The Second Coming

[Ed Anger]

Not bad.

I'd never pay for a new car like that though.

I reserve the right to stop paying on it, and drive a lemon through the dealership's front window.

[DisturbedPervert]

A 4 is just as good as a 5 in getting those Ps out of intro classes.

Depends on the program.  Some do require a 5 in certain subjects, and some don't accept APs at all. 

[grumbler]

Well, where I come from ex-military people are not considered good poetry teachers.

We consider them uneducated scum and don't let them anywhere children.

Well, where I come from (the US Navy) we kinda feel the same way about ex-military types, and ours aren't even Polacks to begin with, as a rule. 

Since I am not ex-military, your jibe is an EPIC FAIL.

[garbon]

Depends on the program.  Some do require a 5 in certain subjects, and some don't accept APs at all. 

Stanford does!

[PDH]

Grumbler gave my grandfather an "F" back in '42. 

[Norgy]

For some reason, I haven't really remembered that poem, despite reading it when I studied English.

The lecturer mainly focused on the poem capturing the "spiritus mundi", that is the zeitgeist of the post-Great War West where the future seemed bleak and dull. And then moved on to The Wasteland and recommended Oswald Spengler. 

Then later, in smaller classes, the ph. d. student teacher gave us his interpretation, which basically was that Yeats was an occultist/esoteric and the sphinx (the Greek one) symbolises the female divine blah blah and also rebirth since the Greek sphinx was a flying one (like a phoenix from the ashes). And to think this was almost ten years before Dan Brown. I left the class even a bit dumber than before.

[grumbler]

Why would a student of an AP class explore what they already knew? I would rather suspect if an AP student understood the historical facts required to get an A in the class, they wouldn't waste time with a poem (unless you're a prick and put it on the test.  )

I don't write the AP test! 

AP courses are more than about learning the material; half the points on the AP test come from essays, and those essays require you to apply existing knowledge to new situations.  A good way to teach this is to "make the familiar unfamiliar," which is to take something they know (like how nationalism was exploited by the conservatives in the years leading up to WW1) and make it unfamiliar (i.e. nationalism is now a falcon "turning and turning in the widening gyre" and it "cannot hear the falconer").

If your teachers do not do this where it is possible, I pity you (and them).  I do test using this method as well (like my test on Gandhi placed him in the modern US as the leader of a group of Hispanics trying to force the US to give up the land it gained in the treaty of Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.  Students had to show they understood the career of Mohandas Gandhi by describing what the parallels would be in the case of the "American Gandhi."

[grumbler]

Grumbler gave my grandfather an "F" back in '42.

Tell him it is too late to turn in that missing homework.

[garbon]

I don't write the AP test! 

Presumably they still have tests during the course of the semester?

[Valmy]

AP courses are more than about learning the material; half the points on the AP test come from essays, and those essays require you to apply existing knowledge to new situations.  A good way to teach this is to "make the familiar unfamiliar," which is to take something they know (like how nationalism was exploited by the conservatives in the years leading up to WW1) and make it unfamiliar (i.e. nationalism is now a falcon "turning and turning in the widening gyre" and it "cannot hear the falconer").

Yeah on my test I had to interpret a Barbara Tuchman quote.

[Caliga]

I'm amazed you remember the contents of the test (and I think you and are are basically the same age).

[Malthus]

Damn you guys for taking an interesting thread and making it boring. 

Anyway, out of curiousity Grumbles, did any of your students come up with interpretations that surprised you (in a good way)?

[garbon]

I'm amazed you remember the contents of the test (and I think you and are are basically the same age).

Indeed. I can't really even remember which tests I took.

[Caliga]

Indeed. I can't really even remember which tests I took.

I know I took Euro History AP and American History AP.  I'm pretty sure I took English AP as well.  I must have taken a fourth one because I earned 32 credits for them all.  Is there an Anatomy & Physiology or Biology AP exam? 

[Barrister]

Grumbler gave my grandfather an "F" back in '42.

Your grandfather was alive in 1842?