Foreign/Overseas Education

[replicant]

I am curious for those that live in another country outside the U.S. What sort of mandatory reading (i.e. classics) were you expected to read?

[thod]

"An Introduction to Tensor Calculus, Relativity and Cosmology"

[Homini Lupus]

In Italy wherever you study you surely read some of the "Divina Commedia" and some of "I promessi sposi". Then that depends from school to school, I'll write down some of those I had to read since you ask
-1984
-Madame Bovary (both in italian and french)
-Le grande Meulnes (in french)
-La gloire de mon père (in french)
-Hard Times (in english)
-Thus spoke Zarathustra (I dared to have a look at the book when the professor placed it on the desk so she assigned it as mandatory to the whole class)
-La mandragola (the mandrake, by Machiavelli)
-Some of Plato's dialogues (I don't remember wich)
-Il fu Mattia Pascal ("He was Mattia Pascal")
-The metamorphosis (Kafka's)
-Candide
-La coscienza di Zeno (Zeno's conscience)

They're not all but it's quite some times I read them.

[Gilbo]

Shakespeare, obviously as in the UK. Hated it at first until we want to see it on stage and then loved it

Gerald Durrell 'My family and other animals' - which I still think is one of the funniest books I've ever read

John Keats poetry - which I think is twaddle. To paraphrase all his work:
'Death is Beauty, Beauty is Death. That is all ye know and all ye ever need to know.'

[Noehelia]

The education system is Greece is like this:
Education and books are free. The books are issued and given out from the ministry of education that decides what the teaching material will be for all children in every grade. Children are not divided in advanced and lower levels.
So we have assigned mandatory books for physics, for literature courses, etc. Whole literature books are only the ones from ancient Greeks, the rest are taught from excerpts that consist the books for language and literature. So we are tought some poems and some passages from classicals other than ancient greeks but not their whole books.
However it is on the decision of the teacher whether he will try to prompt pupils to read something else beyond the assigned books. Not all teachers do that. When I was a pupil my literature teacher would give as homework to some pupils to read other books but only to the good pupils, the ones that seemed to care about that.

To your question. Ancient greeks that are tought: Homer, Herodotus, Ksenofon, Sophocle, Euripides, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Lycias, Isocrates, Demosthenes, and only for the ones that have decided to continue in the theoretical orientation, Plato and Aristotle.

In courses for modern literature again modern greek writers are prefered (there is no point to mention them here, probably you do not know them but they are classics for us). From foreign writers I do remember poems for Edgar Alan Poe and passages from "Animal Farm" of George Orwell but that is the problem with excerpts, I do not remember in details what I have read in school and from what writer.

[Lupin]

Mandatory UK literature for exams at our secondary school: The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer), Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, Twelfth Night (Shakespeare), A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens), Of Mice and Men, The Pearl (Fielding). Keats and Wordsworth for poetry. Have forgotten a couple but that was the bulk of it.

We had this mad Scottish English teacher if you get my meaning. Goodness me, she was mad like Miss Jean Brodie......always identifying some obscure 'sexual inuendo' she'd found in the text, in reference to Romeo's manhood or some other character's deepest desires (about which few of us had a clue at 13 yrs of age........all girls school, pretty rigid upbringing etc). Hilarious now I look back.....thanks for the thread hee, hee.

[replicant]

I resented my schooling because I don't think we were pushed hard enough to read more, let alone the books we had accessible were quite limited. Going to public school was not easy, especially in the inner city. I was in classrooms full of kids that acted up and didn't respect knowledge. So, no matter how hard I worked, I didn't get all that I think I deserved.

High School was full of various readings. In each year, we read at least one work from Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, The Tempest). We read his sonnets. We read works from Kipling, Chaucer, Austen, O Henry, etc. We studied American poets and some American authors like Steinbeck.

Still don't think we did nearly enough reading. Being a kid from a very poor family, I didn't have many books nor had access to many books. So, the ones I got, I cherished immensely.

I spend my adult years making up for what I missed as a kid.

