Daughter number two is about to complete high school. She is a capable student, and she reads with great alacrity. She's not a bad writer either, I like her stuff.
So we were talking about how things have gone at school, as you do, and you know what? What she hasn't studied is truly surprising.
She hasn't 'done' any Shakespeare to date. That's not just this year, that's ever. Nor has she done Christopher Marlowe or Ben Jonson. She had seen T.S. Eliot mentioned in a book she got out of the library, so she had heard of him, and she'd read in a Bernard Cornwell book of Anthony Trollope propping up the leg of a table. She said she recognised the reference as I had recommended him.
She has not heard of Rudyard Kipling, Dylan Thomas or William Blake. No Alfred Lord Tennyson for her. Oh no.
Has Russia ever had an empire? Oh dear, the naivety. Yes child of mine and they have literature too. Lots of it.
What she has spent a lot of time on is writing ugly, no, very ugly creative writing pieces for her NCEA. The teachers train these children to emulate drivel like The Luminaries and The Bone People. I call this creative writing class pitiable and largely worthless crap. But like tame seals they have to do it or get a low grade. Gone is economy and elegance. We'll have none of that the teachers say.
This is bad folks. A very very poor state of affairs.
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