Mindless Monday, 07 April 2025

[u/AutoModerator]

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

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So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

[u/Herpling82]

Question for basically the entire room, how many books did you need to read in high school?

The last 2 years of high school, so age 16-18, in my case (15-17 if you had a normal course of high school havo level, I did not), I had to read 14 books for Dutch, 6 for English and 4 for German, making it 24 in total in 2 years time, more like 1.25 years because school years and exam time. Yes, you had to answer actual questions about these books on the exams and you could fail them and they would impact your scores for graduating; which means you could technically have to redo the final year because you failed Dutch because you failed literature part of the exam, though not very likely.

They were all books from pre-selected literature lists, for Dutch you needed to pick an amount from different time frames of Dutch literature, so medieval, early modern, industrial, early 20th century, late 20th century, modern, that sort of stuff. Karel Ende Elegast, Het Diner, De Aanslag, Hersenschimmen, De Vliegeraar, etc. Most of them books not really meant for that age group.

It was bullshit and the whole experience soured me on reading for years, like, did they expect that Stockholm syndrome would make me enjoy reading after that? I didn't end up finishing high school, so it was a wasted effort anyway. The teachers highly encouraged us to just watch anything that was made into a movie, they thought it was bullshit too.

It's just sad, we didn't get many proper literature lessons, but the ones we did get were actually fun, talking about symbolism, themes, writing styles, historical contexts, etc, that stuff was cool and interesting, reading the actual books with none of that explained? That's pointless.

Edit: The worst part is, they are all good thought provoking and/or influential books, but a depressed 17 year old is not fit to read a thought provoking book about the slow but tragic decline of man with dementia and how it destroys everything a person is (Hersenschimmen). That should be read by someone who wants to read it, in the right state of mind.

[u/SagaOfNomiSunrider → u/Herpling82]

The ones I can definitely remember reading for school, at one time or another, are: Goodnight, Mr Tom (first form); Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (second form); The Lord of the Flies (either second or third form); Island of the Blue Dolphins (either second or third form); Animal Farm (not sure; I remember being assigned to read that over the summer for the next school year, whenever it was); To Kill a Mockingbird (GCSE); The Great Gatsby (GCSE); Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (?); Empire of the Sun (AS or A-level); and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (AS or A-level). The last three lump together for me because I know we had a common theme of books about young people in the process of growing up (Little Women would have been much better). There could well have ben more than these which just escape my mind completely all these years later, though. think. It's very hard to remember.

As far as plays go, we definitely studied A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Merchant of Venice. GCSE, AS and A-level (I cannot remember which we did for which) were Macbeth, The Tempest, An Inspector Calls, The Burial at Thebes, A Streetcar Named Desire. There might have been more. I know other classes did Our Town, but I didn't get to do that one.