On twitter people are talking about whether books from prior to 1970 are too difficult to read. This is what a generation of valuing STEM over the humanities has done to us.
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I wonder how many people that read that today think the opening line is describing a blue sky rather than a dirty grey and white static due to how TVs work now.
They often are really hard to read, and this is coming from a lifetime reader and writer who excels with English reading comprehension, grammar, and vocab. I don't really know how to explain to you that linguistics evolve over time and therefore pre-mid 20th century writing is now foreign to us!
I saw that and I am flummoxed! I know I'm old, but I've been reading literature much older than 50 years my entire reading life, so about that same length of time. SMDH..
I remember talking with an engineer student friend who was telling me what their special English course was like. He was so pissed off because they wouldn't LET him take a real English course. He was stuck only allowed to underline the noun in a sentence for a couple months in his first year.
trying to assistant teach a unit on dystopian fiction at a high school was absolutely grim. i had to eventually result to memeifying everything to get them to comprehend the themes. trying to teach in "shaka, when the walls fell" instead of academic English.
I dropped out of film school after my sophomore year but I'm very grateful for the media studies I *did* get. I'm a SWE now but a diverse liberal arts education has saved me from the darker paths of my chosen profession
a younger youtuber I sometimes talked about how she found older books talked around things while modern books talk about things and I thought that was an interesting way of putting it
Then I remember all those tiktoks with kids complaining about how learning metaphor in English Class was useless
I've always found that older books are less afraid to meander into details and less afraid to play with prose. Modern writing feels obsessed with the idea that prose should be invisible and scene setting minimal. Basically a movie in text form
That might be due to the commercial reality of getting something sold. Making something that has a decent chance of being adapted could be a strategy for making ends meet.
I can really REALLY see the value in these so-called useless degrees now that the world has mostly abandoned the humanities at large. Turns out we do need to be thinking about and processing this shit.
tbh one of the most important moments in my education at Mutual College was seeing one of my STEM friends struggle to do basic analysis of a text in a creative writing class we were in together. almost like these are skills we have to learn and is just as valuable as like, biochem
These are the same people who rail against learning cursive writing... my thought is always, "if you can't read source documents, they can tell you it says whatever they want it to." Which seems to be playing out in the firing of fact-checking and Leon attacking Wikipedia.
im an executive assistant lol. but i did finish writing my novel last year! not shopping it or anything atm. so like, at least im getting some enrichment out of it
It's going to be interesting to see who ends up being the global educational powerhouse over the next decade. That was one of this country's prize jewels. It's why the best in the world came here
This whole thing is particularly funny to me because I’m a big fan of old pulp novels.
There are some meatier stories mixed in that could be a bit hard to read for a child but even the greats like Lovecraft were writing for an audience with a 9th grade reading level so almost anyone could read it.
Old books like Tarzan, A Prince of Mars, and Call of Cthulhu, are classics for a reason but they’re not challenging reads. They’re famous for having really creative, if sometimes derivative, plot lines not because they’re written in masterful prose.
ever since my education courses taught about "STEAM" (science tech arts engineering math) ive been like. why the fuck have we not been incorporating this as a part of it everywhere!!!!!!! they can and SHOULD work hand in hand!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i guess i can see that but i kinda see it more as just a single word term to define using what students are learning in one subject to help strengthen their learning in another area, esp if it's one they excel at, but also to help them understand better using things they already know
arts is just a catch-all so it can literally be the YA novels you get them to read and then attaching that to like, idk a project where they have to try and redesign something in a story in a way that might work better, or at the bare minimum, what they would change, how they would, and why
for older age groups you can turn that into fine arts, it depends on the age group really, and what you're covering, but i think there's room for all kinds of art
I personally have disliked that term, as it implies they are all the same, but I'd rather they be separate things that work together? Kinda like peanut butter and chocolate working in tandem better than just alone. That's just one opinion though, STEAM isn't harming anyone lol
honestly that's fair, it's just a lot easier to describe it as "STEAM" since the alternative is a lot wordier. the classes i had basically just made them separate things that worked in tandem, the prof just used STEAM because that's something that's easy to understand immediately
STEAM isn't just adding art to a STEM curriculum, it's teaching STEM more like how art classes are taught. More hands on, more giving students starting info and then letting them try to figure things out on their own. Learning methods of finding the info instead of just learning the info directly
The "A" in STEAM is as much of a lie as the word "career" in "our high school students should be college- and career-ready." It's technically there, but it really isn't used to do anything different.
