It’s wild that the U.K. doesn’t teach the Odyssey, I thought their whole thing was stealing other peoples’ culture and pretending they owned it now.
Shakespeare invented literature, so clearly there’s no value in teaching anything from before him…
You haven’t experienced Shakespeare unless you read it in the original klingon.
taH pagh taHbe’!
ghu’ qaS wa’DIch’e’, qar’a’!
Fair point.
Well Greece wasn’t ever a British colony, so they didn’t have as many opportunities to steal artifacts and culture as they did with, say, Egypt or India
I’m sure they had ample opportunity to steal Greek artefacts from when Greeks invaded Egypt and India.
Also see: the Ionian Islands from 1815 to 1862
I’ve heard of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, does that count?
That translation has fallen out of favor with contemporary scholars but you get the gist.
Just looked it up, the Odyssey can be taught in the UK but it is rarely chosen because Shakespeare is easier to teach and students who pick Shakespeare get better grades on average.
Odd that it’s a choice between them. We learned Shakespeare and Homer where I am in the US.
In the UK secondary students study 3 bits of literature for the exam, modern (20th century+), victorian and classical which is everything before then, I think that’s how it works but that’s just from memory
We don’t like to brag about it but we fought the Brits in the War of 1812, one of the things we took from England was Greek literature. In turn, we Americans lost the definition of jams vs jelly and the superior spelling of “colour”.
I rebel against this fact by being American and using the spelling of “Grey” for the color, autocorrect be damned.
Is it even taught in the US? 🤔
I didn’t read it for school. I just liked reading and had this gnarly book featuring all the greatest hits of Greek mythology growing up.
I read it for school
Literally a part of a classical education. As in Classical.
We had to do skits. Broke it down by chapters and each group did like a page or two. I was the son in the scene where he’s working with his dad in disguise right when Odysseus returns home and sees all the other guys trying to bang his wife
That we did do; but for The Lion in Winter. I was Geoffrey.
Went to a mediocre high school in the US, and I had an English/writing course where the only materials were the Aeneid, Illiad, Odyssey, and Mythology by Edith Hamilton.
That seems above average, but I don’t have too much to compare it to. I read all of this when I took Latin as my language classes. And the odyssey for fun.
Definitely was in the rural, redneck school I went to.
My 10th grade English class studied a small section of it, like one self contained story.
This is what we did as well, in AP English. We also did Beowulf. We also had to read the first fucking Harry Potter book because the teacher liked Harry Potter. Imagine a group of the highest achieving 17 and 18 year olds out of 600 students their age writing papers about a book written for 10 year olds.
Such a waste of time. We got college credit for this bullshit. I’m still mad about it.
I feel like there’s a way to do it that doesn’t suck - an examination of the book WRT the hero’s journey, picking out elements borrowed from English literary tradition to see how they’re deployed v. original texts, etc.
Real talk though, I feel it comes from a place of not knowing how to appeal to young people. I ran into the very same thing once when asked about course ideas for first year students coming directly from high school. I had no idea (still don’t) what would appeal to kids, so I thought a course that used Harry Potter as a keystone text (everybody being familiar, using it as a bridge to more traditional lit) could work. But as I said the words I knew 18 year old me would’ve hated that, sooo…
I read both The Illiad and a shortened version of The Odyssey in school.
……………I did the odyssey at various points man I think the guy in the tweet is just Polyphemus or smthn like ‘I don’t know who this nobody guy is, ain’t never heard of no odyssey before bro’
Not in secondary school but I did the Illiad, the Anaed, the Odyssey and Ovids Metamorphoses in 6th form college.
I did study it at school but had to take Classical Civilisation for one of my GCSE options. Our default in English Literature was a Shakespeare work as previously mentioned (Merchant of Venice for me). I also recall studying An Inspector Calls?
Meanwhile on tiktok British people are apparently mad at Americans for not knowing or caring about Robbie Williams
deleted by creator
What insane revisionist history cope. Robbie tried multiple times to crack the US but was soundly rejected by American audiences every time.
Liam’s a tool. UK schools absolutely do teach the Odyssey, and have done so at least as far back as my youth.
most of the time someone says something wasnt taught in school its because that person straight up didnt pay attention in class
I suspect there is significant overlap between the kids who were complaining in math class that what they were learning was useless along with the adults who claim math class didn’t teach them “how to do taxes”. (As if you do anything other than fill out a form, anyways.)
Take the numbers from the numbered boxes, and transpose them into the numbered boxes on the tax form. There, you know how to do taxes, what are we gonna do with the other 13 years of your pre-college education?
But what if it puts me in a higher tax bracket and I get less moneyyyyyy?
lol
Let’s see… what other words are in the Financial Incompetants’ Guide to Life… ok here’s something that sounds cooL WRITE OFFS!!!1
Wait we were supposed to pay attention in school now it makes sense
Guess someone didn’t pay attention when the teacher said “Pay attention please” multiple times.
Mine didn’t. We did Buddy, The Crucible, Animal Farm and Shakespeare from what I remember. First I heard of the Odyssey was when I was 19 and DW did a retelling of it on Arthur. When I saw a copy of the story in the shop I worked at, I got it so I could read the actual story.
