Quote:
Originally Posted by Ea of Dune
Baron> But are you honestly suggesting that a book written from the perspective of American workers at the time of the dust bowl is dumbed down? 
Ea of dune |
Yes. A lot of things done in schools and universities are dumbed down and especially so in the arts. The difference between Jane Eyre and that American book is the one is quintessentially English and the other is Yank talk. When at school you only have a brief time to sample what great works people have done in the past and I suppose it might only take one or two and that would show the children that there is more out there than the Mc culture we have today.
My concern is that I was personally affected by this and had a dreadful time at school. We were never pushed and in lessons I'd figure out the lesson in five minutes while the teacher took and hour and ten minutes slowly plodding through at such remedial speed. The only way I could cope was to divert the lesson into more complex things and that would get the class interested and if I were careful enough I'd manage to hoodwink the teacher into becoming interested.
What we learnt in physics was something I think will surprise you today. One or two teachers didn't go with the agenda, our physics teacher was one of them and we learns some really interesting stuff which would have normally only been taught at about first year degree course level, and this was pre o level! Now you might get the idea of how school stunts learning, it does not promote it. Look at MIT's youngest professor of computer science for example. He never went to school and ended up so clever he was made a professor in his early twenties. People just don't realise how bad schooling is for people.