SF and Education

I've been contributing to another thread that went askew and onto the topic of literature education and I began wondering about the connection between science fiction and education.

For the literature teachers out there: do you use science fiction in the classroom? If so, what books do you use and how? Are they on your district's or school's recommended curriculum? What has the response been from student, parents, and other teachers?

For everyone else, did you ever have a teacher that used science fiction? I realize there are a few classics (Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, Orwell's 1984, Huxley's Brave New World, etc), but anything else?

Just wondering ...

I'm using 1984 in a Modern European History class this spring, by the way.

No science fiction outside of the usual during my secondary education, just Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451. My district didn't do Ender's Game. (Despite my lukewarm opinion, it wouldn't have been the worst thing I read--my freshman year teacher had us read John Grisham and Clive Cussler, for God's sake.)

In middle school, we did read a bit of fantasy--Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series.

As a student I saw more of it in middle school. The YA elements of the genre seem to be more appealing to educators than the more adult books. Its a shame, given there are some really great authors out there who never get approached as a result.

My sister is a philosophy professor. In introductory courses, she has used episodes from Star Trek to illustrate basic concepts such as Cartesian duality. trying to meet the students on their own turf I guess. She says it works quite well.

I went to high school in a monastery. You would think we might have read A Canticle for Leibowitz, but I think the closest we got to SF (and I contend it's not all that far off) was The Odyssey.

My senior year English teacher, God bless her, allowed me to use The Lord of the Rings as my semester major novel outside read. A friend had just brought Ballantyne's first paperback edition in the US back from Chicago at the beginning of the school year, and I devoured it in three days. AND she accepted for my "original" story for the year a terrible derivative science fiction story based half on Simak's Time is the Simplest Thing (I trade with you my mind!) and I forget what the other half was. Mrs. Haas was the toughest teacher in the school, and so this was really evidence of her broad mind. We did have a love of poetry in common, especially Dylan Thomas' Fern Hill. (And yes, for those of you checking publication dates, that would have been 42 years ago.)

One of my favorite high school teachers had us read Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank and On the Beach by Nevil Shute.

We were given Flowers for Algernon in english class. It was the novella version, and we'd have been in grade 8 or 9, I'm guessing.

we also had Flowers of Algernon, novella, included w/in the textbook. Had an awful lot of Melville and Conrad. Put me off Melville for good (except for a few poems), sadly..but i like Conrad.

Well, I was homeschooled all my life, and every year we'd take part in the Book-It campaign thing from Pizza Hut. We designed our own reading program, and we actually had to read ten science fiction books, ten fantasy, ten historical fiction, ten nonfiction, etc. And any time during the year if we needed to a read "a book" for a requirement, we could read any book we wanted.

The only science fiction on the required list in my classes was George Orwell, Aldus Huxley, and H G Wells. A lot of people ended up with exposure to Jules Verne and Ray Bradbury as well. At most of the schools I went to, science fiction wasn't considered proper reading material unless it was one of the classics.

I think We by Zamyatin would lend itself incredibly well to discussions in history, political or social studies classes. It could be used to discuss how students view their relationships with their government and their fellow citizens. I don't see this book mentioned very often on these boards but I feel it would be important. There is also a really good collection of his essays translated into English called A Soviet Heretic that would also work.

I found a new use for LT. I thought I had a copy of We but wasn't sure, so I checked my library on LT and sure enough, it confirmed that indeed I do possess a copy.

Now where the hell did I put it?

I'm a teacher of special ed, typically to HS students, often to students who don't see the value of reading.

So, yeah, I teach science fiction and fantasy. Books I've taught that haven't made it to this list yet:

"Mountains of Mourning" by Lois McMaster Bujold

short stories and _The Blue Girl_ by Charles de Lint

I taught the short story "Flowers for Algernon" and the text I sometimes used had short stories by Bradbury, Asimov & Clarke.

In 7th grade, we read what I think was "Rain, Rain, Go Away" by Isaac Asimov and an excerpt from Jurassic Park. In some other class (6th grade? 8th?) we read Flowers for Algernon. I don't recall any other sci-fi.

