• udon@lemmy.world
    3·
    7 days ago

    At some point you realize that many of the classic books are just… really good books! The terrible part is what they do to them in literature class. But many of those old books have become classics for a reason.

  • whoisearth@lemmy.ca
    1·
    7 days ago

    Some teachers allowed coles notes and some didn’t but was anyone else a member of the gang whose parents couldn’t afford coles notes so you never had that leg up and only had the source material or a friend you could borrow off if you were lucky?

  • Sparkega@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1881·
    8 days ago

    Before the internet, Cliff Notes were popular books that summarized and provided insight into meaning for classical literature. Students used them in place of reading the actual book.

    • jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
      78·
      8 days ago

      Some teachers would take the cliff notes for a book their classes reading, and make sure none of their questions were mentioned or relevant to the cliff notes themselves. So you could have real bangers of tests that ask weird ass questions that no reasonable person would remember from the book. What color was the dance card given to the main protagonist and The Great Gatsby dance scene?

      So you end up with tests that are just trivia, and don’t talk about any thematic issues, or generally recognize themes or takeaways. Crazy times

      • greenskye@lemm.eeEnglish
        32·
        8 days ago

        Now you’ve got teachers and students fighting over whether or not their paper was written by AI, so students need to jump through hoops trying to prove (or convincingly lie) that they didn’t use AI to write. Which can mean writing in weird ways that don’t ‘feel’ like AI.

        • Infynis@midwest.socialEnglish
          111·
          8 days ago

          I absolutely hate this boring dystopia, but emerging dialects due to a need for humans to sound distinct from bots is probably the coolest idea to come out of it so far. It has great parallels with the American vs. British accent situation too.

    • Farid@startrek.website
      8·
      8 days ago

      The only reason I know the contents of most classic literature is because of “So You Haven’t Read” series on YouTube.

    • JakenVeina@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      7 days ago

      The book on the table has the telltale Cliff Notes branding imagery. Cliff Notes is a company that was real big in the 90s and 00s (not sure how big these days) for making short summaries of famous novels, including plot points and themes. Everything you would need to write a competent essay on the book. They’re notorious for allowing high school kids to get through literature classes without actually doing the reading work.