at the requirement that I take four years of English to graduate. IMO, there should be one required year of English that focuses on grammar and writing research papers, since that's the kind most assigned in college. Then there should be elective "literature" classes for people who like this kind of thing.</p>
<p>
[quote]
...i feel an underlying sexual tone between my lover and I.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>See, Coqui, when you refuse to understand the basic rules of English, you make senseless grammar mistakes that make you look like an idot and belie your entire argument.</p>
<p>The fact is, however, that colleges aren't just interested in basic grammar. They want to see that you've taken four years of English--even if you're going into Engineering or something like that.</p>
<p>Coqui,</p>
<p>The quotation in my previous post was by a poet who also happened to be a doctor. In both endeavors, he saw himself as helping people, offering something vital.</p>
<p>MEAD13, </p>
<p>is dat de bes u cood cum up wit as a rebuttal? i wrote it on purpose man/woman. sarcasm's in literature isn't it? and who writes with perfect grammar on cc anyway? dear god i made one grammar mistake. i'm a complete moron....</p>
<p>IN any case, we are all in agreement that grammar is very important. The debate is about studying literature.</p>
<p>There are many uses for literature; one can understand how a particular person views the world, how to think like that person and therefore have profound insight, and be sophisticated when it comes to discussing stuff. However, literature is not the only subject that helps to develop those skills, and those skills are not even essential. </p>
<p>i don't know about others schools, it seems like some schools spend way too much time on well-roundedness without preparing students to survive in the real world.</p>
<p>like people said, students should be given a chance to choose which ways to develop certain skills and maybe even which skills they choose to develop. and the main responsibility of teachers or schools should be inspiring the students to learn boring facts and develop applicable skills. </p>
<p>but oftentimes the school's job is to just force everything on students and see how they deal with it. many can't. many can with a tutor. many cannot afford a tutor. </p>
<p>if we did not have as much mandatory classes intended to 'produce' well rounded students as now, and if classes are focused early on to be applicable in certain careers, the tax money spent on text books, teachers, space etc. and the money governments pay to low-income families that we will save would be quite fascinating considering how many teachers are employed to teach irrelevant stuff through out the entire system among other factors. </p>
<p>oops! sorry for another long rant. I hope people would agree or disagree, and together we might be able to plan a system versatile enough to suit the needs of an increasingly diverse student body.</p>
<p>It's generally a good idea, bneg, but I think the problem with that is we would have to have some sort of governing body who decides what's irrelevant and what's useful to learn in school. They overlap quite a bit sometimes, such as in the area of advanced math. 95% or more of people learning calculus would never need to use it in their job, but there is a small chance they might. Studying literature, however, is 100% useless in a real job (unless, of course, you're an English teacher or an aspiring writer of high literature).</p>
<p>i'm not sure how what i'm about benefits the argument that lit is useless, but i just randomly thought of this as i read my ap scores...</p>
<p>ok i got a 4 on ap calc ab. i studied a good amount for this test and actually did all my work in class throughout the year. if i hadnt tried at my work or studied, there is NO way i would have pulled off a 4, much less a 1 or gotten A's. and even after the test, i wasnt confident i got a 4.</p>
<p>but i also got a 4 on ap eng lit. i didnt study at all for this test. i didnt read one book assigned throughout the year (go short summary on sparknotes!) and yet i easily pulled off a 4 and an A in the class. and i knew i did well too and wasnt worried.</p>
<p>i'm sure there is some point somewhere in my little story, but once again i am plagued with fatigue and am going to sle....</p>
<p>Anti-intellectuals.....go watch The Apprentice or something.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
Nothing in school that we learn is directly applicable in a beneficial way
[/QUOTE]
Haha engineers would castrate you for that.</p>
<p>Why is literature useful?</p>
<p>Man often learns with great difficulty what his forefathers have already known; when it is all neatly placed before him in literature, it saves much time and frustration. I read literature to gain wisdom, simply put. It shocks me how ignorant, even animal-like most people are today, mindless cogs in a manufacturing machine. Great literature stretches the mind, nurtures the imagination, translates human experiences. Philosophy may be the realm of pure logic and moral discussion, but without literature, translating, even creating such ideas is difficult. Literature represents that link between academia and real life, because it shows experiences in action. However, literature holds a certain order to it, one present in life in only more abstract ways, ways that one may never perceive without the background of literature. When one reads literature, it is more than a simple page of morality or plot, it represents the summation of the life experiences of the author, taken from his mind's language and put into mundane English (or whatever the case) to be understood by the reader, who must then take it into his own mind's language. That is what literature teaches you, and that essentially is what all of learning is about.</p>
<p>Why is English class useful?