Even though I haven't finished my degree yet (long story behind that and I am slowly working on it as I have to work full time), I enjoy university much more than regular public school. No one is hindering my growth and I am really my only obstacle.





replicant added to this post, 15 minutes and 6 seconds later...

This past semester I took a special topics class with a professor I adore. He's a physical geologist and originally from N. Ireland. The topics class didn't have a textbook. He encouraged us to use various resources and he presented a wealth of information to us. I learned so much in my class. It has been one of the best classes I have ever had.





replicant added to this post, 4 minutes and 47 seconds later...

The education system is Greece is like this:
Education and books are free. The books are issued and given out from the ministry of education that decides what the teaching material will be for all children in every grade. Children are not divided in advanced and lower levels.
So we have assigned mandatory books for physics, for literature courses, etc. Whole literature books are only the ones from ancient Greeks, the rest are taught from excerpts that consist the books for language and literature. So we are tought some poems and some passages from classicals other than ancient greeks but not their whole books.
However it is on the decision of the teacher whether he will try to prompt pupils to read something else beyond the assigned books. Not all teachers do that. When I was a pupil my literature teacher would give as homework to some pupils to read other books but only to the good pupils, the ones that seemed to care about that.

To your question. Ancient Greeks that are tought: Homer, Herodotus, Ksenofon, Sophocle, Euripides, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Lycias, Isocrates, Demosthenes, and only for the ones that have decided to continue in the theoretical orientation, Plato and Aristotle.

In courses for modern literature again modern greek writers are prefered (there is no point to mention them here, probably you do not know them but they are classics for us). From foreign writers I do remember poems for Edgar Alan Poe and passages from "Animal Farm" of George Orwell but that is the problem with excerpts, I do not remember in details what I have read in school and from what writer.

Noehelia, I remember discussing very little of various ancient Greeks. We read Homer but I remember nothing else taught to us in school beyond basic mythology. We talked nothing of philosophy, which was saddening. I only learning more about Plato and Aristotle and other Greek scholars now that I am older.

I am curious about modern Greek writers and if any of their works have been translated into English. Would you have any recommendations?

I admit I have not read as much classic literature, etc as others. I did read for my class on Tudor England - Hobbes' Leviathan. I had to do a paper on it.

[Noehelia]

All of the following are taught in school by some passages of their books. They are considered classics in Greece in the sense that a person who loves books has usually read their work (not all of it ofc) until he is 20.

Nikos Kazantzakis (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) - I am sure you know Zorba the Greek, The Last Temptation of Christ but he has many other great books like Christ Recrucified (The Greek Passion), Captain Michalis, Report to Greco. Since you are an INTJ and usually INTJ's have a passion with Nietzsche I would recommend Askitiki (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) (in English I found it as The saviors of God. Spiritual exercises). The link is about the online text that I found. It is a philosophical book, my boyfriend who is an INTJ loves it as much as Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I have not read it, it has kind of a peculiar language. Usually people read most of his work in adulthood.

Antonis Samarakis (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) is said to be the second greek writer after Kazantzakis to be translated in most foreign countries. The Flaw is his most known book, although he has others and short stories that have been highly read.

Menelaos Lountemis, it is weird that I can not find any english pages for him and very few info even in greek pages. His work, especially A Child Counts the Stars, is a classic reading for children here (10-15 years old). Even young people that do not read in general books have read that. I read a study recently made in university about reading habits of youths and people have stated about "the Lountemis phase". I have read so many books of his (I has also been in the Lountemis phase) like The World's Clock Strikes Midnight, Cherry Trees will Bloom and This Year and others but as I found out they are not translated in English.

Elias Venezis (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.), is one of them that my teacher in literature have made me read him for an assignment. Aeolia and The Number 31328 are the ones that I have read from him.

I think the post is becoming too long so I will just mention the rest of the writers and put some links from them if I can find ones.
Alki Zei (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.), Zorz Sarri (I have read at least 5 books from her), Stratis Myrivilis (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.). There are others that are considered classics but I do not like them so much in order to mention them. And ofc there are so many more recent greek writers.

