Laughing For Fifty Years And Still Laughing!

The English text book in Tamil medium schools' post X-standard classes is quite basic. http://www.textbooksonline.tn.nic.in/books/11/std11-english.pdf
At that level there is no way a child can deal with PGW. The traditional non-detailed text books have had a story - usually in the good vs. evil gentre. Tale-of-two-cities, The-count-of-monte-cristo sort of books. Grand sacrifice, Grim Vengeance and so on. Children will not be encouraged to imagine and write essays of alternate scenarios. Like, what-if Sydney Carton were to have said "screw Lucy Manette, I'd marry a regular french girl, and get a government job in the new Republic", and goes on to live happily ever after in Paris ? That would jive well with the mood of a teenager, as well as the national character of jugaad. Instead, the children are cramming standard essays for the exams.

 

I liked that essay.... reminded me of ... what else... something on youtube. Take a gander and a listen:

 

I liked your crisp evaluation of my “essay” .... reminded me of ... what else... tempted me of what …..writing another essay. But, you are spared this time because we essay-writers are fussy creatures who require tremendous power to recharge our Broca’s area after every Wagnerian and self-engrossed composition. Emerson said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds ”. He hardly noted how essay-writing fools take to consistency over contradictions so that they don’t confuse themselves while it is ok to confound others.

 

I have not heard of the classifier “non-detail” for almost two decades now. I chuckled on seeing it.

One can be forgiven for suggesting that someone should have come up with a more imaginative word to identify the subject paving for early and formal induction into classics. The first time I heard that phrase back in school I felt like someone took up the task to revise the curriculum taxonomy and then abruptly collapsed of exhaustion midway and the task to name this particular subject was deferred indefinitely as it was very resource expensive to fully and properly name this dangling modifier.

 

I am not a headmistress of a highly ranked school in TN.

I am a Disasporini*, with family in various countries we had migrated to. I can read Tamil with some difficulty. [* a member of the Indian Diaspora]

I can completely see your rationale about dense books with big words, and long winded stories from forin cultures. Tough for a sensible teenager in Hindu High School to get past a few pages in those. Even for English medium students those books would be a terrible bore.... unless there is some rumor about steamy scenes somewhere in the book.

Not having to write essays in exams could make a book a lot more pleasant. I see that there is no such thing as a non-detailed text in the current State Board English syllabus for Tamil medium students. They have a few stories, under the tag, Additional Readings, from which "detailed" questions were asked. A PGW-story could never fit into that scheme. Imagine a student having to write an answer to an ERC (explain with ref. to contect) question about something that Barmy Fungi-Fipps had said at the Drone's club.

It is easy to find the link, when you have google to help you. It helps if you had already been to that link, and remember an odd thing or two about it. Most of the TV, youtube, and radio links on this thread are things I had already seen, and therefore they pop up in my mind, when I see something related to those.

No... not a headmistress.

 

You are right. Though non-detail (ND) lacks the verbatim of the original work, the subsequent marginalia and annotations [details] enabled from the original work are faithfully restored in the misleading "non-detail" edition.

The text borrowed from the original work is sparse. But the helpful annotations from the original work are glued in ND as new text to displace the original text. Tell me, would we even be able to grasp the classics if such high-culture work is not weakened in original form and then strengthened in digestible form.

 

The non-detail is not just about the book that is prescribed for the class. It is also about the level of detail required to answer the exam questions. While the detailed text (often called English-Paper-I) was usually committed to memory, punctuation and all, and nitpicky questions on such details are asked in the exam, the exam on non-detailed readings would contain just a few questions asking for essays. The very studious Hindu Highschool student would memorize whatever that is prescribed in school, as well as the essays in the "guides" sold in those helpful bookstores near the school. The goal of getting the student to understand the story, and whatever implications within that rigamarole, and then produce essays in her/his own words is totally lost in the gusto to memorize everything.

One time I listened to a teenager on a chennai open terrace; she had a small book in hand, walking back and forth, in the early morning, and reciting something that sounded like Mahisaasura Mardhini chant. It was rhythmical, but sounded odd nevertheless. When I paid some closer attention, it turned out to be "Treasure Island". That child had parsed the whole <abridged version of the> book into lines of equal number of syllables, and putting that lot into her hard disc drive.