/lit/ - Literature

>>20060459
I can't remember even a single English class I ever enjoyed. The best book I ever got to read for class was Ender's Game back in 9th grade. Everything else was either books for retarded children or nationalistic propaganda.
I still don't get the point of trying to analyze a book. A book can mean anything its reader can connect it with, so there's no point in having discussions about what a text means since it usually reveals more about what their reader has their mind filled up with than it does about what the text itself says.
An anti-Semite will connect everything with the corruption of society by the Jews just as a person obsessed with homoseuxuality will try to uncover "campy" subtext in anything they read, but neither of them might necessarily come any closer to revealing what the author had in mind.

>>20060459
Surreal to see this post with that pic because my 6th grade English who I later came to realize resembled Misato so that I always thought of her that way fucked the shit out of me, she was a younger twenty something fresh out of college, came in to class the first day wearing a huge summer hat, tried to read a short story with us that featured a guy in a grocery store spilling mayonaise and the obvious connotations had the whole class dying with laughter and she was a good sport about it and was laughing too despite herself, like would herself burst out laughing right after insisting another kid try to read, and she always brought Gatorade for everyone to take when they entered the room, anyway yeah she rode me like a witch on a broom and that's how I lost my virginity, never told anybody and I don't consider it traumatic nor do I wish she had been punished.

>>20060555
Yes, but that's the point. You gather around 30 15-year-olds and have them try to analyze some writing and let the insanity unfold. And the teacher has to reign it all in.

>>20060574
What exactly do people gain by making up stories like this on the internet? Is it the same mechanism as children claiming to their peers that they have a girlfriend who goes to another school? Seems pointless to try to impress anonymous online strangers with fictional sexual antics.

>>20060574
I didn't post Misato just like that. We all had one.

>>20060593
It's a completely true story which is why I deleted it because I'm paranoid and don't want her recognized, I'm not going to argue with you about whether it's true by the way just wanted to clarify

>>20060584
I wouldn't mind them if literature classes were electives/extra-curricular activities that didn't count for a grade in high school, rather than mandatory core courses, but because assignments in them count for a grade, they can lead students into believing that there must be a right way to interpret books and write essays on them.

>>20060602
Can you elaborate a little on how it happened? Just curious

>>20060606
What shithole school did you go to? My teachers gave the best grades to those who contributed the most to a literally discussion, even if you stepped into light controversy. Unless you were retarded enough to play all your racist cards outright and lacked any tact.

>>20060625
Not very artfully because it's been saved as fuel for a certain project for awhile and I don't want to leak and waste any of the fuel here but to explode within the next couple of nights, incidentally, and let it all out, and you can certainly choose to interpret that in two ways, but it would be inaccurate since I've been sexually obsessed by the memory my whole life. It's actually the second time I was ~molested~ as well in far from disagreeable circumstances so you can imagine I have no difficulty in that department and stay regular.
The gist is that I was staying at her house for a couple days for biographical reasons I can't divulge, pretty quickly it became clear that what had struck me and everyone in class as a certain worldliness that made her cool was in reality the surface of a virile immorality and by the second night she was unabashedly seducing me. I took it in stride as a sort of sentimental education, I hear tell that such relationships are supposed to be traumatizing but that wasn't my experience, I drank wine and kept my promise after the third night when I left and she was sweaty and imploring me like her life depended on it, that I would never tell anyone, anyone, ever. The graphic details of what exactly happened I refrain from for the reason I mentioned at the top.

>>20060459
The highschool teacher was an alright old woman. Brought lots of tests, had lots of practice herself, understood what she didn't know. She's probably retired now, if not dead, but at least I actually remember her.
A uni teacher from the first semester was very charismatic, really knew her stuff too. She had such a way of presenting the lesson that it was beneficial to pay attention to it even if one knew most of it already - she presented those gems of personal knowledge, the little pieces of crystallized observations that supported the main structure. What a talent.
The rest were fucking midwits who only got to where they were because they went through the motions and a lack of employees.

>>20060677
This reads exactly like some faggot's fanfiction about his teacher-fucking fantasy.
It's so painfully clear that you're making this up, I don't know why you even try.

