[ SECRET POST #2238 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2238 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 097 secrets from Secret Submission Post #320.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Lets not even go into how frigging ethnocentric it is too.

I've experienced tons of people being all haughty about having read the classics and the classic children's books as if that is any sort of measure for being cultured. Sure, just go ahead judging me for not being educated for not having read Narnia or the Hobbit or whatever other classic you can think of. Cause the reason I did not read them is totally my non-education and not, like, maybe the fact that I was busy reading my own country's classics.

[(Anonymous)]

Ethnocentric? Oh, give me a friggin' break. Now I've heard of everything.

[(Anonymous)]

+infinity, especially for your last sentence. Sorry that my high school reading list consisted of classics by writers from my country instead of the translated version of some Western book.

[(Anonymous)]

You complain about ethnocentric and you then end with Cause the reason I did not read them is totally my non-education and not, like, maybe the fact that I was busy reading my own country's classics.

I guess you didn't read many books on irony then.

SA

[(Anonymous)]

Dude, reading your own countries classics is not a sign of ethnocentrism and I never said that it was. People should feel free to read any classics they want. When you sit there and judge people for not having read your countries classics however (or at least, the books that your country has decided are The Best Classics Ever) then yes, you are being a dick. Because, you know, the world is a huge place and each culture has its own classics.

[(Anonymous)]

True that, and I (as a Westerner) would never judge someone from a different country for not knowing my country's classics. But I do judge people from my own country who have zero interest in their own culture.

[(Anonymous)]

Um, you do realise that many 'classics' are from other countries, being translations into English, and your point is therefore considerably weakened?

[mekkio]

This.

For every East of Eden (US), you have One Hundred Years of Solitude (Columbia) For every The Prince (Italy), you have The Art of War (Chinese). For every The Color Purple (US), you have Cry, the Beloved Country (South Africa).

[corellianrogue]

While this is true of many European countries, we sadly lack much education in literature from places other than North America and Europe. It wasn't until I was in college that I was exposed to certain Indian or Chinese classics (even though I still can't spell them, I'm sorry.)

So if the anon were from, say, China, and reading Three Kingdoms and Journey to the West instead of Crime and Punishment and Lord of the Flies, but then were judged because they hadn't read the latter books, I think is what they're getting at.

...There's something wrong with that sentence, but my brain refuses to let me fix it. I apologize to anyone who reads it. Basically, Classical Literature as most of the West defines it really is the 'Dead White Guys Club' so to speak. Not that it makes them bad books, but I see where the anon was coming from.

[elephantinegrace]

Oh my goddess, Journey to the West...so many memories. Most of them involve falling out of a tree trying to act out scenes from it with my classmates. -facepalm-

[corellianrogue]

Bwaha, that's awesome. I only read it maybe a couple years ago, but I was doing it while working a soul-sucking job, so it took me FOREVER to get through.

My classmates and I usually just injured ourselves trying to act out Disney movies. XD

[chardmonster]

Hey the Harlem Renaissance happened and it's in most school curriculums now.

[corellianrogue]

Very good point. Not that it was included in MY school curriculum, but I'm from the middle of nowhere, USA, so that's not exactly surprising. We had two Lit classes - British and American, and the American one was basically all Hemingway and Steinbeck.

I tend to forget that larger schools actually manage well-rounded educations.

[(Anonymous)]

and on the opposite side is schools like mine being forced to read and think about all these old 'classics' from the Dead White Guys Club and wonder what our culture and stories were like in the same time period.
But apparently the stories of our culture are not big enough classics to analyse

So we're stuck slodging out way through Animal Farm, Pride and Prejudice and To Kill a Mockingbird and asked to interpret it and we could get the main gist but we don't know the history of that countries and it was so frustratingly tedious trying to draw the parallels with another countries history and those books.

It pisses me off so much. So when I think of classics I tend to think of those and can't bring myself to give a shit. It's associated with all the resentment and boredom and frustration I remember

and as an adult it also frustrates me because it's representative of the..westernisation of our countries and how white countries culture can sometimes be prioritised over our own culture and it makes me so angry that we're losing our history and identity to that in our history and english classes.

[elephantinegrace]

You fell victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is never get involved in a land war with Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never claim that Western classics are short when War and Peace is roughly the size and weight of a baby hippopotamus!

(If you've never seen The Princess Bride, I'm going to feel really, really stupid.)

relmneiko, too lazy to log in

[(Anonymous)]

...I have seen it, but it was a very long time ago. I wish I got that joke. XP

[(Anonymous)]

It still comes down to a list of books decided by one culture as 'the greatest ever' being used to judge people for not reading it. Which I consider ridiculous enough to begin with even within that culture. Someone can be amazingly read without ever having read a single classic book! It just chafes me even worse when people get so snobby about these classics that they don't even take a minute to think, hey wait, maybe the reason people haven't read this particular classic in high school is cause there is a whole world out there with different books they consider top notch reading for high school.

[grainne_mhaol]

I kinda feel like I've travelled through a time warp to the 80s in this thread.

'The work of worthy old dead white men' really hasn't been the defining criteria of "The Classics" for some time now. We've been working really hard on that.

[(Anonymous)]

Might it be a location thing? I'm not sure exactly how the school system works in the states, but is there a possibility that just cause there is a general push to making classics lists more than just dead white dudes, not every high school is actually following that?

I know around here you'd sometimes need everything short or actual force to get schools to change something they feel was totally working for everybody (even when it was not). Because, you know, status quo is so much easier than effort to change something. If there is no really force for getting high schools to change reading lists, I could definitely see many sticking to the same stuff they've always taught.

[lunabee34]

And thank goodness for that.

My high school English teacher was 92 when I was in her class...

[nyxelestia]

...so the old, dead white guys standard was still very strong in her class.

Though it also depends on where you are. Certainly in almost my entire school, that was largely the standard of "classics" literature. We got only a smattering of literature from women and minorities, and even an extremely vague overview of some major religious/influential literature from other cultures, but these were presented not as classics that we should know to function in society, but rather as extras that were just meant to "broaden our horizons" in some capacity.

And I graduated high school two years ago, so this is a fairly recent thing.

[(Anonymous)]

If you were reading your own country's classics you're reading classics, ffs. I'm sorry if you met assholes who don't know world literature, but most literature loving people consider things like Journey to the West, the Ramayana, Rumi's poetry, and whatever else you might be reading as just as valid.