John Gardner's 'Grendel'

[null]

Have any of you read this? Recently (some school systems assign it to HS students (too early?))?. If so, I'd be curious to know your take on it; what did or didn't the book do for you? I only recently finished a read through and was struck by several points. Of course themes of pareidolia, personification and existentialism permeate the work:

I understand that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist. all the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly - as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back. I create the whole universe, blink by blink.​

Here, for example, we see Grendel defining both himself and his existence by that which he, so blindly, pushes against; and that nature, in pushing back against him, is also blind - yet in its own way. For Grendel's blindness is out of ignorance - a disease which he seeks to cure through pareidolia...

Stars, spattered out through lifeless night from end to end, like jewels scattered in a dead king's grave, tease, torment my wits toward meaningful patterns that do not exist.​

...and nature's blindness is that of nihilistic infinity.... Why? Infinity, by sheer enormity of scale, must necessarily be uncaring:

O the ultimate evil in the temporal world is deeper than any specific evil, such as hatred, or suffering, or death! The ultimate evil is that Time is perpetual perishing, and being actual involves elimination. The nature of evil may be epitomized, therefore, in two simple but horrible and holy propositions: 'Things fade' and 'Alternatives exclude.' Such is His mystery: that beauty requires contrast, and that discord is fundamental to the creation of new intensities of feeling.​

The pain of mortality, the futility of throwing one's self against an infinite, uncaring, wall. Yet in that proposition, Grendel acknowledges greatness: "beauty requires contrast." Grendel contrasts himself with existence, defines himself by that which he is not ("alternatives exclude"), and yet in so doing proves his own existential beauty. But what of mankind in all of this (for Grendel is no man)? Does Grendel, aside from being a murderous brute, serve them some purpose?

You improve them, my boy! Can’t you see that yourself? You stimulate them! You make them think and scheme. You drive them to poetry, science, religion, all that makes them what they are for as long as they last. You are, so to speak, the brute existent by which they learn to define themselves. The exile, captivity, death they shirk from—the blunt facts of their mortality, their abandonment—that’s what you make them recognize, embrace! You are mankind, or man’s condition: inseparable as the mountain-climber and the mountain.​

Grendel, or rather the forces which he represents, is the driving force behind mankind: man is what Grendel isn't. He injects man with fear, introspection and - most importantly - hope. Hope that beauty, knowledge, or some god, if only they can learn to properly invoke it, will bring them happiness and reprieve. That, too, is what Beowulf is for: man's hero in the flesh, proof proper of divine hospice. Grendel must die if man is to truly live (he will live on in their poetry, their science, religion).

I look down past the stars to a terrifying darkness. I seem to recognize the place, but it's impossible. "Accident," I whisper. I will fall. I seem to desire the fall, and though I fight it with all my will I know in advance I can't win. Standing baffled, quaking with fear, three feet from the edge of a nightmare cliff, I find myself, incredibly, moving towards it. I look down, down, into bottomless blackness, feeling the dark power moving in me like an ocean current, some monster inside me, deep sea wonder, dread night monarch astir in his cave, moving me slowly to my voluntary tumble into death.​

 

[Voodoo]

I was in highschool two years ago.
In my junior AP English class we participated in classics including, but not limited to,

Avatar
Tangled
Hairspray
Titanic
Tron
Toy Story 3

Teacher ratio of Gossip:Teacing with an astounding 50:1, new record?

Never wrote a single essay or read a single book (for the class, I read on my own).
And none of us passed the AP test. Weird.

 

[null]

Is that type of curriculum endemic to your area, or are you suggesting that it's endemic to your generation/the current state of education? I'm certainly surprised to see those titles next to an AP level course. I graduated from HS a decade ago now, and despite my neurodevelopmental disorders* that 'limited' me to the honors level courses, I recall working through much of Shakespeare, Things Fall Apart, The Great Gatsby and All Quiet. Not that the works you mention don't have their merits or entertainment value; it seems to me, rather, that you'd want to cast young, impressionable, minds as far away from home and humdrum as possible. The literary genius of a master of human emotion, the dissolution of African societies under the weight of colonialism, the social hedonism of the roaring 20's, the utter hopelessness and loss of WWI.

