Facebook: Favorite book you had to read for school?

From our Facebook discussion:

Tell us about your favorite book you had to read for school.

Lark Rise to Candleford, over thirty years ago for a college course on history and culture. I still re-read it periodically, but haven't been able to bring myself to watch the television adaptation because I don't want the delicacy of the book ruined by insertion of a spurious plot. :)

>2 Marissa_Doyle: That looks very interesting and I never heard of before. I'm going to check it out. Thanks for the recommendation.

Still grateful to my high school teachers for having me read All Quiet on the Western Front, The Chyrsalids, The Stone Angel and yes even Catcher in the Rye. We did some good ones in grade school too, before that: Banner in the Sky and Shane.

Not feeling as grateful about the Shakespeare plays, but I'm sure I appreciated it more with teachers to guide me than I would have on my own.

At the time, probably a tie between The Magic Mountain and New Grub Street. Probably because I've long since passed the ideal age to read it I've lost interest in the former but I found it terribly exciting at the time; I'm not so keen on the latter as I was once either but it introduced me to Gissing, whom I am quite keen on.

High school: Frankenstein, or My Antonia. Or Lives of a Cell.

College: The Brothers Karamazov, hands down.

But to be honest, what I had to read, and what I read because I wanted to, are not very distinct groups at this far remove.

>6 southernbooklady: I was thinking that it has been a very long time since I've been in school. I don't remember ever being assigned a "book" to read during school. We read excerpts from textbooks, usually depressing. I was an avid reader in spite of it.

I'd been reading along on this thread, and suddenly realized that I *did* have a book that I would not have discovered, had it not been part of assigned reading in a humanities class. Pascal's Pensees (loosely translated as Pascal's Thoughts) introduced me to a different set of classical authors than I'd thought about, and I might not have discovered Descartes had there not been a Blaise Pascal to encourage me to do so.

Some classics I read in school that I liked -

Christmas Carol
David Copperfield
I liked Dickens and read others after these.

Silas Marner was another assigned book that I liked.

To Kill a Mockingbirg by Harper Lee ... and it remains my all-time favorite book, some 50 years after high school!

Must have been The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde or The Plague by Albert Camus.

On the other hand I despised Lord of the Flies that they made us read when we were 12 or 13 or so.

I had to read King Solomon's Mines, Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird and 1984 on my own, after disappointment when they were 'considered but not selected' readings for classes I was in.

Most of all, I loved reading Shakespeare in school. I had enjoyed seeing plays before, but that taught me the advantages of reading them. Our teacher had us read them out loud, reassigning roles every lesson (if not more often) and hearing the different ways a given character could be played was a revelation. And Mark Anthony's funerary oration in Julius Caesar - we read it at least 5 different ways, and it changed how I listened to politicians forever.

But if you want prose: then The Chrysalids. We read To Kill A Mockingbird too, of course; but from the perspective of a British school, with a fairly international set of classmates, the whole idea that a man might be automatically convicted of a crime simply because of his skin colour seemed frankly bizarre. It was John Wyndham who explained to me how racism and bigotry work.

Most hated school text: Brighton Rock by Graham Greene. Whoever thought a book with such latently misogynistic undertones was a good choice for a class of teenage girls?

I read I, Claudius for my Western Civ class in college -- it's a book that I read for school, that I might not otherwise have discovered. I read a lot of enjoyable books in various English classes, but I also would have read many of those for fun. Claudius is an example of an assigned book that I really enjoyed.

>14 foggidawn: Memo to self: "school" has a different meaning in American English! :-D

>15 Guanhumara: I think most people would think of grades K-12 as "school" here in the US, but I saw other responses above including books read in college, and it is still schooling, just at a higher level.

>16 foggidawn: My comment was not intended as any criticism of your post; rather it was a wry acknowledgment that you caused me to realise that I may have misunderstood the intent of the OP.

