#but im not teaching im just invigilating

[sexysilverstrider]

shoutout to my adik who swerved a turn that caused the second picture

[olderthannetfic]

Death of a Salesman anon here

Fucking THANK you for validating me about what a bastard willy loman was. I wish I could say all of that to my english teacher without her taking it as personal sleight

but I also feel like I should clarify. we did have an opt out system. they just didn't let us use it. basically for that assignment what was actually supposed to happen was that students (A level english lit students) could pick literally ANY two books they wanted and compare themes in them for their grade. Except my school was like no youre gonna compare the great gatsby(which i love) and DOAS (which i hate) because the teachers couldnt afford for students to read books they weren't familiar with and then get a low grade from an outside invigilator and make the school look bad. which fair enough but it still makes me mad how I suffered with that play for 6 months when I legit didn't have to. the other section of students got to do cloud atlas and atonement! i would have killed for that!!!

and while we did watch the movie for the play it was overall such an unrelatable story. and for a class of 17/18 year olds a little dry.

sigh. maybe this is more about standardized testing and students getting good grades than it is about creating interest in literature.

also Im very happy and pleasantly surprised that you liked DoaS as a kid. dont hear that often!

--

But that's the point. Aaaaaaaah!

(Your English teacher was a dumbass.)

My school used to have this week where we did trips or random fun classes (we could pick from a selection), and I went up to Ashland, OR a few times. It was one of the plays they were putting on once. I feel like I've seen it on stage another time, but I can't recall exactly when.

With good actors who really play up the toxic dynamic where Willy is like Happy but wants to be Biff (and/or Willy's older brother) and thus has fucked over both his kids and himself, it's a good play. It does probably help that Willy doesn't remind me of any family members though.

I find it extremely dry on the page, and 1940s wangst about the American Dream only speaks to me if it's film noir and cynical as fuck. But if you're 3 feet from the stage and great actors are wringing emotion out of it, it isn't dry at all. I don't think this particular one would work nearly so well on screen.

This does sound like the usual story of standardized testing ruining education. It sucks. What the teachers should have done is read like 4-6 books and told you guys to pick two or told you to pick between 3 possible pairs. I'm sure they could have found something besides just DOAS and TGG that talks about the American Dream. It's not exactly a rare topic in American literature. Heh.

I remember the 6 months issue well too. Even a book one loathes is probably okay if it's a couple of weeks of class. Nobody needs to spend and entire semester on the same work though. That, to me, smacks of forcing kids to read books that are too hard for them still or just crappy teaching.