>>20060704
I find that hard to believe since I doubt many students stay at their teacher's house for three nights. Why are you trying to start an argument with me about something I can't prove? Just move on, it's fine, if I'm lying it will all fine

>>20060636
Literature classes were the ones I got my best grades in back in high school and college, but I hated having to fit in books and characters with unique identities into a closed system of archetypes and re-appearing themes which flow in a determined sequence from the days of the ancient Greeks till modern times, rather than as a treatment of a topic molded in a unique way by its age and in accordance to its own author's preferences. I remember I once got several points taken away on a test because I claimed that Shakespeare's plays were much more representative of Elizabethan era English culture, including both the rivalry between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church, than they were of a long tradition of the evolution of the concept of Man. Neither one is, admittedly, necessarily wrong, but it is very difficult to conceive one of them as true without regarding the other one as false, for one is ultra-generalizing whereas the other one is slightly more specific but also links the then-current political climate to the writer mentioned.

I mean, I guess the reason for how I got graded might have been because I did not have enough material to substantiate my argument with, but nevertheless I believe that there must have been some bias on the professor's part which would have led to my claim getting less points than one that agreed with the narrative promoted by the professor.

>>20060704
not him and didn't see the deleted post but do you watch the news lol, bitches be fucking their students left and right

>>20060677
Ah ok, no I was more interested in the dynamics of how she got into a situation where she could make that happen than the nitty gritty, which I guess you sort of answered. You said it didn't traumatize you, would you be willing to say what effects it did have? Sorry this is just an interesting story to me

>>20060792
It's impossible to say because of when it happened, I have a high libido and could probably be called girl crazy but I was a well established girl crazy before this incident as well. Also already previously "molested" like I mentioned, if by girls my own age, so that muddies the water even further. In general I would say no clear effects.

>>20060459
My fourth grade English teacher is the best I ever had. She had a purposely comfortable room and used lamps instead of the florescent ceiling. Beanbags everywhere. When it was time to read she let us go wherever we wanted in the room. Nobody ever fucked around or didn't read, even the illiterate jocks. They read their Captain Underpants like they were on adderall.
As a funny aside, she perceived my literary genius on account of the fact that I was reading none other than Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, which had just come out. She called me to her desk and asked me to read her a chapter while she sat there with some mysterious notepad. The next week some people from the official ass looking niggas, no idea where from, came in and took me out of class with her so they could test my reading level. My mom had an answering machine when I came home informing her that my reading level was collegiate and suggesting all sorts of extracurricula routes. I shut that shit right down.

>>20060869
Why did you do that? Did you consider what was possible? Where had you read such information at that age? Or from whom did you gain some information?

>>20060874
I just hated school. I didn't want more of it. And I didn't anything cutting into the time I spent playing outside with friends, which is what my life revolved around. My neighborhood had a lot of kids in it and as soon as we came home it was nonstop shenanigans. Had no interest in doing school stuff instead. I'm not sure what you mean by those last two questions

>>20060459
I just wish Misato would bully me...

>>20060869
if you’re an American you probably dodged some modern mk ultra shit, I forget its name but it’s been fairly documented by anons here

>>20060459
Except for a shitty middle school English teacher, English and Spanish were the only fields where every instructor liked what they taught.

>>20060958
That's interesting, I haven't seen that. It did seem arbitrary

>>20060459
my lang/lit teacher at sixth form was passionate about literature and you could tell she had a lot of respect for it, she was the first person to ever really show appreciation for a short story I wrote and gave it succint and great critique that helped me to improve it. she also had a really fat ass and I would fuck the everloving shit out of her if she offered.

I was the greatest class clown of all time and had an especially rough relationship with one of my ugly hag English teachers in high school. I'm sure she could have had no idea that I was a voracious reader by how I turned in every assignment and test with simply GOD written down and would always answer when challenged, God is always the answer. I'm an atheist.
Anyway, one day I turned away from my class clowning to correct something I overheard her saying. "Stratford UPON Avon," I drawled, and turned back to class clowning. She was so sure it was Stratford Avon, and so excited at this opportunity to humiliate me in front of the class and emasculate all further attempts at being ringleader, that she asked everyone to please turn to page so and so, we would all read together what was Shakespeare's birth place. Obediently we all turn with great interest to the alotted page. She skipped being red in the face and went straight to purple, highly alarming. The defeat is decisive, chaos reigns.

>>20060896
I had this happen to me for math. All it meant is I got taken away from the other kids during school hours to do higher level math with the other smart kids instead of being bored out of my mind with the rest of the pack. idk if it did anything for me but it was better than squirming around in my chair

>>20060459
I don’t know why but all of them have been hot older ladies and they’ve already really liked me. I’m in collage now and am considering doing something about it

>>20060459
Absolutely horrible. I think these people get drunk into some kind of power-play or 'friendly' obsession with their students.
Once I gave a pseudo-philosophical speech in class, only to get traumatized 5 min later when I heard the professor laughing about the way I tried to talk about the subject with other classmates. Sure, I was a fucking autist imbecile, but hell, I was 17 man. Barely read anything of substance at that age.