In poetry there are so many modern Greek poets that are considered classics. Some of them are:
Odysseus Elytis (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.), and George Seferis (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.), have received the Nobel prize but I do not like them that much. The preferred poets by Greeks are Kostis Palamas, Konstantinos Kavafis, Kostas Karyotakis, Yannis Ritsos, Maria Polydouri (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.). You can find links for most of these in To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I would like to mention a recent Greek poet that is the most known the last 20 years: Kiki Dimoula (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) but she twists so much the Greek language that I do not think that the english translation can capture the meaning of her poets.

[Marcus]

We went through the Hungarian and the European literature (including poetry) in chronological order.

Here is an approximate list of European authors (with some titles I remember) we had in high school:
Gustave Flaubert: Mme Bovary
Victor Hugo: Les Miserables
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Faust
Honoré de Balzac: Pere Goriot
Nikolai Gogol
William Shakespeare: Hamlet
Giovanni Bocaccio: Decameron
Ernest Hemingway
Homer: Odyssey
Bertold Brecht
Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita
Franz Kafka
Pushkin
Thomas Mann
Pierre Corneille
Friedrich Schiller
Anton Chekhov
Jonathan Swift
Daniel Defoe
Moliere: Tartuffe
Sophocles: Antigone
Dickens
Tolstoy
Voltaire
Dostoievski: Crime and Punishment
Dante Alighieri: Divine Comedy

To tell the truth, I did not really like literature. I skipped about 50% of the mandatory books. For example reading Homer (translated in hexameters) when you're 14 is pretty much painful.

[Indy]

In the Netherlands, the mandatory reading program isn't that extensive. There is a list of Dutch and translated works to choose from, normally around 12 books during your last 3 years of High school.

During English class we did MacBeth and Yeats and some other poets. You only have to read 3 to 4 books for your final examination.

For some students there is a course on Roman and Greek Culture (as well as pure Latin and Greek) and there you deal with the Odyssey and the Iliad.

Many schools are Christian, so they have a lot of bible study there as well. The often have Religion as a course subject as well, which focuses on the Judaism, Hindoism, Islam, etc.

[replicant]

A little offtopic but Indy - lovin' the avatar. Walken is awesome!

[Grizzly]

Before I moved to china I dug through The Geography of Thought by Richard Nisbett, an explanation of why there is such a difference in logical and value based reasoning between easterners and westerners.

Despite not being a classic its a must if your going out to that side of the planet.

[denaria]

As I did an accelerated course in the UK, and because I specialised in science/maths in the Sixth Form (the UK name for the top two year groups which are equivalent to High School Senior plus College Fresher) I had rather a weird set of set books between ages 11 and 14. But - Shakespeare (Tempest, R&J, Macbeth, JC, H IV Pt 1, Midsummer ND and maybe a couple more), Dickens (O Twist, D Cop, Great Exp), Austen (P&P, S&S), Shaw (Pygmalion, Caesar & Cleo) were the conventional English classics, and we also did some Sartre & Anouilh plays in translation, Animal Farm, Frankenstein, Chekov's Cherry Orchard in Russian, Caesar Book 6 and lots of Ovid, Catullus, Virgil etc in Latin, and one or two other more unusual (at the time: 37 - 40 years ago) books which I have not remembered. I read far more classic stuff for myself: the Brontes, more Dickens, the rest of Austen, Mary Webb, DH Lawrence, Thackeray, Defoe, Bunyan, Hugo, Steinbeck, Homer, de Beauvoir, H James, couldn't get on with Hardy...etc etc etc. I'd like to say my outside reading reflected my intelligence and taste, but actually I am a reading junkie and devour whatever's available; in those days there wasn't a lot of cash around for the junk paperbacks I tear through today, so I read what was on the shelves at home and at the local lending library.

Of course a lot of what I read for "contemporary" pleasure is now considered classic. I devoured Gerald Durrell and still re-read him (if you only know My Family, try the Drunken Forest and the Bafut Beagles, though not on a crowded train.) And of course for true "split your sides" comedy there is the master of them all, Sir PG Wodehouse.