of course this model requires faith that there are such people

would far prefer to hear about whether, what, why we ought to read from people who’ve been serious about doing it all their lives

By the way, thank you Ms. Ross (12th grade AP English), Mr. Sullivan (11th grade English), even Ms. Oh Crap I Forgot Her Name but she was old and her ankle clicked with every step (10th grade English), and all English teachers who came before.

am not averse to reading conservative writers, discussing strains of conservative thought, it’s not about that—it’s the form of argumentation, the syntax of the sentence

also worth reading— bsky.app/profile/namw...

currently reading @namwalien.bsky.social — “to tear down a monumental figure and to prettify it are not our only options”

AP was about education, then about saving money on college tuition, and then about building a better resume for college applications, and now it’s about … what?

My school is trying to 'outsource' by not having AP Lit and instead having the kids take a bus to a local community college where they can take English 100(and look at their phone the whole time in a lecture hall and fail because they are 17 and not prepared for that). This allows for more layoffs.

I think that Ellison’s Invisible Man is, among other things, High Quality Instructional Material

indoctrination also teaches students “how to think,” i wish we’d do away with that phrase and say what we really mean

People at @collegeboard.org worked for years to accumulate this authority, now what?

yes, public schools ought to help students think about the best of what a broad range of people have done, can do, might do with words, and not just for the sake of their careers

and, I assume but want to be sure, complete texts, and not just for the sake of a standardized reading comprehension test that measures cultural literacy?

ah thanks! hope you’ll let me know what you think, and good luck in the meantime…

it drives me up a wall when english or history professors from elite schools even hint at devaluing literature in legacy publications

it’s lovely, actually, when parents ask whether i’m teaching something they loved in high school

@gregpak.net you had it right, the company IS a scourge, it’s just not immediately obvious to a lot of people how or why

THIS

It’s the teaching to the test that’s the problem.

This is what we’ve been trying to tell the SBOE for months

Multiple books, many Shakespeare plays, poetry… (I took AP English Lit). We read started with Beowulf, read Chaucer, before moving to the more modern stuff. It was hard. It was also amazing. Actually took seriously the idea that shd be college level.

we could do worse than pass along this experience to the next generation

glad it's working out in your case, but I still don't see why we can't have teachers and schools design book-based courses

it's already in middle schools, they're now coming for high schools

it's not that there are no important books, it's that there are too many for any single person or entity to fix and dictate which ones they are

Reading texts you want to throw out the window is great! Especially when you have the chance to talk with others about *why*--about what your values are for literature, and again, why that is. I'm glad we both had that experience. I wish students now could.

is it a curriculum company or is it homegrown?

also unfortunate, I’d say, to further privatize rather than just do better things

sometimes more moderate factions call classical education “apolitical,” but that’s a fantasy—nonpartisan maybe, but that’s different

it’s so stupid