Quote:
Originally Posted by
Zeldy
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Vincent, Thunder God
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Zeldy
Sux4u. Well then it's your own fault that English Lit fails for you. My teacher encourages us to put down our own thoughts, as there is never a right answer.
I absolutely love studying poetry! I've just finished cluster 1, or 2, or whichever cluster includes Vultures and Limbo (LIMBO.. LIKE ME).
Yeah,
your teacher. Some of the best teacher's I've had were English teachers, but I've also had an equal amount that give pointless questions. I doubt Manus' attitude is the problem here as you seem to suggest, since I've always been extremely polite with teachers, but when I became too independent in my ideas, and diverged too far from their narrow-minded vision of what I should think, they told me off.
My teacher is like assistant head of English, so really what she does is right, what all these nasty, groggy teachers do is wrong, I always wonder why people like that bother teaching if they just cannot be bothered; It's not a job you can just 'switch off' from. We are a top set group, though and generally those sets do get more advantages
as a teacher trust them to not make up ludicrous assumptions about a book cause they assume that we know our stuff.
Sometimes, though, on some books a teacher (atleast my school anyway) actually know exactly what the author/poet meant,
and if you stray too far out then obviously they have to stop you, it is an academic subject at the end of the day.
Why should a teacher have to gain trust not to be making "ludicrous assumptions" in the first place? I believe a completely off-topic response to a question, or not answering the question at all, is grounds for marking the answer as 0, but when I was asked for a specific opinion on a specific part of a book and that scene's theme, I'll meet that requirement, but I'm not changing my opinion just because it's considered to be "straying out too far" and I don't think it's fair to be marked 0 with my teacher disagreeing with my opinion. I believe I have a right to my opinions and to express them when asked, and I don't believe it's right for my teacher to give me a 0. I thought the reason books with more and more controversial themes were presented the higher you progress through the grades was to encourage people to become more and more open-minded and draw their own conclusions based on topics perhaps not yet introduced to them. I don't think controversial topics are raised just so I come to a difficult, challenging conclusion in my outline of the theme and my opinion on it only to have my teacher disagree and mark 0. I kept to the requirement, I analyzed the theme as asked, I'm not going to conform to one teacher's personal opinion of "actually knowing exactly what the author/poet meant" because you'll realize that, even with teachers, everyone has their own wildly original idea "of what the author meant." That's as it should be, but any attempt to force students who disagree with the teachers own opinions by taking away all my marks in an outrage.
Don't I read to be introduced to issues
without being bashed over the head with the author's opinions, making my analysis of his message all to obvious? Your ideas sound like what might be more realistic of a simplistic level of elementary required reading in which the theme was always obvious to me all along, but then, I was never asked my opinion then, merely completely explicit, right or wrong questions "what did X character do on page 70?" It was evident to the teachers that I was far beyond that stage even then, as I showed eagerness to explore the questions more, to state why the character did that and how it influenced the theme of the book,the teachers who even cared a whit about the quality of my work at all, cared about the stories I was writing when they only thought I couldn't even understand the concept of fiction, and was relegated to a diary in which most of my peers wrote a sentence, and I pages of narrative, not just about my day, but with in-depth self-analysis of how it made me feel to boot.
By your arguments, having opinions of a controversial complex theme is irrelevant when everyone should immediately agree the book is summed up by one person's opinion, and reading would be pointless altogether, as it would just be commonly accepted among everyone that one book always leaves the same emotional response and the same affect on learning for everyone, and that every student would automatically conform to that stance or be insane. But still, how can you just know his opinion is right without even reading the book, and I mean
really reading the book. There is never any real hidden proof of which side the author is on, since the issue already raises so many different opinions the author feels pressured to remain objective, and readers must come to their own conclusions. He can try to present the tale in such a way that might sway the reader to the side of the conflict he favors, but if he immediately states the side he disagrees with is wrong, he'd immediately lose any credibility as an author of fiction. Nonfiction is for essays, fiction can have themes the author feels very importantly about, but he can't just assume it's an essay and he can act as if all his points are fact and proof of his correct opinion, because he's not in a debate about real life, he's entering a world of his own imagination, that must not be completely defined by how he perceives the world now, or there is no creativity.
Yet somehow you think that when your teacher is asking you to take whatever side your teacher thinks the writer is on, and insists you must "not stray too far" from what they wrongly believe is their definitive interpretation of a controversial issue presented objectively, in fiction, you must agree, or you
should fail! Authors often say that their original message in the work was completely disregarded in the curriculum because it was over-analyzed by each teacher to find a way for a right or wrong answer to be based on what should be subjectively viewed in the first place. If you'd believed there might be another, say, worthwhile opinion, so that the entire world didn't all agree on what's right or wrong, maybe the opinion of the writer himself, what he personally felt as the message intended, and his own personal reason for writing the novel, his vision for its creation, was at all relevant, you you could have read it, straight from him, in an interview. But no, why would the writer know what opinion he really has of his work if it conflicts with your teacher's view of right and wrong? :rolleyes2
As long as I'm asked for a specific opinion based on a part of a thematically complex novel, I can't possibly be wrong in my opinion if it's also answers what was asked because I was asked what I thought, and since it's meant, by the author, to be subjectively interpreted, by the reader, the teacher shouldn't deduct marks if he merely disagrees. After all, if I wasn't meant to have my own opinion, why should I gain any inspiration from my own opinions of fictional character, to be inspired to create something different. And they wonder why all the media made is so repetitive and unoriginal, when students can't even feel ... different... about a novel, different enough to want to make their own novel outlining their own opinion that they came to based on other books, when they aren't encouraged. Ironically, many people consume that same rehashed media, because they were trained to
have no opinion.
Furthermore, even without consideration to formulating my own free thought, why should I
have to over analyze every little detail of a novel when I want to just take the book for what it is, a whole work, not fragmented into many questions picked, usually, from thousands of sentences, or 100s of pages?
By your logic, if you were to write your own novel, I could invalidate your reason for writing it by exposing it to millions of kids who were not to think of it as they chose, because I happened to be an Eng. lit. teacher and said I had the definitive view of the novel, without ever consulting you, and proceeded to force all those children to agree with me, or they'd "stray too far." I could select exactly what tiny segments of the book to highlight, as if I were you, the author, and knew exactly what the key events of the book were to properly highlight the major theme I want to present.
That's all Manus and me are trying to say - we don't believe that's a way to actually formulate your own idea of the novel, but rather systematically remove all enjoyment of the novel through tonnes of endless analyzing while having whatever views seem... different... to be torn to shreds.
I'll bet it's easy, if you can just repeat exactly what your teacher thinks about the novel, he or she will clearly try to convince you, and slightly alter the words. Easy, but you're just being programmed to think the way he is. Either that, or you don't care what he thinks, and go into your next class prepared to completely undermine your previous work's "opinions" if your next teacher feels differently. Either way, hardly of any practical use in learning.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harle-Quin
Moral is: If you're an ignorant dumbass, no one cares about your views or opinions.
I'm willing to admit when I'm wrong within reason, but there is no right or wrong opinion on a fictional work and never should be. See above comments if you need any further logic than that, it seems Zeldy does.