I like positioning an opposite acronym of LEAF, Language, Education, Arts, Fourth Thing (I think it was either philosophy or function/civics/home studies) but as an arts major I'm cynical about arts proximity to thr tech industry
well yeah, that's fair, but there's ways to integrate art into tech lessons w/o involving modern day shenanigans. doesnt have to be grandstanding connections, can even be as simple as "use MS paint to draw something and draw the same thing using paper, note the differences" for a younger age group
Yeah the relationship has absolutely changed since like the 90s. Like shifting the focus from AI art to more equitable blender education and facilitation for 3D printers owners would be a great example of a positive connection
most other teachers and schools i know (at least in my area) are kinda anti-AI to begin with so it's definitely easier to try and work things into that sort of angle. some libraries have access to 3D printers so you could even use that as an example, depending on the area
That’s fucking disturbing! Recency bias (and as you mention devaluing the humanities) is limiting people’s understanding of the world, empathy and curiosity!!!
i majored in engineering in college but minored in literature, and at the time everyone was like "you're gonna regret that when you never use it." anyway jokes on them, instead i regret it bc i sometimes feel like i'm going insane!
One of my fondest memories is how my students lost their minds as I read aloud the Plaza scene of Great Gatsby. The melodrama holds up and the tension of that scene holds up regardless of the age of the text.
I just had a conversation with a bunch of engineers that was basically all of college except the things I needed were garbage. Well send your kids to coding boot camps then & stop complaining about the cost of tuition if you don’t value any of those skills.
You want you kids to have a college degree? Why? Because it’s suppose to have a return on investment? Why is a college degree valuable? Oh is it because of the prestige that comes from the scholastic achievements of people who you don’t respect?
this is breaking my brain. It's so stupid on such a basic level. Like... do they know that even today, some books are hard to read and some are easy to read? And some 100-year-old books are easy to read and some are hard to read??
I think I'm going to eternally regret doing comp sci but there is no way at the time I could've justified doing history, my favourite, or actually trying to get an education in art
Giovannis Room is a 1956 novel and far from difficult but it rocked me to my core.
One crazy thing about this is how much EASIER those books are to read now than they were 20 years ago.
There are some older books where I used to need to google stuff regularly (either dated vocab or cultural touch stones I didn't have). Now ereaders make this nearly completely painless!
You're right about the atrophy of the humanities, but it isn't like there's been a commensurate increase in scientific understanding. If anything, science has become a cargo cult among lay people, and they understand very little of even the basics
We desperately need the humanities as a society. We need folks who have a comprehensive understanding of civics and ethics. Citizens who can engage and appreciate the arts. Education should focus on both the development of the individual as a whole person and societal benefit of learned citizens.
It's a shame, when I went into chemical engineering there were lots of really well read and artistic old guard and even my cohort had rich and varied hobbies. You went into STEM because you had passion, and passion for one thing usually meant passion for many things. Now STEM is a career trajectory.
this is what 2 generations of digital distractions have done for us, we can talk shit about how much we read more better than these kids nowadays but you shoved an ipad in my hands in 1985 I'd never have read a single book ever
It’s like when people brag about how old musicians were better because “they used real instruments”. You know damn well if FL Studio existed back in the 1960s every musician on Earth would be using it.
I saw this discourse on FB and someone gave Tolkien as an example of someone who would be difficult for people to read. Tolkien, the guy who wrote a trilogy I read in middle school.
Being a kid in school who was good at history and English and just being told I was a stupid piece of shit because I wasn’t good at chemistry and math.
I strongly disagree with the take that STEM focus has anything to do with this. This is not a zero sum issue.
Is find it far more likely that anyone that has difficulties with pre-1970 books, will have far more difficulties with basic high school maths or science...
To be fair, I picked up a 1970s book on direct action and worker solidarity, and it was easily the most over-written big-words-for-no-reason book I've ever tried to chew on. And I am a -voracious- reader.
Lots of books from the 18th and 19th centuries remain extremely readable. It's when the sort of modern expository English prose we still use today really crystallized. Old doesn't automatically equal difficult.