Nevertheless, I disagree strongly with your statement it is still schooling, just at a higher level. "Schooling" means being educated by being taught knowledge, whereas a college education - I assumed this meant a university equivalent, not an F.E. college - consists of learning how to study and acquire knowledge for oneself. Attendance at lectures is purely optional, after all!

>17 Guanhumara: Interesting -- I wouldn't have made that distinction, because I think the line is more blurry in actuality, though your description may be the ideal. (And some of my university professors would, in fact, fail students who missed a certain percentage of lectures -- but I went to a small school, so I'm not sure how that compares to larger institutions here in the US.)

>18 foggidawn: I am coming to the conclusion that your education system is very different to ours. Here it would be impossible for a professor - or any university lecturer - to display such personal vindictiveness as you describe; we take it for granted that our examination papers are anonymised before marking, and the results scrutinised by examiners external to the university.

I was aware of the great difference at school level - I believe your school results are assessed by the teachers rather than external examiners? - but hadn't realised that this approach persisted into higher education!

Actual incident that happened to me; I requested my history professor (1st year university) advise me on how I might have improved my submitted paper. He glanced through it for approximately ten seconds, made a "hum" noise, scratched off his rating and marked it up 5%, handed it back. I learned nothing from this encounter except how arbitrary the system is. Or what a hurry he was in to get rid of me, one or the other. Both, probably.

>19 Guanhumara: It's been quite a few years since my university days but I recall that each professor set his or her own requirements. Some were very laid back and others were strict about attendance. They included this information in the syllabus or during the first class. There was no personal vindictiveness or animus involved. They told us upfront how they ran their class and we were graded accordingly. (It was probably a good lesson for some students; employers have been known to dock pay if you don't show up.)

>21 Taphophile13: Yes, this. The percentage of lectures you were expected to attend was in the syllabus (if that was a requirement they were interested in tracking; some didn't bother).

>20 Cecrow: & >21 Taphophile13:: Thank you both for the elucidation. Am I correct in understanding that
i) your examiners know whose papers they are marking, so there is not even the most basic protection against unconscious bias on the part of the assessor?
ii) there is no external oversight, so a single person on a whim can change a student's result? This would also seem to imply that grades are arbitrary and not normalized?
iii) your degree classification can be affected by factors other than academic excellence?

>23 Guanhumara:
i) As far as I know all professors grade their own students' exams and papers, at least in theory. When I worked part time for a professor I helped make up exam questions and then graded the exams. The only instance of external examiners I ever encountered was during high school when we took national exams—SAT or ACT, also an optional national Latin exam.

ii) No one ever questioned the method. I suppose a professor could have bias but I never heard anyone complain about it.

iii) Grade Point Average determines whether one earned cum laude, etc. so I suppose it is possible that a professor could derail a student's advancement but I have never heard of such malice. Much more common is grade inflation: the slightest effort is worth at least a B. Participation trophies for everyone.

I'd be interested to know more about your experience. How are external examiners selected?

>24 Taphophile13:
School level exams are conducted by external examining boards. These used to be affiliated to various universities, although in recent years they have come to function more or less autonomously. The examiners whom they hire are qualified teachers, usually ones not currently teaching full-time.

At university level, papers are set and marked by the lecturer who gave the course (I have never heard of anyone who did not have tenure participating), but they are anonymised, so he/she does not know whose paper is which.
The results are then normalised, based on the median. (Hence I, for example, once received a grade implying that I had successfully answered over 60% of a paper of which I had actually answered under 30% of the questions! The reason was, of course, that the lecturer setting the paper had mis-estimated how fast it could be completed and I was unusual in having achieved that much - and we all groused at my friend, who had managed around 50% of the paper, thus raising the median raw result and preventing further adjustment.)
The external examiner who oversees this will be an academic in the same field from a different university.

It used to be the case that school exam results (for qualifications, I mean, not the annual internal exams) were normalised at national level - so that getting an A meant you were in the top 10% of your cohort. Some time in the nineties they switched to "raw results", and since then the percentage of A grades has risen steadily each year (which the politicians point to proudly as indicating improved education and employers point to as indicative of lower standards!)