Never read sf in school as part of a required reading list. Outside of school, I was reading sf since the 6th grade - some Scholastic books, the Doc Savage series, and later real sf - Asimov, Clement, Dune, Cities in Flight.

In grade 7 English we actually read Tunnel in the Sky honestly I'm not really sure why they picked that one for the curriculum (Alberta the mid-90s).

I teach a university cognitive science and science fiction course... this semester I am using all short stories - some of them found by this groups recommendations.

Authors represented include Brin, Heinlein, Asimov, Egan, Chiang, Lem among others.

Peter, how is that working out for you?

When my kids were in High school the principal took an English class to help out. She took a class of the slower students (all below grade readers) and used the book Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (she even payed for the books herself). They read, analized, talk about plot devices wrote essays, book reports etc. After that she took them to the movie and they had to write a paper comparing the book and movie.

Author/Editor Julie E. Czerneda has published a series of SF Anthologies for use in classrooms via the Canadian publisher Fitzhenry & Whiteside.

The most recent, Polaris: A Celebration of Polar Science, won a journalism award from the Canadian Science Writer's Association.

I have to confess, though, I know about the series because Julie bought one of my stories for it, not because I encountered it myself in a schoolroom setting.

In school I remember doing Dark is Rising, Z for Zachariah, There will come soft rains, Flowers for Algernon, Requiem for a Princess, Visitors, Dolphin Boy, Under the Mountain and possibly Brave New World. Other sfnal books included Lord of the Flies and various Roald Dahl horror stories.

I used Left Hand of Darkness for an exernal exam in sixth form, but it wasn't the book we'd studied for it in class. But I know there were multiple copies of Tombs of Atuan in the bookroom, so that must have been used for other classes.

Midsummer Night's Dream was one of the commonly used Shakespeares, and MacBeth and Hamlet, all of which have fantasy elements.

In Jr High (called Middle School now) we read:
Brave New World
Fahrenheit 451
Flowers for Algernon
Planet of the Apes

-- John

Gene-

Well to be honest- I am not sure. It seems like it is going over well - we question the basic assumptions that most individuals go through life (subjectivity of time as flowing, definition of life, objective reality of our subjective experience).

I think they are finding it interesting.. and I am enjoy talking about these issues. But Ive been fooled before- so we shall see.

Upcoming SF reading is:

Egan's Learning to Be Me and The Walk
Chiang's What's Expected of Us?
Borges's Borges and I (ok not technically SF)
Dennett's Where Am I? which I would argue is philosophical SF.

When I was in school in Texas in the late 60s, I had The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe read to me in 4th grade; then in 5th grade it was A Wizard of Earthsea; then in junior high/middle school, we read Flowers for Algernon, Planet of the Apes, and Animal Farm. Our drama class read aloud, then enacted, several Star Trek scripts. That was cool. (I got to be Chekhov.)

High school brought Alas, Babylon, 1984, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Fahrenheit 451.

Outside reading in SFnal fields was rampant, of course!

>25 richardderus:

Wow! That's an incredible list of SF for in-school reading. It's also an interesting progression from moral to social commentary.

And Star Trek enactments? Holy Cow! I'd love to see that in my school.

Read SF and some day you may get a Nobel too!

A great moment on the PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer tonight, when new Nobel Laureate in Economics Paul Krugman was asked by Lehrer what inspired him to become an economist. Krugman replied it was reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation series as a teenager, and seeing how social scientists saved galactic civilization.

If I recall correctly, we read Flowers for Algernon, Animal Farm, 1984, Anthem, A Canticle for Leibowitz, and I think Lord of the Flies. That was in the late 70s-early 80s.

Lord of the Flies was apparently mandatory reading...even in the mid 60s..we had it and Animal Farm in HS..but i don't really think of either as SF. Flowers for Algernon in JrH was about it for us.
(well, we did have Heart of Darkness..who knows how to categorize that one..except under bleak)

I prefer to categorize Heart of Darkness as transcendent.

transcendentally bleak..that'll do.