Left me uncomfortable for life. Specially with some schizophrenic thoughts when I think about public speech and the way people think.

It is a deprecated system. Although it hurts the angelism of the democrats, this world is fucked and the problems are humans.

Teacher: one more profession to attract narcissistic parasites. It has a life-changing potential, but it is always good ? Hardly.

>>20062556
I was going to be all
>same
But jfc 17? I knew most of the languages which were compulsory in my schools, including some I didn't take, but I got bullied to fuck by teachers who I made the elementary mistake of correcting. One tried to convince me I was pronouncing my native language wrong (I wasn't, she couldn't speak the language and only knew how to power through the mostly incorrect flashcards the classroom had to fulfill government obligations), and one I corrected her French in a French Catholic school because she had written, "du Père, du Fille, et du Saint-Espirit", which seemed like it was going to get someone in trouble.
However, by the time I was seventeen, they all wanted me to pretend they hadn't tried to convince me I was shit and too cocky. Exams for university come up then and all the kids who might pass languages are no longer weird tribal folk then.

>>20060459
It's been, interesting. Gotta say that the best ones have been my male teachers. In 7th grade I had one who's might still be my favorite, I still follow his youtube channel and he's active. I feel a bit like a shit head though because I reconnected and disconnected on a rather bad note. He's probably the only English teacher who had western canon books instead of black trans-inclusive feminist think pieces.

>>20062604
It was a simple topic about globalization that I was discussing inside a classroom of a 3world shithole country.

Well, I guess people have different ages for developing some real intellectual insights or to actually read something of substance.
I knew that until 17-18, I was basically faking because I never had parents that would care to read something or buy a single book.
I was still inside the dark cloud (or trying to break out) of ignorance, vanity and crowd-thinking. Internet and the technocracy of society was already big, and I almost got permanently corrupted into the illusion and fantasy of it.
The deal, the breakthrough out of plato's cave can happen in your early 20s-30s or in the end of your 40s-50s.
And then, you will have people completely dead that never read a book in their whole lives (you will find these at AA meetings and psychwards, or inside your own house).
Debating about teaching and learning experiences inside this website is probably not a good idea.

bump

bump

>>20060459
It was not really an experience to say much about. Grades 5-8 it was a snobbish woman close to retirement. I still remember her fur coat and general disinterest for anyone but the select circle of girls that she treated almost like her pack. She was our homeroom teacher, too, so bad experiences I did have weren't tied to the literature class.
High school literature professor was a bit more lax, though again there was this vibe of judgemental woman permeating through the classroom.
Book analysis boiled down to a tiring debate where a student shyly tries to offer their vision, and the professor just keeps asking more and more questions. You really just had to keep talking to get a good grade, but most of my classmates would clam up because it would get too deep for their teenage brain.

>>20060459
Primary school (age 11-15 in my country) was nice but overall unremarkable. High school prof (equivalent of British grammar school, age 15-19) was excellent. Going by the curriculum, we literally started with the Greeks, and she managed to catch 15-year-olds into interesting discussions on justice in ancient tragedy, and I've been hooked ever since. Each year of her lectures taught me more and built more love for literature than all the years I've wasted on /lit/ put together.
I'm studying literature and Russian now. The profs are overall better in the dedicated lit department than those within the Russian department, no idea why exactly, but those in Russian usually seem limited and autistic in their interests, and one of them definitely doesn't know her shit (teaching extremely surface-level pomo interpretation). The great professors are a delight to learn from and are beloved by the students, they're like friends and little celebrities.
There are also the language profs, such as English and German and Latin in high school, who were all unremarkable, and now Russian, who I'm hoping to get more connected with as I learn about language and linguistics, so that I won't be a merely passive listener.

>>20063079
Currently I'm taking classes in Russian grammar by a prof who I thought was extremely strict and cold, but now I'm noticing how invested she is in the topics, how she's connecting the Russian material with classical philology and our native language, and really she's interesting to learn from.

>>20060737
bro but how can there be argumentative material when all you would do is argument with the help of ones who used the argumentative material before his own, to the point of an origin where noone had argumentative material. we're all just using eachothers own sources if you think about it. down to christ's. and did he have a source for himself?