To quote the late great Frank Zappa,
If you want to get laid, go to college.</p>
<p>If you want an education, go to the library.
</p>
<p>I'm going to college ;)</p>
<p>Sure, writing down lessons learned is extremely important so posterity can know them too, but to me that's history, not literature. </p>
<p>Also, if the point of literature is to understand the point of view and life experience of the author, wouldn't it be much easier and faster to write such experiences in simple English? I have no problem with books that can be comprehended quickly, like most popular thrillers. The only revered author in English classes who is like this that I can think of is Hemingway, even though his stories tend to be exceedingly boring. </p>
<p>Most books studied in English are composed of language so vague it takes many people collaborating for a long time to figure out what its meaning actually is. To me that's wasteful and pointless.</p>
<p>No, and as you do not see the complexity of this, the insight you would gain from open-minded examination of literature is evident. </p>
<p>It is correct that you must have detailed prior knowledge in order to understand complex literature, but that knowledge, comprised of unique words and concepts, will benefit in other ways. Facts are useless without the ability to translate them and apply them, and literature does just that. Thrillers generally are useless garbage (look up "hyperreality" ;)). Every critical review that I have read of books that I have read has only expanded upon what I already knew, or touched on minor areas, but in nearly every case, I could figure out the broad meaning of the book on a supportable level, so the statement "it takes many people collaborating for a long time" is untrue. As for literature and history, they are interconnected, in that they both have their own approach with dealing with past events. Having a solid understanding of things from multiple approaches is essential. The whole POINT of literature is that it is not comprehended quickly - the thought of the process is what is important. Like history, literature can teach you both on a practical and theoretical level on how to approach life. For example, I have read much of Shakespeare's works on my own time. You can spend hours examining a single sonnet, and the levels of knowledge contained in them is astounding. Now I am reading the Iliad, something Shakespeare referenced, and things are becoming yet more clearer - why did he write this, what was going through his mind reading this, etc. Literature lets you sort out the apparently random assortment of life into something palpable. For an analogy, unaccoutred messages (in some regards those of history, for example) are like the wrapping of a sandwich that says "peanut butter and jelly," or "ham," but for one to understand what "ham" really is, one must bite into it and savor all of the subtle flavors :).</p>
<p>Okay, that made more sense that your previous post. I get what you're saying, but I don't agree with you. In my experience, literature hasn't taught me to think more critically or clearer. Maybe it's just too intellectual an idea for me to appreciate. I value more applicable, fact-based learning over abstract topics. I also think I've had pretty bad English teachers over the years, so that probably had something to do with it. :)</p>
<p>Let's agree to disagree.</p>
<p>I have had terrible English teachers for every year of high school, with the exception of one, who taught me more about grammar and abstract thinking than actual literature (she also was certified in French and German, to give you an idea). But I must say that by far my appreciation of literature has come from personal study, beginning with the Bible, anatomy and astronomy books, and novels as a young child (I could read at a second grade level before I started kindergarten) and followed up with more since. I can honestly say that you can never learn enough in any area, including literature. There is a certain threshold you must past before you start to see the benefit. Yet if you shun abstract thought in general, then you will gain no benefit from literature, or any higher learning, because critical thought is all based on abstract reasoning; it is what unites the various disciplines. If you only use fact-based learning, you quite literally are only using half of your brain. I feel sorry for people who never go beyond the facts and limited comparisons into actual analysis, my high school history teacher was stuck in that trap. He would go off on tirades about how religion should not have any role in government (paradoxically he is a Catholic), and he would cite many facts about history to back up his argument. However, when a tough ethical question came around, he fell back upon religion, and simply could not reconcile his views because he could not analyze them. He also despised literature (and missed every subtle political reference in my end-year project, to my chagrin). I would resent it if I fell into the trap of resting on facts and figures as justifying anything. But if you intend to subjugate yourself in this way, I can agree to disagree, even if I don't understand the motivation. Still, if your reply is that you do analyze the facts on a higher level, and really apply them, then my recommendation to study literature stands, as higher-level application of facts is based on abstract learning, and vice versa.</p>
