• @[email protected]
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    15 minutes ago

    This happened in my art class once. Our kooky art teacher invited an ex-student in without any prior warning and we were supposed to ask him questions on his art (he did book covers).

    Silence, no one was having this shit. Out of pity I asked him questions on some tiny details I noticed on the spot. More silence, I ask about different tiny details. And so forth.

    I’ve realised that there’s a large portion of the populace that are perfectly comfortable in excruciating silence if it’s not at their expense.

  • @Treczoks
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    193 hours ago

    Just imagine this with the books I had to read in school. Yes, I would have read it, I’m a fast reader, so a bad book does not waste too much time. On the other hand, I would have no problems with grilling the author over the shit he or she wrote. Because basically every book we had to read for school was crap. There are so many good books, books that would spark interest and passion for reading more, but somehow they had selected the worst of the worst back then, aimed at making children reel in horror when they see books and vow never to touch a book again after school.

    • @[email protected]
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      127 minutes ago

      Part of it is also what they make you do to the book. I remember one exercise involving a book of our choice and of course I selected one I already liked at the time. The analysis itself tends to make a book a lot less fun.

    • @Serinus
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      22 hours ago

      Huh. I guess my experience was better I remember reading My Side of the Mountain and The Giver, among other things. Usually pretty decent reads though.

  • @FinishingDutch
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    123 hours ago

    Ugh, can relate. I love to read; I used to go through two books per week as a kid during middle school and high school. Not even just fiction, but non-fiction about topics that interested me like space and aviation. I even read books on my Palm Pilot PDA, well before e-readers were a thing.

    So as you can imagine, I had an exceptional vocabulary compared to classmates. This had some annoying effects as well. Whenever I did written assignments for a new class with a different teacher, they’d always accuse me of either cheating or plagiarism. Because I was using way more ‘difficult words’ than classmates. A two minute conversation usually cleared it up; they quickly found out that I did in fact do the work and understood the assignment.

    I don’t envy teachers today. Reading comprehension has declined sharply, and kids just don’t like to read as much as they did when I was young. Despite the fact that books are now way more accessible to them. I fear it’s going to result in an illiterate generation…

    • @[email protected]
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      41 hour ago

      I read everything I could get my hands on (and still do), except the shit they assigned us for school.

      I get “historically relevant” classics are a thing, but students don’t want to read most of them because they’re brutally formal and none of them can relate to them. It’s a chore primarily because the curriculum is all old and because burying 500 layers of symbolism into a story isn’t how people write any more (because it sucks).

      If more reading assignments were stories written to actually entertain kids and just asking the kids to put themselves in the character’s shoes and “what would you do”, maybe they wouldn’t hate reading so much.

      • @[email protected]
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        224 minutes ago

        At some point I started dialing up the symbolism interpretation up to 11 but somehow they didn’t like that either. I came to the conclusion that they want you to validate their particular interpretation of a work even if it put too much thought into it compared to the author, not put too much thought into it yourself.

  • @[email protected]
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    735 hours ago

    Imagine bullying someone because they read a book.

    They should be thankful the school didn’t punish the class for not doing the assignment.

    • babybus
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      31 hour ago

      Imagine bullying someone because they read a book.

      Because anon was different. He was the only one who read the book. That’s why.

    • Dharma Curious (he/him)
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      83 hours ago

      I was home schooled,* and occasionally I wish I had gone to public school, because I missed out on a lot of cultural touchstones, but then I’m reminded that kids are fucking horrible to other kids at any sign of differentness, and I was a fat, nerdy, gay bookworm, so, yeah, I’m good with the way things shook out. Haha

      *Got a great education, not a religious nutjob, was not raised by right wing zealots.

      • @[email protected]
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        32 hours ago

        Home schooled kids on average are smarter. Public schools tend to lower their standards to get a certain percentage of students to pass.

        Plus I bet your teacher was hot.

        • @Serinus
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          22 hours ago

          Considering half the home schooled kids are kept for indoctrination and/or abuse purposes, I doubt it.

  • @GottaKnowYourCHKN
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    64 hours ago

    Middle School sucks ass for everyone who’s not a rich kid.