Woody, you're a cool cowboy but what do you know of such things?

* ADHD which caused me to perform poorly in grade school. I was prone to outbursts, bouts of pronounced annoyance (from repetitive stimuli), and excessive amounts of time spent ignoring reality for my own fantasy. In fact I remain neurotic into my adulthood, but have sufficient coping mechanisms that it is a receding problem.

 

[Storky]

To kill a mocking bird. One of the best books i've read.

 

[PR3C1Z10N]

I haven't read it. I'm a sophomore in HS, but I'm homeschooled, and I take both independent study and online live courses. Although I have no personal experience of public schools, I've heard about some of the current material, and I find it disappointing. I've read lots of books for my History-Philosophy-Religion class, and it really forces you to think. Instead of sticking our noses in a history book written 1 year ago, I think it can be better to read original sources such as Herodotus, or Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the King's of Britain.

Teach someone to understand one book, and they will understand THAT book. Teach someone to be able to think, and they can apply books.

 

[null]

This is hereby a thread for the discussion of education and school curricula.

To kill a mocking bird. One of the best books i've read.

TKaMB is another that we read through, though at the time I was too far in my own head to give it a proper treatment. Do you remember how old you were when you read it? What did you enjoy about it?

Teach someone to understand one book, and they will understand THAT book. Teach someone to be able to think, and they can apply books.

Very interesting reply. I have a rather intelligent coworker (well, at least I find him relatively (to me) to be fleeter of thought and to form patterns more subtle than my own) who homeschools his equally precocious son. From what conversations we've had on the subject, and from your comments, homeschooling certainly seems to provide one with much of what Western lower education has lost.

I fear, though, that there is bias in a sample that looks at homeschooled kids because, obviously, the enterprise requires considerable familial efforts to achieve; either through direct parent-as-teacher time, or the cost of hiring private tutors. In the former case, there is additionally a potential loss of wages as a result. I'm not implying that these are bad things, but that a certain kind of family, and socio-economic status, is more inclined to undertake homeschooling. Since it is therefore a deliberate act, one can presume that the teachers, or tutors, will have a similar level of deliberateness (and double the interest if the children are their own). Homeschooled kids almost universally will receive a better education simply because the environment is more favorable.

Further, I would argue that children have the mental and developmental need to impress their parents, yet rebel against (and ultimately perceive to have surpassed) them. This is because a parent represents a more complex authority figure than, say, a public school math teacher. The math teacher, by comparison, is merely someone to rebel against; as is the entire public school system with its arbitrary rules, bureaucracy and implied superiority.

Consider the goal of modern public education: okay, nominally it's to educate students, however mind also that there are psychological imperatives each child is working through as they progress in age and grade. Administrators realize this but know that they must also provide the most consistent and uniform experience possible: at present it is thought that any massively public system must focus on the 'average' condition if it is to serve the most utility for the largest number of people. So they react, with varying degrees of success, with rules and structures meant to suppress a child's 'negative' psychological desires (dress codes, no kissing in hallways, &c.) and to keep them safe (no weapons, no fighting, &c.). But because, as we just established, the kids are rebelling, inventing rules isn't enough: administrators must also enforce those rules and their own position in the hierarchy. So now they're focusing on teaching kids to respect authority and follow instructions, plus this set of arbitrary rules which are prone to change (further underscoring their arbitrariness in young minds) if/when they don't work as planned.