I was referring more to Shakespeare sort of stuff, but I forgot that was the 14th century LOL. To be fair, a lot of my generation probably doesn’t remember when he was born either
media literacy, critical theory, a critical lens and the skill of careful, close reading are SO important, and so neglected in our current primary curriculum
we don't teach folks how to interrogate and vet information, how to analyze for bias and hidden meaning, it's just ROUGH
I teach kids at a STEAM makerspace and one of my favorite things to teach is 3D modeling for 3D printing. Like it’s a perfect combo of tech and also helping kids be creative in what they’re sculpting. Adding the A is super important
It’s a further step on the way to making schooling only have labor purposes. The plebs who work in the mines don’t need that , and once we hollow out democracy enough they don’t need it for voting either. Better they focus on things that bring money and let the elite be burden by all this literature
I wonder if they're judging more complex "literary" fiction that is considered "classic" against the entirety of more recent fiction (ranging from more complex to shorter, simpler paperbacks). Kinda the inverse of people being nostalgic for old music because they're only listening to the hits.
Have you ever listened to Sold a Story? There’s a lot of people who grew up being taught to read badly, and it’s going to screw up a whole generation of people.
What a weird year to pick. I'd go back to at least early 19th century and it's more that the pacing and dialect has changed. Once a reader gets in the rhythm of the dialect everything becomes easier. Looking at you Chaucer and Edmund Spenser and Henrey Fielding
My wife and I read it out loud during the pandemic and we were laughing out loud nearly every page. The book is hilarious. Makes me sad for people that can’t enjoy it. (for context, I’m 41 and have a BA in English).
We can't have the class reading list determined by what a majority of the students think is interesting. Whatever it is they've found to be interesting is only because they're already familiar with it. The point of the class is to challenge them to expand the range of what they find interesting.
Too many people give up at first word they don’t understand or if it’s not action packed. Books take us anywhere we want to go. The more one reads, the easier it becomes, the easier it becomes, the more one understands, the more one understands, the more one wants to read. A lovely viscous circle.
A buddy of mine who became a staunch mrna vaccine enemy during covid called me a couple months back to ask me what m-rna is and there are many people who think humans rode around on dinosaurs.
Like, I get what you are saying, but it's not like stem is valued highly either.
It's infuriating. One of my biggest pet peeves in the world of speculative fiction is how many people dismiss recommendations from before like 1990 if it's not Tolkien, Asimov, or Herbert.
From my PoV, we've steadily refined the storytelling to be as attention-grabbing and keeping as possible. Going back from, say, The Expanse to Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep is like going from refined sugar back to sugar cane itself. The sugar cane didn't stop being sweet, but it's not the same.
one of the wild parts about that thread was the guy saying "Hemingway is fine though" as if that's not telling us this guy 1) can't read a sentence that's longer than three words and 2) doesn't understand that Hemingway's style was a distinct, artistic choice
the funny read on that is how many of those movies have a lot of core problems that could have been solved if the protagonist had a cell phone so its hard to relate to it
Wouldn't put the blame on STEM; seems increasingly like no-one under the age of 35 cares about books, films or any other media, together with events that happened prior to 1970; or learn anything from them
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I saw that and I am flummoxed! I know I'm old, but I've been reading literature much older than 50 years my entire reading life, so about that same length of time. SMDH..
Then I remember all those tiktoks with kids complaining about how learning metaphor in English Class was useless
There are some meatier stories mixed in that could be a bit hard to read for a child but even the greats like Lovecraft were writing for an audience with a 9th grade reading level so almost anyone could read it.
What.
What?
Giovannis Room is a 1956 novel and far from difficult but it rocked me to my core.
There are some older books where I used to need to google stuff regularly (either dated vocab or cultural touch stones I didn't have). Now ereaders make this nearly completely painless!
oh no
Is find it far more likely that anyone that has difficulties with pre-1970 books, will have far more difficulties with basic high school maths or science...
There's a valid trend there to be considered.
But I don't disagree with you.
I was referring more to Shakespeare sort of stuff, but I forgot that was the 14th century LOL. To be fair, a lot of my generation probably doesn’t remember when he was born either
we don't teach folks how to interrogate and vet information, how to analyze for bias and hidden meaning, it's just ROUGH
The quality of human being left on Twitter can barely read the "Do Not Drink This Antifreeze" labels aimed at them.
Stop treating kids like they're dumb and can't possibly find literature entertaining
Like, I get what you are saying, but it's not like stem is valued highly either.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLawOfConservationOfDetail