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Most high school kids hate history. And I did too, but then I saw the PBS miniseries on the Civil War. Never again did I hate history.
Another sticky thing is Shakespeare. Most kids hate Shakespeare and I did until I had a really good teacher in the 11th grade. My ninth grade teacher was kind of stupid and she taught us about Julius Caesar. We all hated it. But I read it again at another school and I no longer hated it. Ironically, I took English 1A as a freshman and again I had a stupid teacher and I hated Shakespeare again.
I guess any subject can be interesting or boring depending on the teacher. It helps if you like the teacher. If you hate the teacher of chemistry you might hate chemistry the rest of your life.
None. The subjects I enjoyed in school, I've always enjoyed. I didn't always have a great teacher, but that never turned me off a subject I liked (I liked some Shakespeare, but not all Shakespeare...that's true today. It's why I will go watch a performance of Much Ado About Nothing in the park gladly, but will hem and haw and find something else to do if my husband wants to put Coriolanus in the DVD player). T
he few subjects I never enjoyed, well, that never changed. I never did stumble across a newfound appreciation for them. I have never been interested in math-centric coursework, and people have always been quick to point out "If you only had one really good teacher, it could have been different..." My geometry teacher in HS was one of the best teachers I've ever had, and I really enjoyed him. I did better in his class than I'd ever done in a math class before or since. But I never liked it. I liked his teaching, but never did grow to enjoy the discipline. There are teachers who can bring a topic you never had much exposure to to life, sure...but if you really just don't like something, sometimes it really doesn't make a difference who teaches it or how.
I don't have any I hated and now love but I have ones I couldn't do but excelled at in college. I loved math and science in high school but barely passed. In college I was an A student in math and science. It was so much easier in college. They explained things instead of just showing me an algorithm to follow.
Subjects I hated in high school I still hate. English and History are my bottom two. I never came to the conclusions the teachers wanted me to. I learned quickly that my ideas are not the accepted ones in English class and stopped offering them. I wish I'd known about clif notes back then. I could have just avoided reading the books altogether and given the teacher the answer they wanted. You couldn't pay me to take an English class again. What's interesting is that I've never written less than an A paper outside of an English class. Even in high school my papers, outside of English class, got the highest marks. In an English class forget it.
I'm taking the reading diagnostics class the state of Michigan requires right now and I'll take a B because the instructor keeps taking points off because I put the comma outside the parenthesis when it belonged inside the parentheses. This is a post graduate class. I really want to know when the quality of your ideas is more important than APA format? Does that even happen in an English class? Not surprisingly, I'm procrastinating writing my final paper right now, lol. I hate that ideas matter less than format in this class. There doesn't seem to be room for critical thinking in these classes. You just enthusiastically agree with the professor and put everything in APA format if you want to pass. There is so much in this class that I'd like to intelligently debate but I know what will happen to my grade if I don't agree with the teacher. Once bitten twice shy. If the teacher is liberal (and her ideas are VERY LIBERAL), you do NOT express an opposing view. It will be taken as an attack. My experience is that conservative teachers (a rare bird) will entertain them but they'll do everything in their power to prove their point but they don't hold having an original thought against you. They seem to like proving their point and even being proven wrong on occasion. I didn't win many of my arguments with my professors in undergrad (Jesuit university so there were a few conservative professors) but I won a couple.
My students are baffled by me when I tell them I'd rather see a well supported wrong answer than the right answer without explanation. They don't want to have original ideas and I know why. They've been convinced there's only ever one right answer. Like me they've been slapped down too many times for having an original thought. They don't think. They parrot the ideas of others. I do it to get through the grad courses I need to take to keep my license but it's a boring way to be "educated". I miss debates with professors on the commons at my undergrad university. I lost most of them but man did I learn from them. In education classes you're just supposed to accept what the teacher says. Period.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 04-13-2014 at 02:31 PM..
English classes always grade on correct English usage, and that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. In my experience, English and History teachers care the most about that. I wish more teachers cared about it, though.
You couldn't pay me to take an English class again. What's interesting is that
I've never written less than an A paper outside of an English class. Even in
high school my papers, outside of English class, got the highest marks. In an
English class forget it.
I thought I was the only one with that experience...exactly the same experience with me. I hated English class all my life because English teachers always want to micromanage your writing and your ideas, etc etc etc yet in any other class my papers would always get A plus. The English teacher even micromanaged how to keep our notebooks but I refused to do the way he wanted so got a C- for my English notebook. Is it any wonder that now I refuse to read and write in English for pleasure??? And what's ironic is now I read and write fluently in two Asian languages and find it a LOT EASIER to express myself in them than English!
English classes always grade on correct English usage, and that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
Very true. And the use of Cliff notes in lieu of doing the required reading is commonly called "cheating". At least it was in the many years I sat in college actually doing the required reading because I was there to get an education. Meanie professors insisting all of us use proper punctuation. What's up with that? Wait. Come to think of it my second grade teacher made me use proper punctuation. The nerve!
Had I known it was such a strain and I was so special I should have been exempt from having points taken off (since I had so many stunningly unique ideas about "Charlottes's Web" when I was seven) I'd have had my parents march in and tell the teacher, who voted for Nixon for God's sake, she needed to change my grade!
Last edited by DewDropInn; 04-13-2014 at 08:47 PM..
English classes always grade on correct English usage, and that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. In my experience, English and History teachers care the most about that. I wish more teachers cared about it, though.
. The ones that did made my life easier. I was a stickler for proper spelling and grammar when I proof read my kids' papers. I hated hearing "My teacher won't care". I cared.
The best teachers allowed them to write their thoughts out as a rough draft, and then apply the necessary punctuation, spelling corrections, etc. on the final, graded, version.
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. The ones that did made my life easier. I was a stickler for proper spelling and grammar when I proof read my kids' papers. I hated hearing "My teacher won't care". I cared.
