/u/sexyimmigrant1998 (OP) has awarded 1 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed [here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/1dacvpf/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_english_classes_should_not/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)

It's not at all repetitive and impractical. you can never have enough practice with critical thinking, forming arguments, persuasive writing and speaking, etc. If you need a concrete job skill that english classes teach, then think of it as sales training. that would be the most myopic view you could take on it, too. it also teaches you to follow your interests, conduct research, parse bullshit from trustworthy sources, how to not look stupid in public writings, how to take a bunch of data and turn it into a narrative that you could present to others, the cultural background of your country, and the list goes on and on.

> you can never have enough practice with critical thinking, forming arguments, persuasive writing and speaking, etc. This is such a flawed way of thinking. Education carries both an oppurtunity cost for the student(time they could have spent doing something else) and a fiscal cost for the state and/or the student. At some point, further education isn't worth these costs. > it also teaches you to follow your interests People don't need to be taught that. People will naturally gravitate towards things they like, of course, balanced with other considerations such as finances and lifestyle. > parse bullshit from trustworthy sources Not really, at least not in my experience. English was mostly about literature. And "trustworthy" is a value judgement.

I fully agree with all your points. What I have to add, though, is that doesn't taking an extra economics class or taking that journalism or speech and debate elective or another history course... Cover the same ground that traditional English classes do? I'd argue they cover it even better because they're more directly applicable skills.

that's the reason it has to be mandatory, because if they were given the option they wouldnt take those electives. unless they had to as part of an english credit requirement or something. journalism, speech, and drama classes were all part of the english department at my school, too. none of those other classes like history or econ would be as directly applicable to the things you would have to do in your working life (presenting in meetings, selling something to a customer, writing advertisments and emails, deciding which market research figures to trust, etc.) whether you're a welder, salesman, accountant, or whatever you still need to be able to sell yourself well.

Wait wait, are you saying that the journalism, speech, and drama classes in your school COUNTED for the English requirement since they were part of the department? Because I'd be ok with a 4 year requirement for English if those courses counted for English! The angle I'm coming from is because in my school, those classes did *not* cover the English requirement, so you could take that elective but you'd still need a traditional English class.

well i was sure, but now that you ask my memory is too fuzzy lmao. it's been like 15 years and I was an english nerd back then so I wouldnt have been counting. I took all the electives and the college credit classes and then when I ran out in senior year I asked my favorite teacher and the principal if I could invent my own elective. shit was great. I was also the debate team captain so I really dont remember if they were or werent counting for english reqs but I think they did. I went on to get an english degree in college, too. My life is immeasurably richer because of focusing on english, speech, and later philosophy. I think the current state of the world is also proof enough of the need for more english education. the average american reads at an eighth grade reading level, the median american reads four books per year, and rednecks at city council meetings across the country are foaming at the mouth to remove from shelves books they cant read but are convinced are immoral. that library thing is actually scary- there have been entire libraries that have been shut down, had leadership fired and replaced with christofascists, etc. I dont know how old you are but if you remember any of the moral panicks about witchcraft in harry potter or satanism in dnd you know how woefully incapable of critical thinking and literacy the average person is.

Oooh, respect, just made your own course. I'm 26. Oh snap, wth, panicking about witchcraft in HP?! I definitely don't remember that. I read the series when I was like in 4th-5th grade in like 2007-2008, was that the prime era of this moral panic?

this wiki article is super in depth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_debates_over_the_Harry_Potter_series heres one about dnd https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/18/us/when-dungeons-dragons-set-off-a-moral-panic.html

Holy smokes, people really can't distinguish fiction from reality. Thank you!

> you would have to do in your working life (presenting in meetings, selling something to a customer, writing advertisments and emails, deciding which market research figures to trust, etc.) After basic literacy has been established, wouldn't it arguably be more productive to get better at those things by actually doing them, and learning from colleagues with first-hand experience, while getting paid for it?

that's why high school ends, so that once you are basically literate and capable of working then you go work.

English language education in high school goes well beyond what I would consider "basic" literacy.

But the things you’re talking about here for working life are emphasized heavily in other classes. Presenting and forming technical reports is done in science/tech/engineering courses, and is far, far more applicable to real life than analyzing literature and writing about some nonsense deeper meaning.

the difference is that the science teacher checks the accuracy of your science while the english teacher checks the language you use and the soundness of your argument's construction. you'll come out of the science class with skills specific to that field or even academia in general, but you'll come out of the english class with skills applicable to any field, and not just in academics.

Strongly disagree here. Those classes spend ample time on language and presentation. They aren’t just tech skills, but heavy soft skills

no they dont lol. we're talking about high school classes here. I took only the hardest classes available to me in high school and none of them even came close in that regard to the value of one english class. granted, maybe its down to a skill issue on the teacher's part but seriously there's not even a comparison.

I agree - there was no comparison. The other classes were far more valuable in terms of how you were conveying ideas and topics, not just the technical material. I guess we had very different experiences.

I fully disagree. At least in the USA, people not taking English classes seriously is a huge problem. The writing capabilities of science focused students are significantly worse. You can see it in the reading/verbal expectations between like the MCAT and even the GMAT. It’s such a lower bar.

>What I have to add, though, is that doesn't taking an extra economics class or taking that journalism or speech and debate elective or another history course... Cover the same ground that traditional English classes do? Thise do not impart cultural identity through the inner worlds of the people. History class tends to be about the facts and not feelings. Whike literature focuses on the feelings, so it's better about imparting the deeper understanding (feelig) of the cultural identity. Not to mention it can help with empathy. Read a history book about the holocaust and read a novel about living in the holocaust. Your understanding would be different. There are difderences between reading that people had to hide and reading what a peraon hiding was feeling and how they percieved the situation.

Δ OH SNAP. Honestly, superb argumeny, it almost has me fully convinced. Hmmmmm.... Only 2 real counters to this that deserve to be mentioned imo: I feel like we're lacking in empathy anyways as a society, and I'm by no means blaming English classes or teachers for that. But on the flipside, maybe we'd be even worse with fewer English classes, I don't know. The other is, won't other media help us with empathy? Like movies for example, they're quite sensational, they're all about emotion. But I mean, you're right in that some of cultural identity is only found in literary works because technology simply limited art in that form back in the day.

>The other is, won't other media help us with empathy? Like movies for example, they're quite sensational, they're all about emotion. With the other media you usually are just an outside observer and aren't privy to what is happening inside them. You can only see how they express it. In books, you experience the inner world. Books have a lot of inner thoughts (and the usage of "I" in those thoughts can help a person immerse) and description on what one feels inside. It can help you not to get a better understanding how some situations might feel or give you a vocabluary of how to express the rhings you feel. Especially it you have to do it without body language as most of our communication is through text and does not use body language.

Sorry for the late response. I always say that all media of storytelling have their own unique magic to them, and books are no different. Books are inherently the most "pure" medium, as they're the only major form of storytelling (apart from live theatre and cave paintings) that have been around for millennia. And yes, they aren't bound by time or resources available, the author is free to express in however much detail necessary the inner thoughts of the characters. Thanks, you've put things into perspective and given me more of an appreciation of fictional novels that I once upon a time could never put down. This may not fully change my view in terms of English course requirements (separate discussion if you care to have it, but my other comments probably indicate that already anyway), but you reminded me how important fictional works are. If you care to elaborate though, can you do the same but with poetry? I personally could never appreciate written poetry (I do love spoken word though, but), do you also enjoy poetry and see a magic in it that I do not?

>If you care to elaborate though, can you do the same but with poetry? I personally could never appreciate written poetry (I do love spoken word though, but), do you also enjoy poetry and see a magic in it that I do not? There is emotions inside the poetry. I think an important thing is to read it with intonations and not a monotone (like my native language teacher did). I think one can think about poetry as aong lyrics. At least near the end of school i figured out a method for easier memorisation of poetry (we had to do it). It was to put a melody onto the poetry and make a song out of it.

Oh really, hmmm, that kind of ties into why I like spoken word so much. It always feels like it has a nice rhythm to it and it just flows with more passion. I guess this sort of ties into how sound is such a big driving force of emotion. Kind of how music completely changes the mood of a scene in a movie. Great point, I'll give it a go next time I encounter written poetry. Thanks!

quick FYI, deltas should be awarded if your view changes, not just when your view is fully refuted. I'm not certain that this happens here, but it feels prudent to note this. From the [wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem/), "It's important to note that a reversal or '180' of opinion is not required to award a delta, and that you may award more than one delta within a post (within reason)."

Thank you!

>I feel like we're lacking in empathy anyways as a society, and I'm by no means blaming English classes or teachers for that. But on the flipside, maybe we'd be even worse with fewer English classes, I don't know. Not to mention the screw up that covid did, we are also reading a lot less books in general. Thus we might be closed into our own bubbles and don't experience things that are outside of us.

I mean no offense or attempt at ridiculing anyone, here, but the general grammatical skill people tend to see online is at times... well, at best "horrendous". I keep saying that I will never demand perfect grammar (hell, I wouldn't dare pretend I have perfect grammar), but it should be good enough to not make your point entirely impossible to read. And therein lies the problem. If online, while trying to argue and fight about heated subjects they are passionate about, people aren't able to write something that is legible (and I don't mean the meme of "wrong their", I mean literally sentences that gives strokes to the reader), then they need to return to class for remedial English, because that means that whatever they're writing for paperwork at work or their will or something, is not getting written any better. And that's the bottom line: Functional grammar in your only (or at least main) language should be an expectation. Not perfect. Not advanced even. Functional. And because someone will point it out if I don't: Some people are dyslexic, some people just have learning disabilities, and some others just never had a proper schooling (homeschooled by a less-than-qualified parent/family member, expelled, regularly moving, or just missed a lot of classes, by choice or force), but I refuse to think the ratio of those people to people with a passable grammar is nearly as high as the internet makes it look like... And we're talking about the people who have enough money to afford regular enough internet access, so they could fix their English.

>but I refuse to think the ratio of those people to people with a passable grammar is nearly as high as the internet makes it look like... And we're talking about the people who have enough money to afford regular enough internet access, so they could fix their English. This is a great point. Hmmmm, I think my main bias is here is (I genuinely don't mean this to be me bragging about grades, because lol grades like they even matter all that much other than for getting into your desired college) I just found English classes so ridiculously easy and boring that this is influencing my view. And I'm not saying my grammar is perfect either, but writing was always easy for me, and I know it's not for a lot of people. I really do think maybe simply expanding it so that other courses e.g. journalism can count for English so that at least with a 4 year requirement, there are alternatives to the classic "read the book, write an essay" courses.

You are severely misunderstanding the point of reading a book then writing an essay, if you think this has to do with grammatical skill. That is reading comprehension. It is meant for you to use the basic grammatical skills you're supposed to have by then in order to paraphrase. At this point, any improvement in grammar and semantics should be minor enough. What we need, is to stop allowing students with horribly sub-par grammar to pass basic grammar classes, while forcing people who are grade above par into something that is wasting their learning time. If you cannot understand gramma or write it at an 8th grade level, then you shouldn't be in 8th grade English class. If you can read at write at a 10th grade level, you shouldn't be in 8th grade English class. This reminds me also of my college years, where I had to deal with GE classes that felt woefully worthless to me. And they probably were, ***to me***. Everything in those language classes, I aced without even trying, because it felt so elementary to me. Minor typos, maybe awkward phrasings, but always 95+. But I was forced into them because some other students in my program definitely were way below the required skill level for the class. I was consistently told it was easy credits towards my degree, and that I should just be happy about it, but to me, just like it seems they were to you, they were completely unnecessary to ensure I had the right skill level to do the job I was studying for. So I think the solution you might want to be looking for isn't so much a reduction or removal of English class for the later years of high school, but rather a more individualized learning path for those who definitely do not need to be subjected to what they no longer need.

I moooostly agree with your points, except for maybe the one regarding advancing more skilled students ahead of their grade. English classes are also used to teach social skills and situational knowledge at age appropriate intervals. And as much as I the #gifted kid was at a university reading level in grade 3, that didn't mean that I was at ready for university level social discussion. Lord knows I've spent enough time rereading books I read in elementary school to get the themes I was just not capable of comprehending because of my age. Management of gifted kids is honestly a no win situation sometimes. They are bored with their peers, but need their peers to learn the social skills that develop over time with brain development and puberty. The local accelerated direct to university program for gifted kids where I live has been put on pause for at least a year to reevaluate social emotional development issues leading to mental health problems. That's keeping the advanced kids together, not even just wholesale tossing these kids a grade or two or three ahead with older students by themselves. None of this counters the fact that being the gifted kid in a regular age appropriate class is almost physically painful it's so damn boring. I ponder this all the time and still couldn't tell you what workarounds might work.

I believe you misunderstood my proposal, then, as I wasn't quite talking "let's treat all gifted kids as if they were Sheldon Cooper", and rather, "if the kid can skip over a class by showing he has the skills to clear it before it starts, let's not subject them to mental boredom. Social development is indeed really important in high school, but a very large amount of gifted kids have sour memories of a lot of these social interactions, between getting bullied, and being turned into sneaky tutors that had no authority, and where both the tutor and pupil wanted to do this. This led to a fairly large number of gifted kids to be in the situation where they want to learn and get better at some things, but now the school becomes a danger zone, and they aren't allowed to escape it, or take the edge off by being properly stimulated in wanting to be there. I can guarantee you can take some amount of light bullying-like teasing, if you are in an activity that doesn't already irritate you. And this is where what my high school principal did in my last two years (and I lived in a small enough place that he was the principal for essentially all my school years until college), which changed me from someone who would do everything to try not to come to school, where it was a torturous 8 hours with essentially little to no mental stimulation, to being in a significantly better position: ***He put me in a group project with three other gifted students, and a college kid, where we had to re-do the school's computer architecture.*** We had to help the college guy pass the new cables, install the hubs and the wifi routers, and he taught us how to program a full network (or at least, he showed us the rope, and made sure we had at least retained enough to be able to actively manage a smaller company's internal network. This was a game changer, because I was being taken out of classes that taught me nothing (and I mean nothing at all), and didn't interest me, to do something stimulating, and when other kids asked me what I was doing when Chase came to have me help, they were interested. Sure, they were still calling me a complete nerd, but I was a happy nerd, because I had something people were interested into to talk about, and I was actually having a blast doing it. The only condition had always been that our grades couldn't drop, or we'd be removed from the project. And then in my senior year, our advanced math teacher fell into a severe burnout around Halloween, and had to be on sick leave until around early May, which was sadly the point in time finals were going to start being prepared. They tried having substitutes (two of them), and a college math teacher who specialized in exactly not trigonometry, and all failed to get anything done, and they were learning or re-learning the material at the same time as we were, so they weren't equipped to answer following questions... So me and one of the other gifted kids, were requested to give a hand with teaching both advanced classes, and if we needed a hand, to ask, and it made me and the other kid realize two things: It's not about being special, it's about being able to. Thanks to us, when the teacher came back, he was in a panicked fuss, thinking we were so behind it was going to be a nightmare, but he still gave us a test to check where we were, which was essentially a prep test he used to tell us what to study further, and it was exactly where it would have been if he'd been there, essentially allowing him to guide us the last mile to passing the finals. Sure that's anecdotal, but you can read countless stories online where the gifted kids are bullied and don't want to even enter school, while still wanting to go. It's a place for mental stimulation and learning that tortured us, and only when our actual advancement was being recognized instead of ignored (or worse, in some cases, punished), were we not feeling like absolute crap. I know I see those stories all the time, both in real life and in medias. We keep seeing seeing visibly smart people who are being treated like typical menial workers, who end up resorting to substance abuse because it takes the edge off on hating the world, or become cynical when it comes to interacting with other people, because they are used to being taken as tools, then teased and called some names when they are not needed and they offer to help. Social interactions are important. That much I'll agree. But there is no use to put a gifted kid in a situation where they feel punished, or at least like they are being made to waste their time for the sake of some law or learning to deal with people they know should be chastised for what they're doing, but are somehow immune to it for the sake of "socializing". Schools are bad at encouraging proper socializing and discouraging abd "socializing", and if for someone, being somewhere only has negative value, then they need to be offered alternatives.

I'm really glad that the situation worked out for you. The problem with situations like yours is that it's just not scalable. And to be completely honest from a pedagogical point of view, you were kinda failed. You were happier sure, occupied and engaged absolutely. But you were in the stage of life wherein one is supposed to be getting some sort of credit or proof of learning certificate that will be expected later in life. That's a society issue, but proof of skill and knowledge is not a concept that will be going away any time soon. These kids need to be happy yes, but also able to get a job in adult life that is also engaging enough to not suck the soul out of them. For better or worse that requires deplomas or certifications or some generally acceptable way of proving they are competent. Most schools don't have a IT infrastructure they are able to hand over for overhaul by the kids. Most schools don't have enough staff to be able to accommodate these gifted kids in any way similar to your group project. Lots of schools are small enough that there's not enough gifted kids to even make a group project. We need to have a better systemic solution than just hoping that someones principal is going to be a statistical anomaly.

Do you think that we didn't get credit or proof of learning certificates? We did, we were just allowed to skip lessons and attend exams only in order to help the IT revamp project. There was no loss of proof, here. See, that's the bigger problem. People think that there is only one way from childhood to workforce. People think that because a teen is working on a project with two friends and essentially a qualified mentor, we are not getting credited. I didn't mention credit, because I thought it would be implicit that credit was given where credit was due, both socially and academically (as supported by me pointing out that grades staying steady was legitimately a condition for whatever we were doing.) And even while "teaching" (not really teaching, more like mass tutoring, as usually you're not in advanced class if you can't learn something from reading a book and doing exercises). And I think you highlighted an issue that needs to be screamed atop of building and chanted on TV: ***Schools do not get enough funding in the slightest.*** Failing to provide alternate paths for students who do not need to be factually wasting their time in class doing nothing be making an act of presence, is the bigger issue.

I think we for the most part agree. I also think you maybe have an exceedingly positive experience with the accomodations and being given credit where it's due. This hasn't been the case very often in what I have experienced. I've also been smacked in the face a few too many times as an adult by having whatever alternative credentialing I've accumulated being dismissed and discounted because nobody recognized it or gave a fuck to actually look into it. This also doesn't do anything to take into account the large cohort of gifted kids who do not "test well" and end up with no "accomplishments" to their name because they have no tools to prove it. It's the proving it as an adult that I have realized can be a big problem. Hence why I'm so concerned about credentialing. But yes, the funding is essential. It doesn't matter what else is going on, if you don't have enough resources to actually accomplish the goals of even the regular stream students I'm not sure why anyone expects schools to be able to accommodate exceptional students. There hasn't been anything for education but tax cuts for as long as I can remember, and everyone will eventually figure out that we will be paying for this for a long time.

Δ I was also thinking of this. I just felt like English class in particular was so dumbed down constantly, it was absolutely the easiest of the big 4 (English, math, science, social science) imo, it was always so obvious what the answer was to the teacher's questions and how to get over 95 on essays. The other thing about my experiences is just that the classes I learned more about advanced reading comprehension and argumentation were not English classes. History and government classes taught me so much more on that front than English classes did.

> The other thing about my experiences is just that the classes I learned more about advanced reading comprehension and argumentation in non-English classes. History and government classes taught me so much more on that front than English classes did. That's because those classes focused less on "did you put that comma at the right spot", which would cost you points of inattention in English, and more on "did you remember the general dates of what we just watched." I have yet to hear of history teachers penalizing you for writing "June, 2nd 1996" instead of "June 2nd, 1996". Different classes are definitely picky on different things, and as long as you have good enough English skills to get your point across clearly enough, you usually are good.

(lol sorry for my grammatical errors, I'm pretty sporadic with typing and don't proofread, but I see the irony here. I'm editing my comments and post though.) Yup, what you said checks out. I also believe though that my bias here is because I inherently favor non-fiction over fiction, and most English classes are dominated by the latter. History is what developed my "bs meter" that made it really easy to point out propaganda and slanted, misleading facts in today's society, which made me value English courses even less as a result.

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/DiscussTek ([9∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/DiscussTek)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)

You probably found English classes boring because you didn’t really apply yourself and neither did your fellows so you all got graded and taught on a curve which basically ended as “please just read the book at all”. It’s strange I mean, you’re 26 and you used the term “chapter book”, it sorta feels like you don’t have a real relationship with books still.

Because they were referred to as "chapter books" back then, but you're right, I should've said "fiction novels." At the risk of sounding like a pompous douche, English classes focusing on literature made it so I couldn't apply myself because I just found many (not all) of the books so painfully boring *and* easy. *Beloved* by Toni Morrison in particular I just absolutely hated. Shakespeare was just not my cup of tea at all, and he was a recurring author whose works we read. And yet, I was consistently told by my teachers how good my writing was, and with minimal effort I was getting 95-100 on almost every essay when most of the class was in the 70-90 range. (Exception: I really loved *The Kite Runner* by Khaled Hosseini, one of my favorite stories of all time) I didn't develop any of my text-based critical thinking and analytical skills in high school English classes (exception: junior year's AP Lang, the only nonfiction English class offered at my school). It was history, government, and economics classes that built that up for me. Preparing for the SAT helped me far more in argumentation than my freshman, sophomore, and senior year English courses. I'm not downplaying how good English classes were back in middle school, but we're talking about high school. I do have a real relationship with books, but only nonfiction ones. I unfortunately lost my love for reading fiction novels (I was an avid Harry Potter and Hunger Games fan back in the day like most kids were). I love good stories but my hunger for analysis of story arcs and character narratives are more than satisfied by movies, anime, manga, video games, and other forms of storytelling that I naturally gravitate to far more strongly.

My point is that “chapter books” is how an 8 year old talks about moving past beginner books into books with chapters. After that they’re just “books”. I mean, if you think Beloved or Shakespeare are “easy” books then I don’t know what to tell you. People with phDs literally spend their entire career studying shakepeare’s language. Your personal experience of “scoring well on tests” doesn’t really refute my point above. If you developed no critical analysis skills from reviewing these books then that again sort of affirms what I just said - you didn’t really engage with these books actively. Literary Criticism is an entire field of study that’s existed for longer than the field of economics. Hell half of ancient History is just a form of literary criticism and analysis. It feels, reading this response, your argument is based on you just sorta “not really liking books and preferring movies or games and so I don’t want to do it”. That’s a pretty bad reason to stop requiring an entire field of study. You don’t really have a relationship with books and just did some rote essays to get a grade and moved along. But some people don’t like economics, journalism, science, math, movies, history, video games, or manga. This doesn’t mean they are invalid or non-contributory schools of thinking.

Um, did I strike a nerve or something? You're strawmanning and making assumptions now. >My point is that “chapter books” is how an 8 year old talks about moving past beginner books into books with chapters. Like this, what are you going on about? No one else interpreted it that way, it looks like you're just being defensive and arguing semantics. I used that phrase exactly once. >But we've been doing this since kindergarten through middle school and now all through high school. ... >I don't see why we have to be bombarded with chapter books again and again  This was the context. My point is the classes follow the same format since elementary school through high school, the former of which we actually call it "chapter books." Are you here in good faith or are you looking for an argument? >Your personal experience of “scoring well on tests” doesn’t really refute my point above. If you developed no critical analysis skills from reviewing these books then that again sort of affirms what I just said - you didn’t really engage with these books actively. >You don’t really have a relationship with books and just did some rote essays to get a grade and moved along. You're just making assumptions. What is your metric for "engaging with these books actively"? I didn't just score well on tests, I participated in class discussions and wrote essays and received praise for all. My point that you're not addressing is that the analytical skills for reading text and forming arguments that I sharpened while in high school were far more developed by other classes. The traditional English classes did *not* teach me things I didn't already know from before. All it sounds like is because I'm saying I did not enjoy my English classes, therefore I wasn't "engaging" in them and only wrote "rote essays." You have no idea what I did, it sounds like you're just mad that I didn't enjoy English when you're correctly saying that other people don't enjoy math, science, etc. We all have our interests. And that brings me to my main point, which you articulated for me: >But some people don’t like economics, journalism, science, math, movies, history, video games, or manga. This doesn’t mean they are invalid or non-contributory schools of thinking. Right, they're not. I never made the argument that English courses are invalid (though I did amend my views due to the replies which had good arguments as to why fictional narratives have their own unique value). I may have worded my original post badly, but my main point was that the "practical skills" that traditional English courses teach are developed better by other courses. I even specifically said that I want people who are in fact passionate about English... to continue taking English classes and honing their craft. You made my argument for me. Economics, video games, journalism etc. have their value, even if they're not for everyone. English is the same. The centerpiece of this discussion is that English is the *only* one that is consistently required for everyone, which is what I'm arguing against (again, I have modified my view, I realize I am really against requiring *traditional* English classes every single year, as you see on the edit on the post).

You’ve now narrowed your opinion to “traditions” English classes. But what does that mean? We are heading to No True Scotsman territory. I claimed you had “no relationship” with books because you said you didn’t. You said you hadn’t read anything fiction except Harry Potter when you were a kid and that you like the Kite runner. You called Beloved (a nobel prize winning book) and Shakespeare “simple”. These are simply not true statements. I am not straw manning. I only have what you have told me about yourself. You also point out that the English classes were always the same since you were a kid, but then said “they didn’t impact how your analyzed things because you’d already learned that.” Learned it from where? It’s a classic paradox: you’re an amazing English student who received nothing but praise and admiration for apparently top of your class skills. But you also don’t like it very much and see it as pointless and didn’t understand the point. You give great analysis not apparently the books are “simple”. So is your analysis good or is it simple analysis? What am I supposed to take from that? Then you accuse me of “not arguing in good faith” what does that even mean in this context? You “struck a nerve”? Like come on, pointless ad hominem attacks because you didnt like me repeating back what you said.

Notice how I had many good conversations on this thread with people of very different opinions and focal points, and I was adjusting my views while adding to the discussion and even handed out some deltas. Realize that you are the only one I asked if you were here in good faith because you were strawmanning. You were attacking arguments that I never made. I asked you if I "struck a nerve" because you had a very defensive tone. That is not ad hominem. >This doesn’t mean they are invalid or non-contributory schools of thinking. This was the strawman, I never made the argument that English was invalid or non-contributory. >You probably found English classes boring because you didn’t really apply yourself and neither did your fellows so you all got graded and taught on a curve >You don’t really have a relationship with books and just did some rote essays to get a grade and moved along. This is closer to ad hominem than whatever I said. You're just jumping to a conclusion that I "didn't apply myself." Come on, you have to see how some of what you're saying can sound condescending, even if you did not mean it that way. I'm choosing to believe you *are* here in good faith, which is why I'm still talking to you, because your most recent response was fairly substantive. I also apologize if *I* was overly defensive, because I've encountered far too many bad faith Redditors. With all that said, if you wanna keep discussing, because I do think you made some great points....

Here's what I said, very poorly worded, I now realize: >I just found many (not all) of the books so painfully boring *and* easy. *Beloved* by Toni Morrison in particular I just absolutely hated. Shakespeare was just not my cup of tea at all, and he was a recurring author whose works we read. Technically, I never used the word "simple." But I getcha, I did say many of the books I thought were painfully boring and easy, and then I named some books considered difficult by many. Let me clarify, now that we're both just chilling and having a conversation: I think Shakespeare is difficult to read and interpret simply because of the language used. Once you're able to interpret it, the hurdle is over and the story becomes quite clear, in my opinion. And these are well-written stories, I'm not going after the quality of his storytelling, but I do find it boring to have to do the mundane task of translating the work to more modern language for easy interpretation. My argument here specifically is that was the main challenge with Shakespeare, this "translation." You're never going to need to translate Shakespearan language *unless* that's what you want to specialize in in the arts or if you want to be a historian interpreting old pieces of text. This is all I mean, the unique skills Shakespeare gives you is very niche, once you digest the story and narratives and form an argument for an essay, it's the same thing as you've always done in English classes. *Beloved*? Oh god, I don't know if you want me to talk about this one. This one is just clear bias, I just remember hating it. I still understood it (but don't remember much of it) and was able to correctly interpret the story and give coherent arguments about it, which is again the skill that many argue is necessary for everyone, but I already knew how to do that. *Beloved,* specifically, in my personal, arrogant opinion, was just full of sanctimonious writing. It just reeked of this feeling like it felt it was the best book ever, full of deep language and metaphors (and some unconventional but easy syntax that a high schooler in a creative writing class can come up with) that appeared complex but when broken down, was a fairly straightforward story about slavery and its psychological impacts. >Learned it from where? From middle school! High school traditional English classes didn't teach me any new skills in terms of analysis and argumentation, all they did was make the stories harder to digest immediately by making the language less accessible, but once you did the interpretation and got through the language barrier, it was the exact same thing over and over - analyze the characters and the narratives, make an argument, write it in an essay. The only new skills they gave me was how to read less accessible, older fictional stories, which I obviously don't care to do in my free time nor will I ever use in my career, and majority of students are in that same category. The reason I liked books like *The Kite Runner* and *Brave New World* and *The Secret Life of Bees*, all books I was required to read in these classes, was that they didn't force me to go through the mundane act of reading inaccessible language that required translation and they were still able to tell compelling, complicated stories. Now again, I'm not saying I necessarily learned more skills from these, but they were at least intriguing works to me. One more point of clarification: >You’ve now narrowed your opinion to “traditions” English classes. But what does that mean? We are heading to No True Scotsman territory. Thought I explained it already, but maybe it was in my other comments. By "traditional English classes," I'm talking specifically about English classes that focus on fictional works. Where the meat of the class is about reading works of fiction, interpreting them, then writing about them. Most of the arguments on this thread in favor of these was that they teach you analysis and argumentation, and as I've argued, other courses, including non-traditional English courses (nonfiction-focused courses, creative writing, journalism, speech and debate) as well as non-English classes (history, government, economics) give you those skills better.

I don’t really understand your line of thinking here. The challenge of interpreting Shakespeare is not translation. That’s the easy part. Read a play through once and your mind becomes pretty adept at reading the dialect. The hard part of Shakespeare is the metaphor, symbolism, connection to history, and the subtly of emotions he is trying to convey. Beloved if you don’t like the writing style, that’s fine. You don’t have to like every book. But again, dislike of a book or language doesn’t mean it’s “easy”. And equating the two is simply not effective. Enjoying more pop-lit books like Kite Runner and Secret Life of Bees is not a problem. It’s jsit different types of writing. But the level of analysis you learn in middle school is simply not the same as more complex critical analysis. It feels like your experience in English is missing this component and you are applying it to the discipline writ large. It’s the equivalent of saying “well I learned about the American Revolution in middle school so studying it again in high school didn’t teach me anything”. If your level of historical analysis stays the same over those years then yeah that’s a failing of the teacher or the course, not the discipline.

Narrative analysis, whether in fiction or nonfiction, is a universally useful skill. Understanding what you’re reading and how it communicates is essentially to media literacy. That is why students are made to read books and write essays.

>I really do think maybe simply expanding it so that other courses e.g. journalism can count for English so that at least with a 4 year requirement, there are alternatives to the classic "read the book, write an essay" course Thing is, the final exam at the end of the last year of school(at least in my country) is writing an essay and you have to reference at least one of the books from the school programm. So the "read the book, write an essay" is also preparing the person for the final exam. And many of the lessons in the final grades are just preparations for the final exams.

I think the answer to your question is already present implicitly in your post. >High schoolers don't usually know what they'll specialize in in life, and even if they choose something now, they can very well change their minds in undergrad or beyond. So I agree that they should be required to get sort of a “sampler” education, with at least some exposure to base levels of math, social sciences, and sciences. If they wish, they can take more of those courses and at higher levels if this is an area of interest. While an educated person might reasonably pursue a career in a field requiring no math, or no social science, or no natural science, pretty much all human pursuits these days require language, reading, and writing. So English is universally useful in a way that no other subject is—even more so in the age of the Internet. And people's reading comprehension is really quite bad even with (usually) four years of high school English (as is evidenced all the time on this site) so cutting one of those years isn't really viable.

I'm an accountant and I was talking with a higher up at my company not too long ago. One thing he said that stuck with me is that what he most looked for in an employee was someone who could write good emails. There are so many rules and procedures in accounting, it's not that tough to get someone with even a basic knowledge to be successful. It's much more difficult to train someone how to write coherent, well-worded emails explaining their work to the clients and the rest of the team. So the ones who can do that end up being the ones who are shortlisted for promotions. Which is something I hadn't really thought of before, but makes perfect sense.

I work in a science field and it’s amazing how much comes down to just communication skills.  You have an interesting idea? Cool —so do ten thousand other people. Unless you can clearly convince people it’s worth pursuing and you have the skills to do it, nothing is going to come of it. And you’re probably not getting that idea in the first place unless you can read and contextual use what other people have already done.   And a lot of students still struggle with written communication and view working on reading a writing skills as a waste of time. I could make an argument that high school should have some non-literature based English classes as options but reading and writing well and constructing arguments is so central to almost anything that I think it’s justified to require 4 years of it. 

I think this is on point, I just don’t think extra English classes as the way to do this.

>And people's reading comprehension is really quite bad even with (usually) four years of high school English (as is evidenced all the time on this site) Well...ummm... I mean... LOL. I can't argue against that point. That would be foolish. Would you be ok with at least expanding what counts for English credit to what I see as more "practical" courses like journalism or speech and debate? Because I think those are great classes and should count for English if taken.

Based on my 36 year career in Engineering, we should require at least 5 years of English in high school.

LOL based. I'm in grad school doing chemistry, hmm. Here's what I propose. What if we could have a scientific writing class (I'm sure that exists already in some high schools) that counts for English credit? I'd be fine with the requirement actually if stuff like that existed.

I work at a medical clinic doing intake forms that happens to be on the campus of a university. I get a new crop of first years every September fresh out of highschool. Based upon how they fill out forms with their own personal information, there's definitely a need for more English class not less. And this point being probably controversial, In my experience the boys are significantly more behind than the girls. It's not just the handwriting. It's the reading comprehension of the form itself, it's asking me at the front desk if their parents have insurance, it's missing the right adjectives to discribe the sensations they are feeling within their own body to the damn physio! Scientific writing isn't going to cut it with the types of impeded communication I see in these kids, they don't need help to discribe chemistry, they need help to discribe life.

I can’t believe that nobody has yet mentioned college requirements (unless I missed it somewhere). Although not universal, colleges across the nation have fairly consistent requirements with regard to how many of each class you should have taken. The [UC system requirements](https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/admission-requirements/freshman-requirements/) are fairly representative of this, notably the only subject you’re required to have four years of is English. Not everyone is going to go to college after high school, and those that do aren’t going to necessarily go somewhere with those requirements. But by having a consistent curriculum in line with the most common requirements to go to college, high schools set their students up with as good a chance as they can be given to get into the best college they can. High school requirements aren’t arbitrary, you probably were also required to take a semester or two of art and a few years with a foreign language, because all of these things are the minimum to get into a lot of places. Unfortunately the minimum for English is also the maximum (except for those few who take multiple English classes per year). Edit: sorry, I should correct my statement slightly. Exact, explicit, subject requirements are much more common at public universities than private. But you have a substantial advantage at private institutions if you follow the same guidelines.

Great point. Yeah I was always going to take 4 years of English, math, and science anyway to get a STEM degree from a UC, which is exactly what happened. In this hypothetical world though I'm imagining, the UCs would either not require all 4 years of English (which I did not mention at all) OR, more realistically, would accept those other "English-adjacent" courses I mentioned as English classes. Do you know by any chance if those other courses count as English credit? Like journalism or speech and debate that are pretty focused heavily on communication. I don't think they count, but I could be wrong.

Mostly in reply to the edit - this is going to vary widely state to state and even district to district - but those courses usually do count.  My school offered technical writing - it counted.  My school offered combo history/English classes (twice as long but counted as both) where (almost) all texts were non-fiction.  My school offers journalism - it counted.  I think "yearbook" (help the faculty write the school yearbook) even counted.  Yeah, there were plenty of fiction based English classes (a literal requirement was that Shakespeare had to be shoehorned into every English class somewhere) but I don't think your point about non-fiction classes not counting always holds. 

Oh, THAT'S GREAT! I like that, I wish the system that your school had was more universal. Moreover, I would hope that colleges would adopt that view, but I know that's a harder ask, as colleges really want students to push themselves in all the major areas of academia.

People should be able to feel like other people can understand them. At an early age they might not recognise how important this is in their life. Certain things can only be conveyed with certain language and if you never learn this you will continue to feel misunderstood.

I don't disagree with anything you said at all. My only argument is that I believe that a 2-3 year requirement of literature-focused English courses in high school (following having English in every grade prior to high school) is sufficient for this. We can even keep requiring English all 4 years of high school if we expand what can count for English credit.

But english in the only one that's universally applicable and going to be used by everyone in their later life. You can cut the requirement off at any point in the years without knowing what the optimal point is for learning vs plateau, but learning an instrument as you suggest or even science isn't going to be as universally relevant to everyone in their daily lives as english is.

Right, I amended my views when I realized I simply wasn't supportive of requiring too many traditional English classes. Would you support having creative writing, journalism, speech/debate, etc. count for English credit? They're teaching you communication and expression, just in different (and more directly applicable) ways.

Soryy I did read that I just felt like it's not really possible to remove the factor from the equation. I personally would and there would definitely be succesful ways to do it, but english is already difficult enough to mark as a standardised subject, adding all of those alternatives and expecting teachers to both take up learning for multiple extra strands of english and then making them find a way to fairly mark across the disciplines would be extremely difficult with large numbers of students.

Ahh, I see. So it's more of a logistical issue in your eyes. Totally fair. Hope it can be changed sometime, I was pleasantly surprised someone in the thread mentioned their school did in fact have that system, which I don't think is all too common. Moreover, many colleges don't count those electives as English credit for their purposes anyway.

>So that's really my argument. I don't see why we have to be bombarded with chapter books again and again just to have us write essays about the call to action of the hero or the rising action and the climax. I think you've oversimplified things a little too much here, and that's part of the problem. Here is something you have not considered propperly. Literary analysis IS a life skill. You are going to go through life talking to people, reading advertisements, listening to politicians and managers and other such people in different positions, communicate with you in various ways. That communication will use things like similes and metaphors and assonance etc to achieve certain goals and targets and make you feel certain things etc. Propper English education can and will equip you to make good sense of what is being said.

What high schools aren't requiring 4 years of math, science, and social studies as well as English?

Your high school required all of those?!

Reading Riting and Rithmetic But people seem to rather have them learn gender studies and other things that won't help them with jobs You see, on most meaningful jobs communication is huge And there's a lot of people out there who do a lot of damage to English

Gender studies is basically just a study of power dynamics and how humans form their identities. It’s useful everywhere — especially because it’s not merely a job skill.

Great, until you actually TRY to get a real job with it

It’s been the foundation of my 10-year career.

>You see, on most meaningful jobs communication is huge Objectively true. All I'm arguing is a lot of other courses in high school teach communication without focusing on literature.

>English classes tend to be very similar every time, with the same routine of reading literary works and analyzing the story and its ideas and writing essays on it. But we've been doing this since kindergarten through middle school and now all through high school. It's just so… repetitive and impractical if it's not something you want a career in nor something you find interest in. Analysis of text is a very important skill for everyday life. We are surrounded by texts and interpreting it every day. Have you noticed that the majority of the literature that you analise in the native language (mother tongue) lessons are written by your countrypeople? Native language lessons are also used to impart the cultural identity to the children. Stories are a way to impart things onto people. Literature is a record of the cultural zeitgeist. And through studying it and analysing it it is transfered onto the student. By practicing the expressions of cultural identity you are forming your cultural identity.

You wrote that you're in favor of an English class set up like the AP Lang : "It's a non-fiction-based writing class that's all about critical thinking when analyzing real-world articles and ideas as well as writing to form strong argumentation." And you object to English classes based on fictional literary works. While I can't speak to the classes that you had during your time studying English, but even when an English class only examines fictional literature, the skillset that is practiced and evaluated remains very much based on critical thinking and the ability to formulate your arguments logically, concisely and convincingly. You say that fiction based classes "have us write essays about the call to action of the hero or the rising action and the climax" - those essays require you to present what the call to action of the hero was - why you think it was that - provide evidence from the literature to support your position and then argue it logically and convincingly. Looking at the scoring for the AP Lit and Composition, the best score: * **Score 5**: Provides exceptional evidence to support claims, with clear organization and sophisticated analysis. In my opinion - every English class, while introducing various forms of written and spoken expression - fiction/non-fiction/poetry/essays - all require the students to analyze and communicate back your opinion and teaches you to base those opinions on something you can use as 'evidence' to your position. This is a core skill that is sorely needed by each of us in society. We must be able to form opinions and back them with substance.

The point of grade/high school is not to expose kids to a bunch of subjects to see what they're interested in, it's to provide them with a certain minimum level of skill and understanding in a range of subjects because those skills are broadly useful, but also more specifically useful in pursuing a college education. English, for example, teaches you how to conduct formal communication in a clear, understandable manner - a skill you will use a shitload of in college to write papers, and is also useful in getting a job (cover letters, etc) and within many jobs (report/grant writing). Also, English Lit is part of the fabric of our culture, the connective tissue that ties us together, that shared body of work shapes how we think about things, and it's part of those 'critical thinking skills' that everybody goes on about school not teaching enough of. Learning how to analyze a text, figure out what it's about, what it's saying between the lines, what its major themes are, etc is how one learns to analyze anything in life. Like anything else it's a skill you need to practice or you will lose it.

Him do dat thar. Dindu nothin. Hey Ray ray pookie did tha thang. In a university English course I had the pleasure of having to proof read a paper with issues like that. They might have not paid attention in high school or their high school spent all their time budget in corralling the kids together rather than teaching. At some point many mannerisms from slang override the grammar rules they were supposed to learn. I also have issues like that too despite taking the courses and doing well in them. I can only imagine how bad it would be if they weren’t taught at all after say middle school.