Erasing history
 

Quote:
Originally Posted by Carl in Tampa
Sadly, there is also the current attempt to remove from all public areas in the South any commemorations of the Civil War; erasing much of our awareness of our history.


I suggest you simply keep up with the news and/or use the web browser on your computer.

One example (among many) would be the action of the city of New Orleans to remove four statues, including a towering statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that has stood at the center of a traffic circle for 131 years. (They are removing it from Lee Circle; haven't gotten around to re-naming the street yet.)

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nati...icle-1.2469436

And, you will find movements throughout the country to obliterate the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia (often erroneously identified as "the Confederate Flag") from public view. There have even been arrests for displaying the flag. (Shades of the Thought Police.)

Use your web search browser and read to your heart's content.

Memory Hole
 

The essay makes my point, that Columbus was transformed from revered to reviled as history accounts were revised and rewritten.

If you will use your web browser you will find accounts of many efforts to rename Columbus Day, which has actually been done in Seattle. One proposal is Indigenous Remembrance Day.

Is Columbus Day destined for Winston Smith's "memory hole?"

You're right. I wasn't thinking globally.

I try to keep up with the news and I do use the web browser. Now I can read to my heart's content. Information is ubiquitous. Remember using the Readers Guide to Periodical Literature in high school? Online I got 12,600,000 results (0.55 seconds) on the Confederate Flag. Writing position papers in high school for me required taking a bus to big city libraries that had the resources to stack the periodicals. Now we have it at home for the price of the internet. It's interesting talking to you.

Catcher in the Rye, Arrowsmith, Beowulf, Vanity Fair--Brooklyn Tech--class of 59

Good point. But does it matter if Washington actually cut down a cherry tree? Does that make him less of a hero if he didn't? It's not as if he claims he cut down the tree in his memoirs and now we are challenging Washington. Researchers challenged the historian's source. I don't think that's rewriting history as much as getting the facts straight. I don't feel like I was being lied to in the second grade or all the other stories about Washington must also not be true.

I think the same could be said about Columbus. He was a flawed man just like the rest of us. And flawed men can do great things. That's the take-away for children. Globally speaking, not everyone in North Korea shares our values in writing history.

Is McCain less of a hero because he got cought? No-he's a national hero deserving respect. Not everyone thinks that way.

this is a good conversation

The core texts from the Bronx HS of Science curriculum. it remains pretty much the same as when I attended it in 1964.
Animal Farm, The Pearl, Of Mice and Men, The Catcher in the Rye, Greek Mythology, The Odyssey, Brave New World/1984, Henry IV Part I/The
Merchant of Venice, Fences/A Raisin in the Sun/Pygmalion,Julius
Caesar/The Taming of the Shrew, The Bad Seed/Inherit the Wind, The Scarlet Letter, Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, Macbeth, Death of a
Salesman/A Streetcar Named Desire, Antigone, Oedipus Rex, The Canterbury Tales, Hamlet/King Lear/Othello.

I founds this list
http://www.bxscience.edu/ourpages/au...ook%20list.pdf

The Bronx High School of Science

I'm guessing your list is for English or the Literature part of the curriculum and this one isn't.

Your list sounds like my HS list as I remember it. I forgot about The Catcher in the Rye. Their 2009 list just seems overwhelming to me. It shouldn't. The graduates must be brilliant.

The world at our fingertips.
 

Yes, we have the world at our fingertips, but.......

(Click on image to enlarge.)

they have a 1400 book list but the ones I listed are part of the tstandard curriculum. yes, we are, thanks. seriously though it is a specialized high school that is science and math oriented with students chosen by entrance exam from the entire city. usually in the top 10 or 20 in the country but always in the top 100.

I don't do reddit or facebook. There not enough time or privacy.
You'll enjoy this.
Bill Gates internet predictions - Tech Insider

Interesting to read how the books required for a high school education 50 to 60 years ago are being held up as somehow the best choices for today's students. I dare say that none of us would have for a moment agreed with any suggestion in the 50's or 60's that we should be reading the same material as was being given to students in the 1890's. We loose our sense of time and all see our youth as the best.. If we could all just get America back to how it was then, because for the most part, it worked for us?

But in the spirit of the topic, public schools... Shakespeare plays, at least one every year beginning in 7th grade, Pride and Prej (yuck), Wuthering Heights (yuck), Billy Budd, Red Badge, Lord Jim, Tom Sawyer and Huck, Ibsen plays, Animal Farm, Mice and Men, Ethan Fromm, Gatsby, Scarlet Letter, Old Man and the Sea, Tale of 2 cities, Great Expectations, Walden, Cry the Beloved Country, Black like Me, Native Son, several Shaw plays, Importance of being Earnest, Dante's Inferno, some Mythology, some Greek Plays like Medea and Oedipus, Abel Sanchez by Unamuno, some short stories by several but I loved Jorge Borges. and I'm sure I'm forgetting more than I'm remembering. I once was given the opportunity to pick a book for a class, Cat's Cradle, so it goes.

The HS graduation rate was below 20% 100 years ago. Who knows what the reading lists were like.

For the last 50 years the rate has been flat at 75%.

Since 1970, the high school graduation rate for 17-year-olds has remained flat

In the mean time College graduation rates went up. I couldn't find 1975-present college graduation rate.

Tom - do you remember what % of your graduating class went to college?

Of a class of 113 graduates, 100% went to college from my school.

All but 1 out of 200+ or -. He lived in my home town, enlisted in the Army and was stationed in Germany. My HS was in Jersey City but a dozen of us lived 10 miles away and took public transportation and walked to get there. It was an all boys HS back then.

.....

I agree with your picks but wanted to acknowledge your reference to Kilgore Trout ( and so it goes) in Kurt Vonnegut's novels-- thanks for the memory
n

I went to two very different private schools and the reading was very different. The first one taught in 3 week blocks you studied one subject (except math and language) at a time. Fiction from the period or historical ficton or mythology was incorporated into the history blocks. The English blocks were divided into genre and or period. Ie science fiction, elizabethian etc. We even had one that was the bible and other religious texts and their effect on other writings. The one that I remember was the Hobbit.
I had dyslexia so reading huge volumes was a problem for me. The second school was Montverde Academy here in Florida and we read the suggested list by the Florida board of ed at the time. Mostly classics which I had already read at the other school. I noticed my nieces in high school were reading Dune I didn't get that till college.

as I remember, we had about 900 in the senior class and 100% college acceptance rate.