<p>To paraphrase Faulkner, "Facts have very little to do with the truth." Writers aren't interested in facts; they're committed to something larger: conveying the truth of human experience. The same can be said of historians, who are, in essence, storytellers, interested not in relaying the bare facts of the past, but in interpreting and explaining them, constructing them into some coherent narrative that attempts to make sense of the chaos of human experience. Interpreting a story, intepreting historical events, interpreting scientific data--these are all ways of building one's ability to think critically, and they point to a similarity that links all disciplines: there are no final answers, at least to the interesting questions, the ones that really matter.</p>
<p>Okay, we'll drag this debate out then...</p>
<p>Videogamer, don't feel sorry for me. I'm not "subjugating myself" in any way by refusing to accept the English class establishment and the notion that making points about life in a roundabout, confusing way is somehow more noble than saying them outright. As I said in my original post, people like to feel that they are smarter than your average Joe, and I do believe that a significant portion of people who pretend to understand the value of literature do so to make others think they are smart. They see some hidden meaning not apparent in any form at first reading, so others begin to think something is wrong with their understanding.</p>
<p>Analysis in history is much different than analysis in literature. In history, you take facts and go one step further with them into WHY things turned out the way they did. In literature, you take some completely arbitrary piece of writing and draw conclusions about what it really means. You must start at some logical base before trying to analyze anything. In literature, this base simply does not exist.</p>
<p>Spoonyj, it has often been said in various forms that literature "conveys the truth of human experience." In fact, I once heard a critique of Joyce's Ulysses that said something along the lines of "it contains the whole of human experience." I find this not only wrong but insulting as well. If the whole idea of humanity can be condensed into one book, no matter how long it is, our species must not be very interesting. The question I always come back to when I hear this explanation is: Why must we explain the human condition at all? People learn how hard life is during their own time in one way or another. Nobody over the age of 12 needs to be told there is suffering and despair or joy and hope in the world. Get over yourselves and tell me something I (and everyone else who has access to high literature) don't already know.</p>
<p>Simpsnut, to be willing to believe ideas that are said "outright" is naive and foolish. Clearly, most people need persuasion.</p>
<p>And this is exactly what literature does: It paints a world similar to ours--for only then will we find its ideas plausible--and then gives its message. After all, there are no rules to life, are there? It is only the author trying to persuade you, trying make a cogent argument. Subtle themes are only a tactic to force the reader to unveil the argument, making it more convincing, potent, and lasting.</p>
<p>That said, I want to say that I'm a math/science person myself, and I find it offensive that some of you are belittling (in a roundabout way, of course) these subjects (math/science) in defense of English. Stop. Please. I really don't want to get into a debate on this too.</p>
<p>"Why must we explain the human condition at all?"</p>
<p>All right, Simpsnut, which is it: Do you lack all curiosity about human beings and human experience, or are you so smart that the accumulated wisdom of all the writers in the history of the English language can offer you nothing in the way of inisight or illumination?</p>
<p>On a couple of things, at leat, we can agree: </p>
<p>1) You really haven't had very good teachers. I don't mean that as an insult. You come off as young, yes, but also smart; it just seems that nobody has led you through a text in a way that has allowed you to see the pleasure and insight a great book, like any great wok of art, can provide. My adivce is to stay open-minded. Who knows, it may happen? </p>
<p>2) This debate has gone on too long. I offer you the last word.</p>