>>20060459
>1 hour for 1 day a week for 1 year
>supposed to learn german
>method of teaching;
>every way, use and meaning of 'der, die, das'
>somehow learn a half broken language in that limited space of time
If I had one more year or just more time in that one year, I would probably had learned german pretty decently.
Now I'm just a scrub going 'kartoffelsalat' while somewhat being able to understand the written language if you give me 5 minutes per sentence.

I had this one little old Irish lady who taught sophomore English back in college. I was going through a rough time in my life and was struggling to make it to class and do the work. I showed up sporadically for the first few weeks of class. Eventually, I turned in one paper analyzing a Yeats or a cummings poem (don't really remember). It was an intuitive and, in retrospect, pretty deeply personal reading of a self-loathing I felt I'd identified. She gave me an A for the paper and wrote that in her 40 years of teaching, that was the best paper she'd ever received. After that, for unrelated reasons, I fell pretty deeply back into my depression and never showed up to that class again.

Some years later, I was toying with the idea of going back to college again and checked my transcript to see how bad the damage was. Given that I attended only a few weeks of that class, and not even every lecture; and given that I never turned in a final or a midterm or literally anything except that one paper, I fully expected to see an F for that class. Instead, I was delighted to see that not only had she passed me, she'd given me an A for the entire course... all based on that one, single paper.

It didn't really hit me at the time, and I kind of just glossed over it because I had—in my mind—better things to worry about. A few years ago, I remembered that class and that little old Irish lady and what she'd done for me, and it inspired me to take writing seriously. I don't even remember her name but that one small kindness she showed me while I was struggling has had an incredible impact on my life. Since then, I've had only a couple short stories published in a couple minor journals, but I'm working on my novel manuscript and I think I'm starting to actually believe in myself.

So, to put it shortly, a professor or a teacher can have a huge impact on your life. That one little old Irish lady, whose name I'm sure I'll never know again at this point, has impacted mine. The more deeply I think about it, the more I recognize how deeply rebellious an act that was. Professors are "supposed" to be bound by metrics and standards and adherence to the doctrinal pedagogy. I like to think I'm keeping a little spark of that rebel spirit within myself as well, nestled against the dehuman winds blowing down from the ivory belfry of academia. If I could I would thank her, because without that I'm not sure I'd ever have found my way back to literature, which has helped to lift me out of my depression like nothing else. If I ever get my novel published, she's going to be my dedication.

>>20063157
>So, to put it shortly, a professor or a teacher can have a huge impact on your life.

>>20062556
>>20062628

The duality of /lit/zens is quite impressive.

bumpp

bump

>>20062604
I just remembered this morning: in the school where one of the teachers bullied me and tried to give me a speech impediment in my native language, they had to do any announcements in native languages and English because government funding. To do morning and midday announcements, they needed kids who could actually speak and read their native language fluently, which most kids gave up because you could speak English all the rest of the time and everyone would understand each other. So every morning and noon, I was on the school speakers doing announcements in my language for six years while this teacher tried to tell me I was mixing up words. To non native speakers, it sounds like there are lots of homophones, so she confused things a lot because she wasn't even conversant. I got in absolute shit the last year I was there because I did an announcement with her pronunciation to see what would happen, and the principal who could speak our language was like ARE YOU MOCKING STROKE VICTIMS?!?! IDIOTS?!! DO NOT TRY TO MAKE SCHOOL ANNOUNCING FUNNY EVER AGAIN!!
I knew I was changing schools then, so I was a little shit about it, but this morning I was all
>Holy shit that principal actually spent six years speaking to me in our native language when working in an English school which did not support that at all
Thanks, and sorry for being a little shit, Principal.

>>20060459
I had a great teacher who was known for being incredibly strict and intimidating outside of the classroom, but inside his lessons he was this ridiculous, silly character who would do shit like play videos of chicken big brother (a YouTube channel that hid secret cameras inside a chicken coop) or would walk around playing fifa on his phone while we were reading silently, showing us the screen and saying boomerish things like “can you believe it? FIFA on your phone. Incredible what technology can do these days!”.

Despite all the dumb shit he would do somehow we still ended up learning quite a lot, no one in the class got lower than a high B. In fact he was the one that inspired me to go on and read literature at University. God bless you Mr B.

>>20060555
> I still don't get the point of trying to analyze a book. A book can mean anything its reader can connect it with
That isn’t true, you still need to justify that interpretation with direct textual evidence. Ie, how does the structure, form, use of literary devices, etc. back up the claims you’re making about the text? That’s what distinguishes a high-level analysis from a superficial subjective reading imo.