Late 60s, high school, we also read Orwell's1984 and Huxley's Brave New World. Another one was Karel Capek's R.U.R. Rossum's Universal Robots. I think there must have been others but can't recall what they were offhand. We changed literature classes each term. They were all based on a theme of some sort and we chose which ones we took. Pretty progressive for its day, I think. I loved it.

I didn't read any science fiction or fantasy in school

The _only_ science fiction I remember reading in 12 years of school was The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury. This was in our English book in the 11th grade. Science fiction was considered trash by the English teachers in my school.

I will say that there was science fiction in the school library such as The Sioux Spaceman and Vandals of the Void.

Edited for Touchstone

My high school (Los Angeles county, mid-1970's) offered an elective English course in science fiction, which I took. We read R.U.R. and The Martian Chronicles, but the first thing she had us read was Ellison's short story "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream". I'm sure this warped me for life.

My standard English class read 1984.

I was also going to teach {Slaughterhouse V} which is on my State's list of recommended HS literature and instead decided to teach the thematically similar YA, much easier to read {Sherman Alexie}'s {Flight}, which isn't on the list because it's brand new.

Of course, Vonnegut hated that people consider his books science fiction.

Anayanwu, if you're trying to use touchstones, use the square brackets rather than the curly brackets (they're on the same keys on my keyboard). Also, author touchstones use double brackets, but often work better bracketing just the last name (and sometimes won't work at all).

I am not a teacher but I remember reading Arthur C. Clarke long before I understood that satellite technology keeps my cell phone on time. Physics, chemistry you name it -- classic sci fi has concepts that help explain the world. I'm ready to accept robots too, why: because I enjoyed Asimov and his R. Daneel Olivaw.

Hello Edgewood,

I read in my early twenties and never forgot that ellison. Last month, I casually picked up and bought an anthology of his based on the memory. Now at a grandmotherly 61 I can't stomach his style -- too raw and brutal.

Hello,
Stand on Zanzibar influenced my choice of husbands!! Dystopian but I remember that it has references to Africa. What do you think of John Brunner?

Hi rgkb1,

Yep, Ellison has an intense approach. I do think he appealed more to me as a young person. But not all of his stories are brutal. Some are tender & charming (Jefty is Five), playfully rebellious ("Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman), and humorous (I'm Looking for Kadak, Prince Myshkin and Hold the Relish).

In addition to these, some other favorites I recall (though admittedly on the intense side of his spectrum) are Mefisto in Onyx, Shattered Like a Glass Goblin, & Crotoan.

I attended Gore High School in southern New Zealand in the 1970s, and one year (I think it may have been the sixth form = Year 12 in the NZ system) we took a break from our diet of Dickens and Shakespeare and studied The Day of the Triffids - pretty durn radical for the time and place.

We did Z for Zachariah and Farenheit 451, Z was dreadful, hated it.

rgkb1 - I'm curious as to how John Brunner (Great book by the way. Lost my copy have to get another), influenced your breeding habits. Boggle, boggle, boggle (that's my mind boggling).

We didn't read much SciFi in middle or high school. When I got to college there was an Introduction to Astronomy course that I wanted to take. In addition to the textbook "The cosmic Perspctive", the book list for the class was Nightfall by Asimov, Have Spacesuit, Will Travel by Heinlein, Red Planet by Heinlein, Tunnel in the Sky by Heinlein, Out of the Silent Planet by Lewis, From the Earth to the Moon by Verne, and First Men in the Moon by Wells. There was also the option of reading Mars by Bova, {Mars Underground by Hartmann and Red Mars by Robinson.
The assignment for the books was to read the SciFi with an eye towards what made it Science Fiction. We had to find 5 things in the book that were supported by the science taught in the class. We had to find items in the book that directly contradicted the science taught in the class and explain why it was incorrect and how the author used the inconsistency to his advantage

Cont. from previous message.

We had to find examples of technology that we have now that the author didn't forsee and explain how they would change the story if the author had known about these technologies. There were other aspects to the assignment, but these were the ones that focused on integrating the novels with the classwork we were learning and helped the class to apply what we knew to everyday things.
I enjoyed the class so much that I volunteered to help the professor with it for the next 5 semesters.