Poor in Spirit
Ignorance is bliss. That is what our educational system seems to think. Bliss for the politicians, because if the electorate never learns to think, then the electorate can be told what to believe and whom to keep in power. To the electorate's loss. But that bliss also comes at a personal cost to all those educated in it. It means not being aware of intellectual riches to be found in our past and in our literature and culture. Riches that can make life a little more comfortable spiritually. But that implies thinking, and that's dangerous for those in power.
I mentioned one of these past days that I had to read literature from the Spanish Golden Age for my Spanish classes in high school. I casually asked a high school student yesterday if he had read anything by Tirso de Molina or Pedro Calderón de la Barca in school. He thought Calderón de la Barca was a line of designer clothes. The kid is in the equivalent of eighth grade. By then I had already long discovered who Shakespeare and Chaucer had been; the English language's equivalent in authors. I had even had to read a couple of Shakespeare's plays by then. But no, a student in Spain will never have to read any of the most important authors of the Spanish language. They will learn biographical data at a later date. They will also have to learn lists of their works. But they will never have to read even excerpts from those works.
History is in a similar state. Another eighth grader thought the Moors were enemies of the Romans. He also had no idea why 1492 is an iconic year. By the eighth grade I had studied ancient civilizations and American history in primary school. Ancient history will barely be touched here in seventh or eighth grades, and Spanish history will be glossed over later, probably in the last year of obligatory schooling. Contemporary Spanish and world history, including our Civil War, is studied very superficially in an upper grade. Probably that's why a nineth grader that declares himself racist and admires Hitler and Franco thinks that the two dictators should have gotten married and raised kids to follow in their footsteps. I can just imagine suggesting to either of those depraved lunatics same-sex marriage.
Another facet of not learning any history is not knowing anything about the great minds that contributed to knowledge that interests you. In the equivalent of tenth grade, students can start to specialize towards what they will study in college. If you choose to study biology that means it interests you. One who chose biology had no idea who Santiago Ramón y Cajal was. The kid is interested in a career in medicine, but didn't recognize the father of neuroscience. Even though that Nobel Prize laureate happened to have been Spanish.
I suppose in part I am being a little harsh. I grew up curious and interested in literature and history. I did a lot of reading on my own. Still, most of my classmates even in primary were also curious and avid readers. A favorite book in sixth grade was Huckleberry Finn. Almost everybody in our class borrowed it to read. A year or two earlier most of the girls had already read A Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (boys were put off by the title) and subsequently learned something about the Holocaust. Most sixth graders here don't want to read. If they do, it's books with lots of illustrations and little text. None that I know would want to be bothered with a simpler translation of Huck Finn that wouldn't include the oral character of Twain's original in English. Though my daughter passed through this educational system, she was also curious and would search out additional information that interested her. I think she was the only one in her class to do so. Even so, she was sometimes stopped by well-meaning (?) people. At the high school library she had wanted to check out a book about the Holocaust when she was in seventh grade, but the librarian wouldn't let her, claiming it was too graphic for my daughter and that she wouldn't understand it because she was too young. My daughter and I were, like, huh?
The truth is, I feel sorry for so many kids here that neither learn the treasures of their past, nor are encouraged to seek out information on their own. Their lives will be missing a spark. How boring their thoughts will be.
I mentioned one of these past days that I had to read literature from the Spanish Golden Age for my Spanish classes in high school. I casually asked a high school student yesterday if he had read anything by Tirso de Molina or Pedro Calderón de la Barca in school. He thought Calderón de la Barca was a line of designer clothes. The kid is in the equivalent of eighth grade. By then I had already long discovered who Shakespeare and Chaucer had been; the English language's equivalent in authors. I had even had to read a couple of Shakespeare's plays by then. But no, a student in Spain will never have to read any of the most important authors of the Spanish language. They will learn biographical data at a later date. They will also have to learn lists of their works. But they will never have to read even excerpts from those works.
History is in a similar state. Another eighth grader thought the Moors were enemies of the Romans. He also had no idea why 1492 is an iconic year. By the eighth grade I had studied ancient civilizations and American history in primary school. Ancient history will barely be touched here in seventh or eighth grades, and Spanish history will be glossed over later, probably in the last year of obligatory schooling. Contemporary Spanish and world history, including our Civil War, is studied very superficially in an upper grade. Probably that's why a nineth grader that declares himself racist and admires Hitler and Franco thinks that the two dictators should have gotten married and raised kids to follow in their footsteps. I can just imagine suggesting to either of those depraved lunatics same-sex marriage.
Another facet of not learning any history is not knowing anything about the great minds that contributed to knowledge that interests you. In the equivalent of tenth grade, students can start to specialize towards what they will study in college. If you choose to study biology that means it interests you. One who chose biology had no idea who Santiago Ramón y Cajal was. The kid is interested in a career in medicine, but didn't recognize the father of neuroscience. Even though that Nobel Prize laureate happened to have been Spanish.
I suppose in part I am being a little harsh. I grew up curious and interested in literature and history. I did a lot of reading on my own. Still, most of my classmates even in primary were also curious and avid readers. A favorite book in sixth grade was Huckleberry Finn. Almost everybody in our class borrowed it to read. A year or two earlier most of the girls had already read A Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (boys were put off by the title) and subsequently learned something about the Holocaust. Most sixth graders here don't want to read. If they do, it's books with lots of illustrations and little text. None that I know would want to be bothered with a simpler translation of Huck Finn that wouldn't include the oral character of Twain's original in English. Though my daughter passed through this educational system, she was also curious and would search out additional information that interested her. I think she was the only one in her class to do so. Even so, she was sometimes stopped by well-meaning (?) people. At the high school library she had wanted to check out a book about the Holocaust when she was in seventh grade, but the librarian wouldn't let her, claiming it was too graphic for my daughter and that she wouldn't understand it because she was too young. My daughter and I were, like, huh?
The truth is, I feel sorry for so many kids here that neither learn the treasures of their past, nor are encouraged to seek out information on their own. Their lives will be missing a spark. How boring their thoughts will be.
You went to an exceptional high school.. Often Llara was reading at
ReplyDeleteLatin what a friend was reading at Simmons.
I remember a sink the fish celebration after they finished Old Man and the Sea.
True, our high school was wonderful. But my primary, a parochial school long closed, was also good. I remember the sisters and the lay teachers always encouraged us to read. And the curriculum was more extensive than that of primary here. We studied history. Primary school kids here don't.
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