>>20063730
Yes, but under your definition, a "high level" analysis can still be wrong while a "low level" analysis can still be correct. An argument ultimately has no relationship with the truth value of what it's arguing. If the depth and breath of an analysis has ultimately nothing to do with the "truth" of the text, who cares?

>>20062604
>But jfc 17?
Depending on the country or environment that you were created, majority of young people don't read until ~~20-25-30.

>>20063788
Some of my parents' generation cannot read at all. In my generation it was
>You do good in school or we are all forever poor and it will be your stupid fault you wind up with shit job that is why I am beating you with a shoe you listen to those foreign devils about everything on the test or you get a job and buy your own food
You had to read or translate things for some adults once you looked about school age. They made the age you can leave school older a few years after I left, that's why I was surprised the other anon was seventeen and in school and not being told he was one of the ones who would have to go to university. Now kids think university is mandatory and it's weird that grandpa cannot text. They think grandpa cannot text because technology but lots of grandpas cannot read.
It is weird that people read more when they get older in different places. I think almost everyone I know stops reading when they get a job.

>>20060459
Asuka is a bitch and rei is cold she's the obvious logical choice you're just going to have to sweep her being a whore under the rug because she's a real person

>>20063875
Anon that's Misato

>>20063855
Have you seen China ? you are basically brainwashed into reading only academic books for the national entrance exam there, Gaokao.
>>I think almost everyone I know stops reading when they get a job.
This is also very true. How many normies can you see on big social medias basically just eating the technocratic environment and playing the social engineering ? I can bet the majority of these people don't read shit beyond the hottest book on the market.
So yeah, if you at least started on your early 20s, i think it is beyond fine.

>>20063923
>Gaokao
That's normal in a lot of countries. It's not just China. I think more kids actually know about the Korean Suneung/CSAT now and trying to get into SKY than could name a university in China unless they're Chinese. That's probably because Korea has better global media ties than China.
Compared to most western countries' admission processes, I think most countries which are poor have harder exams. They start up suicide hotlines the month university exams happen and again when results come out and that's common to a lot of countries.

>>20063954
Hahahah, SK oh yes, when I applied to KAIST, got rejected obviously... but the suicides, oh the suicides:
https://english.khan.co.kr/khan_art_view.html?artid=201607251827247&code=710100
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2013/01/181_112535.html
https://herald.kaist.ac.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=140
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/world/asia/23southkorea.html

This is a society basically built upon the 'love for science'.

>>20063991
I think it's just where education to become an engineer is the alternative to getting hit with a shoe.

>>20063777
>An argument ultimately has no relationship with the truth value of what it's arguing
Of course it does. Like I said before, the truth value is contingent on your ability to use the source material to PROVE your claim by analysing the concrete features in the text that I listed. You can’t just say “this book made me feel x” and expect people to accept that as a valid interpretation, because you’ve made no attempt to justify it with evidence from the text. Even if it might be subjectively true that the book made you feel a certain way, it does absolutely nothing to confirm whether that is something inherent in the text which causes that feeling, or whether it’s simply your impression of it.

>>20061178
Describe her appearance in more detail

>>20060555
>reads instructions on how to bake a cookie
>this is a how to cook book
>reads the Talmud
>An anti-Semite will connect everything with the corruption of society...

lit and comp teacher. five years exp under my belt. ama

>>20060459
Horror stories. I skipped first period a lot due to sleeping in, so I wasn't there. It wasn't worth going to. Intersectionality, gender, she pronounced Goethe like it rhymes with "both," she didn't get the point of Brave New World and gave us bad grades if our presentations didn't say what she agreed with. Usual shit

>>20067467
also, having read the posts in this entire thread, I really do feel for you guys who had shitty teachers. I know I'm not perfect, but I do my best to try and take care of every kid and be good to as many people as I can. It's hard, when you have the whiteboy who thinks he's a gangster dropping n-bombs all day, or the standoffish girl who cops an attitude every time you ask her to try doing something for once, but I don't know, I don't hold grudges. I see a lot of teachers these kids complain about, and I'm sure I've been complained about, but I also realize if I have beef with a 15-year old kid at the end of the day, that makes me look more like a bigger loser than anyone else in the room. I hope some day you can find it in your hearts to forgive your teachers; some are burnt out with nowhere to go, others are just shitty