So perhaps one problem with the present system is that it fails to treat the psyche appropriately. As a final argument, let's revisit that public school math teacher. You are a precocious student in her class and have just devised a novel method to solve some problem. You show the teacher and, while your answer is clearly right, she tells you you're wrong: why? Is it because she's stupid? No, it's because she must teach the average plan to the average student. That in itself is a difficult proposition, since the students naturally want to rebel against her. So she quite simply hasn't the time to explore your method: besides, since you were clever enough to figure that out the standard method should pose no problem - right? So she doesn't worry about you either. What if your method did catch on and enough of your classmates asked about it so that she had to teach it? Now you're deviating from the whole lesson plan, upon which further lessons are built (relying EXACTLY on the methods being taught now) and there's no assurance that your peers would understand. If they don't understand and they fail the next test, or several, as a result there will be an inquiry and your teacher will admit that she taught an undocumented method: now she's responsible because clearly the method was bad.

Homeschooling defeats this as well because the lesson plans are catered to a single individual, or a small and likely homogenous group. Never mind the social component of a public school student's life which adds numerous complexities to the endeavor and moves administrators still further away from pure education. Homeschoolers socialize, but not in the same way as their public school counterparts - for good and ill.

 

[PR3C1Z10N]

Homeschooling defeats this as well because the lesson plans are catered to a single individual, or a small and likely homogenous group. Never mind the social component of a public school student's life which adds numerous complexities to the endeavor and moves administrators still further away from pure education. Homeschoolers socialize, but not in the same way as their public school counterparts - for good and ill.

Agreed! Up until I was 11 or so, my mom taught me. However, during that time I was taught with a goal of me being more independent. Now my parents set up and pay for the courses, and then I am independent for the most part. The classes aren't one on one with some super expensive tutor, rather, 1:20 or so. Yes, it is more costly than high school, but my parents don't plan on paying for my college tuition. I also don't plan to go to the most expensive state college I can find.

I'd like to think I'm pretty social, but my social circle isn't very big. I don't know 2000 people from a high school. So, yes my social life is not as large as that of the average student, but I know a smaller group of people quite well.

 

[null]

...However, during that time I was taught with a goal of me being more independent. Now my parents set up and pay for the courses, and then I am independent for the most part...

Which I think is a great approach, cost be damned so long as it's within reasonable bounds (i.e. no 1:1 private tutoring (unless that, too, is within reasonable bounds according to one's wealth)). The more I think about it, the more inclined I am to think that, were I to have a kid/kids, homeschooling - at least until mid-HS - would be the preferred format.

 

[Voodoo]

Is that type of curriculum endemic to your area, or are you suggesting that it's endemic to your generation/the current state of education? I'm certainly surprised to see those titles next to an AP level course. I graduated from HS a decade ago now, and despite my neurodevelopmental disorders* that 'limited' me to the honors level courses, I recall working through much of Shakespeare, Things Fall Apart, The Great Gatsby and All Quiet. Not that the works you mention don't have their merits or entertainment value; it seems to me, rather, that you'd want to cast young, impressionable, minds as far away from home and humdrum as possible. The literary genius of a master of human emotion, the dissolution of African societies under the weight of colonialism, the social hedonism of the roaring 20's, the utter hopelessness and loss of WWI.

Woody, you're a cool cowboy but what do you know of such things?

* ADHD which caused me to perform poorly in grade school. I was prone to outbursts, bouts of pronounced annoyance (from repetitive stimuli), and excessive amounts of time spent ignoring reality for my own fantasy. In fact I remain neurotic into my adulthood, but have sufficient coping mechanisms that it is a receding problem.

Forgot to mention my teacher was pathetic (pathetic by bad teacher standards), and the entire high school was a total of 100 kids, and it was a pretty low income town, so nobody really gave two shits about education anyway. Our science teacher was pretty cool but even then he couldn't assign any sort of college prep work because the kids wouldn't/couldn't do it.

tl;dr endemic to very small and poor towns, 90% of kids could care less about learning and the 10% just get lazy from all the easy work they get. Well maybe not the entire 10% but I definetly did. Never had a serious english class once I got out of elementary. My spanish and calculus classes were the same stuff.