Were you not aware of it at any point? I don’t necessarily mean as part of the GCSE curriculum. I’ve been aware of the Odyssey and the Iliad from the “Ancient Greeks” part of our primary school curriculum back in year 4. Of course we weren’t analysing texts, but I’d expect any ten year old to be capable of rattling off some major plot points like blinding Polyphemus, or sailors plugging their ears with wax against the sirens and tying Odysseus to the mast.
Nope, I don’t think I’d ever heard of it prior to the Arthur version.
We did the fall of Icarus in Year 3. My little sister learned Theseus and the Minotaur when she was around the same age, which is how I knew about it. Other than that, I don’t remember studying Ancient Greek anything, not even Heracles. Your school was obviously better than mine.
To be fair, the only people left on Xitter are idiots
The world is awash in morons and they aren’t localized to that venue, although by way of it’s very structure, it’s a venue that strongly attracts people incapable of holding two thoughts at the same time.
As G Carlin would have said, think how stupid the average person is and realize 50% are stupider than that. This is the world we live in - where the trivial thoughts emerging from society’s dreck take have equal stage and prominence to expertise and wisdom
As an American, I am going to dine on this single example as if it disproves the idea that we are insular and provincial hicks for the next decade.
nah, it just proves that brits are as stupid as you are, which is, tbh, is not a surprise /s
We had Brexit. We can’t say nothing.
As a layman, i believe you have a stronger private school presence, which tend to specialize in order to differentiate. But I might be wrong because I have limited information on the topic of British education.
We have a strong private school presence, yes. Trouble is it leads to privilege and people get on in life not cause they’re clever, but cause they wear the right school tie.
People often choose the easier path, which in this case means choosing status over knowledge.
The /s is unnecessary, I can assure you we are stupid and nobody should be surprised.
it’s /s because someone could’ve implied that i consider americans and brits as the winners in this competition, when in fact, the only competition they’re winning is the one for the most villanous politic actions. USA is a leaéer here at the first glance, but brits literally created USA, so that kinda makes all of the USA villainy into a subset of the british one
edit: i was wrong, the best villains are the french, bc William the Conquerror is the reason brits exist, and therefore also the reason usa does
No country has a monopoly on villainy
i’m not saying they have, i’m entertaining the idea of this trio’s leadership in it in terms of quantity
Certainly stashing it away in the ammo belt.
When the only Homer they know is Homer Simpson.
Fun fact: the voice actor for Homer Simpson also voiced Homer (the Greek one) in the Disney Hercules animated series.
Fox should sue those lazy Greeks for stealing the name.
Even The Simpsons covered the Odyssey at some point though.
The world doesn’t revolve around America, but you’ll see idiots in Bumbfuck, Romania talking about Soros and wokeism. It’s got to be exhausting.
Soros is a Hungarian Jew who survived the Holocaust and moved to America afterwards btw, so when someone from the Balkans is complaining about him it’s not ignorance, it means something very specific.
Even more of a Nazi dog whistle than when the American right does it? I guess that would make it a Nazi Air Horn
More that it’s not just an idiot complaining about things supposedly happening in a different country.
“The Jews are trying to replace us.” ?
Orban / the party in charge were saying Soros was using his money and power to flood Romania with immigrants.
Still exhausting!
I find that people get more ticked off about the woke in non American countries even if it really doesn’t involve them (it should) but even then they increase their hostility because of it
I have to admit that I have not read the Illias or the Odyssey in school, either. We were made read books in school intendet to make children shy away from books, so they won’t touch any of them after school ever again.
Luckily I had read loads of good books by that time, so I knew that only a few are as horrible as the ones they made us read in school.
There are basic versions of these stories with big drawings, mostly made for kids. Basically manga. When i was a kid(in Greece), 35 years ago, i had this
https://www.stratikis.gr/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/iliada-nea.jpg
This is Iliad and it was cooler than Odyssey. Badass dudes with almost divine powers fighting other dudes and entire armies on their own, while Gods are taking sides and fucking things up. Isnt that shonen.
Odyssey’s ending was cool though, even if it was a bit sad.
I first read the classic translation by Schwab when I was ten or eleven.
the illias and the odyssey are ancient greek literature, I don’t think they’re that fun to read.
But, you still should be taught about their existence in history.
They were more fun to read than the sh-t the forced down our throats in school. At least Homer knew how to write a story.
It does feel a lot like that, doesn’t it? Why else would the Bronte sisters be on the curriculum if not to snuff out any interest in literature?
It could be worse. We read Brecht and Kafka. Several works of them. I’ve never encountered worse waste of paper and ink than those idiots. And the rest was not much better.
Just because it was wasted on you doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea, Kafka’s short stories especially (Die Verwandlung, Ein Landarzt etc) are accessible for teenagers and a good gateway drug to get interested in other things. Which is really important for kids that don’t have natural access to literature at home.
Sorry, but I experienced “Die Verwandlung” as written diarrhea of a person with severe mental problems. “Der Prozess” didn’t improve my opition of him, either.