Could you tell me more about what contributes to one's GPA please?

Also, who sets and marks essays, question sheets etc. (i.e. the formative materials)? The lecturer or one's tutor?

>25 Guanhumara: Thank you for your reply—very interesting.

Keep in mind that my experience is from decades ago, and things may have changed. I first encountered "results are then normalised" in fourth grade. We called it grading on the curve. If the highest score was 89 (B+) eleven points were added to everyone's score. That B became an A+ and students who had failed then had a barely passing grade, D or D-. My mother said if the teacher had to grade that way it meant she wasn't doing a very good job.

We also have the case of "grades has risen steadily each year", often called grade inflation or the Lake Wobegone effect from Garrison Keillor's fictional town.

The GPA is the average grade taken from all classes. Letter grades have a numeric value. A=4, B=3, etc. Exams, papers, projects, whatever was assigned are graded and averaged at the end of the semester. In turn the grades from all classes are averaged together to arrive at the GPA. 4.0 would mean an A in every class. My high school gave extra weight to honors classes so some of us graduated with 4.2 or 4.3 GPAs.

As to "who sets and marks essays, question sheets etc", well, in theory, the class professor chooses the textbook, gives the lectures, creates the exams and and sets the parameters for term papers which he then grades. Many do have untenured Assistant Professors who may handle most of the lectures and tests. Tutors for high school students are teachers hired by the parents because their child is not doing well in school. At university level it is usually another student who is good at a certain subject and will give extra instruction to other students as a way to earn money.

>25 Guanhumara: No-- tutors in the sense of the British college/university system don't exist in American universities.

Ok. So, no tutorials, but instead compulsory classes given by teachers who set and mark homework - foggidawn's description of university as a continuation of high school makes more sense now.

Yes and no. Each major (and minor) has required classes, but also elective classes so that students can focus their area of study. And each university might have classes that everyone must take, or requirements that can be filled by a variety of classes--so a student majoring in a science will probably also have to take at least a handful of humanities-type classes, and vice versa.

You mean that you don't have some compulsory and some optional subjects in high school?

No. I meant that not all university classes are compulsory--that it varies from major to major and within majors. Your wording in >28 Guanhumara: implied that all university classes are compulsory, and they aren't.

>31 Marissa_Doyle: Ah, I understand now. But can you clarify please? My point was that I understood from Taphophile that you could be punished for non-attendance at "classes", which means, in effect, classes - for a given course - are compulsory. Here students are expected to take responsibility for their own learng - so if you decide that further reading is more useful to you than lecture attendance. that's up to you. (of course. if you ignore your tutor's advice and come a cropper in your exams as a result, you will get little sympathy!)

I have been assuming that "class" is your synonym for lecture - is that correct, or does it cover a wider range of activities?

>32 Guanhumara:: Just to throw a spanner in the works, I work at a university in the UK where some departments penalise students for non-attendance at classes (by which I mean lectures, or seminars, or tutorials, or labs - any type of teaching activity).

I'm not sure it is a 'punishment', per se, but on those types of degree programmes, you just can't do as well if you don't turn up. It tends to vary depending on discipline, and these kinds of penalties seem to appear more in areas where you need to learn specific practical skills (e.g. sciences) and are less prevalent in programmes that have lower numbers of contact hours.

>33 pokarekareana: Thanks for the update. My university took practical work as part of the assessment - and so non-attendance made it impossible to fully complete the requirement (I once had the difficult task of trying to support some students who had been suspended for a full term, prior to a University Senate disciplinary hearing - at which they were cleared of any wrong-doing! - and were consequently having extreme difficulty in completing the practical requirement.)

My initial response was based on the assumption that "class" meant lecture - hence my query in my last post! I concur that most technical courses mandate completion of some practical assessments.