| English A class that has had me thoroughly perplexed for some time now is English a.k.a. Language Arts. It’s odd that a class that should be teaching correct grammar, sentence and a respect for exceptional literature has us analyzing so many crappy texts. And what the hell are we taking vocabulary tests for? If we read quality novels we’d pick up all the vocab that we’d ever need. Then there are the teachers, some are just pathetic with their grammar errors and allusions to Christ. What a total waste of time. Alright now, a staple for English classes has always been the analysis of literary works. This stems all the way from elementary school where we read those short stories from those reading books and answered questions at the end. Wow! Those were great! (Hopefully you understand the sarcasm, hopefully) Anyways, there are many books that are standard (at least in GCHS) that really suck. One of these is Where The Red Fern Grows, which is a horrible tale of a boy and two hounds and they hunt and go on various misadventures that leave the dogs dead. Sounds good on paper, yet on some very similar paper it’s not, it stinks… stinks on ice. Yet another of these “immaculate” pieces of literature is The Call of the Wild, and a more boring book I have never seen (remember, I said book). To give an overview of this sack of utter shit bound between two pieces of cardboard would be complete waste of my time, so I won’t. I’ll put the next two in one sentence to save time (though writing that last sentence and this stuff isn’t very time efficient). Of Mice and Men and A Separate Peace are both horrible pieces of garbage and aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on and are basically the same story. Both center on a couple of misguided souls that are looking for direction in their lives and, of course, they find it through the death of one of the protagonists. The only differences are that the first takes place on a farm and the other in a school, the second contains younger characters, and the protagonist in the second inadvertently kills his friend while in the other it’s done intentionally. The thing that sucked the most was those damn short stories by Bradbury that we read this year, which I had read almost six years ago. There are more but I’m tired of listing them, so I’m gonna end this paragraph. Now, I intend to derisively point out teachers’ faults. Most of these teachers treat their students like crap and an example is Mrs. Train. She treated us like idiots, and though most of the class was, I was not and was deeply offended. To make things worse I never broke a 90 on an essay last year. Now, I know my writing’s not the greatest (it is pretty good though, don’t you think?) but it’s not so crappy as to never break 90. I also hear from certain sources that Hartman is a prick. Anyway, my teacher this year, Mrs. Coffey, is a pretty horrible teacher. While reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which wasn’t that bad after you got past that it was mostly written in a drug-induced euphoria, she suggested that Kesey was comparing McMurphy to Christ. And though the allusion is clearly present, I doubt Kesey meant to have McMurphy represent Jesus because, quite frankly, he was high. Then she kept talking about it for minutes afterward; minutes are a long time when you’re talking about crap. I’m sure there are many other teachers that pull this crap, too many to even list. So, what have we learned? English is a waste a time. Sure, we read classics such as Julius Caesar but we read a lot more of that aforementioned rubbish. I suggest the curriculum be changed and we read great works such as the Kama Sutra. Hell, we could even act out some of the best parts in class, too bad there aren’t many hot chicks in my English class. And that, my friends, is that. For you idiots, the Kama Sutra is a book displaying sexual positions that are supposed to do something like give great power or endurance if done in a row. |