But English was my thing. As it happens, I am now a professional writer and editor. This is in no way thanks to him! He was the kind of English teacher who nitpicked about rules and sucked the joy out of reading and interpreting literature. He would dock you for every spelling or grammar error made in a paper—so if you could make a solid argument that the pig in Lord of the Flies was a metaphor for lost civilization, but you spelled “civilization” wrong throughout the paper, you’d get a D. He almost ruined books for me. Now, apparently, he’s moved on to trying to ruin democracy.
It's literally his job.
It's to reinforce the idea of proofreading your work for errors and verifying there are no mistakes. It's like these whiny entitled dickheads see accountability and quality standards as a terrible accostments to their fragile ego.
I didn't need an entire article of a person crying just to say he's pedantic and thinks people should have enough pride in their work to make sure they present it in the best way possible.
Who the hell is going to take a piece seriously if it's littered with plainly obvious mistakes?
Clearly, making an argument that the pig symbolizes "lost" civilization to a Jewish teacher was a huge mistake.
/s
Also, it's been 35 years since I read LotF, but I'm pretty sure the pig carries meanings of primitivism, not civilization but hunter-gatherers, a time when man was completely dependent on a world of plants and animals he could not control or even influence much, the degeneration of bits of Bible study into animism, totem and taboo, and ritual sacrifice.
That's because you read the whole thing rather than skim reading for a facile hot take to make a good pull-quote. The kids turned feral. They also killed a pig. Obviously the pig was the porcine incarnation of civilization and when they killed it they lost their civilized ways.
Nevermind the facts and flavour of the rest of the text point in a different direction, some pseudo-deep metaphor between two contextless incidents is enough to form a thesis you can be proud of if you're at the level of a professional gossip monger. Job done, paper submitted.
It's par for the course, isn't it? There's no way to disprove an interpretation because it's all based on feelings, not even a compelling argument is needed. Spelling on the other hand is fixed, you get it wrong you get marked down.
These people want to be rewarded for things that hold no objective value because their work never holds objective value.
"This son of a politician, that I happen to have beef with, signals his progressive virtue in a hypocritical manner that our movement is fraught with! How dare he!" - another fool patiently waiting in line to climb on the pyre.
All the jerks that gave you A's gave me C+'s despite the fact I didn't make stupid mistakes like spelling errors and kept grammatical issues to a minimum. Why? Because I often wrote things contradictory to their opinions. One year that I had a particularly annoying English teacher, she assigned us a fairly open "argumentative" paper. I handed in a paper on why literary analysis was stupid and a waste of time. I spent more time on that with all kinds of research because I wanted to send a message. It got the lowest possible C.
Later on, particularly in college, I learned that I did better just writing a bunch of off the cuff BS the night before with whatever crap sources I could find in 30 minutes. So that's what I did.
Reminds me of my essay writing classes in college where I was getting Cs with a rare B here and there. One day I wrote about my friend's girlfriend problem where she was still holding on to her ex. For some reason I got an A for that even though I had the usual amount of grammar mistakes.
this articld pretty much sums up why western civilisation is in decline and China on the rise. And if you dont see it you are probably part of the problem.
Let me save you some time and paraphrase the article:
"I'm angry at my old English teacher because he's splitting the democratic vote, and because he graded me too harshly on spelling and grammatical errors. I think his book is poorly written and he's a racist."
The state of journalism in 2020, everyone.
It is, indeed, the sort of journalism you get from someone with a C+ in English.
It's literally his job.
It's to reinforce the idea of proofreading your work for errors and verifying there are no mistakes. It's like these whiny entitled dickheads see accountability and quality standards as a terrible accostments to their fragile ego.
I didn't need an entire article of a person crying just to say he's pedantic and thinks people should have enough pride in their work to make sure they present it in the best way possible.
Who the hell is going to take a piece seriously if it's littered with plainly obvious mistakes?
What, you mean "the pig is actually civilizashun" isn't a compelling enough argument to make you carefully re-evaluate entire the book?
Clearly, making an argument that the pig symbolizes "lost" civilization to a Jewish teacher was a huge mistake.
/s
Also, it's been 35 years since I read LotF, but I'm pretty sure the pig carries meanings of primitivism, not civilization but hunter-gatherers, a time when man was completely dependent on a world of plants and animals he could not control or even influence much, the degeneration of bits of Bible study into animism, totem and taboo, and ritual sacrifice.
That's because you read the whole thing rather than skim reading for a facile hot take to make a good pull-quote. The kids turned feral. They also killed a pig. Obviously the pig was the porcine incarnation of civilization and when they killed it they lost their civilized ways.
Nevermind the facts and flavour of the rest of the text point in a different direction, some pseudo-deep metaphor between two contextless incidents is enough to form a thesis you can be proud of if you're at the level of a professional gossip monger. Job done, paper submitted.
It's par for the course, isn't it? There's no way to disprove an interpretation because it's all based on feelings, not even a compelling argument is needed. Spelling on the other hand is fixed, you get it wrong you get marked down.
These people want to be rewarded for things that hold no objective value because their work never holds objective value.
The least our elites could do is be elite. People like John Reed and Edward Bernays would be appaled that anyone let these morons manage the state.
"This son of a politician, that I happen to have beef with, signals his progressive virtue in a hypocritical manner that our movement is fraught with! How dare he!" - another fool patiently waiting in line to climb on the pyre.
All the jerks that gave you A's gave me C+'s despite the fact I didn't make stupid mistakes like spelling errors and kept grammatical issues to a minimum. Why? Because I often wrote things contradictory to their opinions. One year that I had a particularly annoying English teacher, she assigned us a fairly open "argumentative" paper. I handed in a paper on why literary analysis was stupid and a waste of time. I spent more time on that with all kinds of research because I wanted to send a message. It got the lowest possible C.
Later on, particularly in college, I learned that I did better just writing a bunch of off the cuff BS the night before with whatever crap sources I could find in 30 minutes. So that's what I did.
Reminds me of my essay writing classes in college where I was getting Cs with a rare B here and there. One day I wrote about my friend's girlfriend problem where she was still holding on to her ex. For some reason I got an A for that even though I had the usual amount of grammar mistakes.
this articld pretty much sums up why western civilisation is in decline and China on the rise. And if you dont see it you are probably part of the problem.
Let me save you some time and paraphrase the article:
"I'm angry at my old English teacher because he's splitting the democratic vote, and because he graded me too harshly on spelling and grammatical errors. I think his book is poorly written and he's a racist."