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Originally Posted by shakran
You've touched on that theme many times. I'm not sure which college you teach at but at my college the students by and large were there for one thing and one thing only - getting their degree so they could get a decent job. They took classes that 1) filled requirements and 2) sounded easy. That's probably the type of student you're picking up as well - after all, reading courses in highschool were freaking easy right? Read "To Kill a Mockingbird," and manage to remember that it wasn't a hunting book, and you'd pass the unit. So naturally they're going to take YOUR class to fill their humanities requirement rather than some eastern philosophy class in which, they think, they'll have to work much harder.
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Hmm. What I meant in terms of class selection is that, yes, they have to take a lit class, but they have a wide selection of them to choose from. If they don't want to be reading Russian and Chinese literature, this was a poor choice. There's more than enough variety for everyone to find something to their taste: American lit I and II, English lit I and II, World Lit I and II, Women's lit, Black American lit, The Short Story, Shakespeare, Modern Drama, The English Novel, The Modern American Novel, 19th Century English Novels, Epic Poetry, Intro to Poetry I and II, Children's lit, Adolescent lit (those are my two upper division classes) and a half dozen speial focus classes each semester. There's like, a thousand lit classes to choose from. Or, more like 20, but there's so many that it doesn't make sense to choose something you're not going to enjoy.
I did run into a couple of guys who thought Children's lit would be a cruise because they'd be reading children's books, but they dropped when the found out how wrong they were.
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College kids, especially these days, have their mind on their career. They're only interested in learning what will further their chosen career. And unless the kid intends to become a literature professor, they're not real worried about learning how to interpret literature.
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Learning to read critically is a skill that can be aplied to a variety of working situations, not just by lit professors. It's also something that can greatly enhance quality of life by bringing a deeper understanding of recreational reading, and produces a more well-rounded education. This isn't a trade school, it's a liberal arts university.
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years and years ago when I was in college I saw the same thing in my journalism classes. Some of the people in the class actually had a marketing major, and the radio class was required for them as well. They didn't give a flying crap about journalism, and it was very frustrating to do newscasts with them because all they wanted to do was fool around and make stuff up (hence the marketing major, I suppose).
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That sucks.
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The kids in your class are no different. The few who are actively discussing the material are either future lit teachers or are genuinely interested in the subject. The majority are trying to do their time until they get a degree and can start making money.
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Ok, granting that as true, it still doesn't make any sense to choose a world lit class when there are twenty other lit classes to choose from. That a lit class is required, and another six hours of humanities that most students fill with lit, doesn't mean they have to take any one particular class. They can choose something they're actually interested in learning.
I guess it just doesn't make sense to me because my problem is college was never having enough time to take all the classes I wanted, to take advantage of this incredible opportunity to learn as much as possible about the world, and not just in English and History (I was an English/History double major). It just doesn't make sense to come here, to one of the 50 best college/universities in the country and pass time when there's such a wonderful opportunity to improve youself.
I just can't get why they wouldn't want to take advantage of this opportunity to read a lot of great stuff--not just good stuff, but truly great literature, inspiring and deep and powerful--and learn about these cultures that produced this stuff. This isn't a chore, it's an opportunity to learn directly from someone who's an expert in the field, something they get to do over and over and over again. They have access, all in one place, to several hundred experts in a huge variety of fields all there for the purpose of helping them to help them improve themselves.
Dang it. More rambling frustration. I just can't see why, if they're there, they don't take advantage of the situation to learn as much as they can.
Gilda