Well, lead a horse to water etc, doesn’t mean we should stop making teens read books in school they wouldn’t be exposed to otherwise. At least now you have both read and formed an opinion on two of the most influential and well regarded works of world literature. (And hopefully they also made you read a lot of other literature in diverse styles and genres.)
The problem is not about “reading books they would not read otherwise”. Sadly, many, if not most, kids don’t get exposed to books anymore except in school. And then they are confronted with unlikable stuff that makes them shy away from ever touching a book again.
I still hope that one day the people who decide what children and teens should read in school get their elitist heads out of their asses and actually try to get kids to read because they enjoy reading a book. Problem is that most people in that area seem to hate books that actually sell in the shops because people like to read them. Like I said about Reich-Ranizky once: he would not notice a good book if it bit him.
So the obvious solution is they should read more books, more varied stuff, not less. Popular, niche, basic, normative, weird, etc.
Of course, your assumption that all teens hate Kafka just because you do is demonstrably false. The assumption that books sell simply because they are actually better and more enjoyable to read is also false, there are a lot of other factors at play.
The kids that enjoy reading will find what is pushed in the book shops anyway, but kids from working class homes will never be exposed to anything else - and therefore have no chance to decide if they like it or not.
Only boring kids would find Wuthering Heights & Jane Eyre boring. Both books would be excellent choices in any curriculum. If you wanna talk boring early 19th century authors, Jane Austen is the name you’re looking for.
I found Wuthering Heights more miserable than boring.
Its not even that great of a mini van. You can get better for cheaper!
The Honda Odyssey fucks hard
Like that Kia, right?
The problem is, I have this big bag of stones in my glass house, and I want to throw them at the UK for being dumb, but if I do, I also have to admit the US education system is trash.
I’ll throw that stone for you
The British education system is almost as bad as the American education system. The biggest difference between our cultures is that a lot of Americans are willing to point out how incredibly racist our country is
It’s not just slavery minimization. A lot of far right Americans have taken over local school boards to ban books that talk about gay people existing or the fact that sex is something that happens, among other nefarious purposes. And a religious organization in Texas writes pretty much all the textbooks used across the country. It can’t be this bad in the UK can it?
So much broken glass, was it worth it? Now I have to go get the broom.
The amazing part is you somehow broke France and the Netherland’s glass too? Just so much to clean up.
I mean, I have no qualms with recognizing the US education system is garbage… It gives me more fire to try to improve it.
Both can be true. We can be trash in different ways!
I can do both. I’m ot gonna let some backwater pit like the UK insult my home, especially since the UK is essentially completely dependent on the US at this point.
The Illiad was like the Bible before the Bible.
Only in that it was widely published but there are others too like the Epic of Gilgamesh.
The Illiad was like the ancient Greek Bible because it was used to provide behavioural guidelines and views common to all Greeks. It was a text central to any Greek’s education. How does a leader act? Read the Illiad. How are battles waged? Read the Illiad. What is the relation between humans and gods? Read the Illiad.
Alexander the Great was known to carry a copy of the Illiad with him at all times, and many philosophers routinely used excerpts from it to illustrate their points. And people would reference it like we reference things from the Bible in the west (Judas, turn water into wine, cross to bear, turn the other cheek etc)
I have not read the Iliad and I’ve only read a few excerpts from the Odyssey. They available as an audio book anywhere that isn’t Audible?
If you are going to delve into that, you could also try the book “Circe” by Madelleine Miller. Loved it.
I don’t reccomend reading/listening to the original, but reading/listening to one of Steven Fry’s books about them.
Iliad was not a religious text(or even a text for many centuries). It was just a story of a dude trying to get back home.
I know you know this and likely just mistyped, but for clarity, the Iliad is about the war itself. The Odyssey is about the dude trying to get back home.
They weren’t religious texts per se, but they were certainly cultural touchstones which contain important lessons about the human condition, death, love, and what’s truly important in life. They would fill a role similar to histories in the Old Testament, probably, like the book of Ruth.
You are right, i wrote a comment about iliad before and mistyped iliad here too. And you are right, it was a cultural touch stone for ancient Greece.
instead we studied useful things
Have you ever seen any British television quiz game shows? The amount of world geography and history most contestants seem to know is abismal, makes me scratch my head and seriously wonder what many of these people are doing there, in a game show about knowledge. What are they even doing there, in the delusion that they have a shot.
“What is the capital of Denmark?”
“Erm… pass.”This person’s comment is just another drop in the bucket in the sorry state of things.
$10 says the dipshit in question did a frantic google, saw ‘ulysses’ and went james joyce.
Still not American though
Getting closer at least
…the US is not closer to the UK than Ireland though…
Wait… some people don’t know the Odyssey?
They don’t teach it in my country. I read it on my own.
The Illiad and the Odyssey are classics and hardly American culture. They are western culture as a whole. No idea what the drama is about but some dude not knowing what the Odyssey is, is the same as not knowing any other classic. (There are too many to count, but not knowing the most popular ones are is like not knowing the titanic sank.) (Spoilers)
That’s the joke.
