Dúnmharú ar an Dart
Go way you gowl.
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Scothscealta were brilliant stories, I’ll never forget them
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I have no memory of them at all.
A great history of Cliftonville FC.
I’ll fight any man about the merits of that book.
Agree with you there’s way too much focus on learning off quotes. I liked the linking of themes between works, I think that encourages critical thinking. Plays are literature as well, you kinda have to have them on there, I’d have thought and you probably have to have Shakespeare on there. I think most classes get to see a play performed or at least see a movie of it.
Stanley by Peter gunning.
A TFK book club is the next logical step
A wine, a beer and a book to discuss each Friday evening to fill the gaps left by the EPL.
I have no issues with plays whatsoever and Shakespeare has obviously written plenty of very good ones.
But they are not meant to be read, they are meant to be performed. Sitting in a classroom reading a script is beyond tedious. It 100% puts people off plays and is not how the medium is supposed to be experienced.
If you’re doing plays, why not read TV or film scripts, they are also literature? Because that would also be madness. Let them watch a couple of plays, I do think people should experience it.
As classic as Shakespeare’s plays are, a couple of great stories, I do think that the language can be difficult for Leaving Cert students.
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Irvine Welsh up first…
How’s your cunty, Brunty…
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Fair enough point on performing against reading. But they’ve been part of literature for such a long time I think it makes sense to include them. On the language being difficult, I think that’s the point, you learn by dealing with things that are challenging.
They were a touch depressing
I know a couple of owl 
lads who are in a Men’s Book Club. At an age where they are secure in their sexuality they have a grand owl time of it.
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I get that, and I’ve no issue with challenging students but you’re throwing something at people with pretty much no context. And the vast majority of people in my class didn’t even engage with the actual work and just looked up sparknotes online. Now, they might do that anyway.
I just wonder do we bow too much to the altar of Shakespeare and whether something more comprehensible like Ibsen or Beckett would be better. Challenge them in a different way, through something thought-provoking, maybe a bit of existentialism, rather than just literally trying to comprehend what the fuck Hamlet is raving about now.
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I’m full of good ideas
Wouldn’t disagree with any of that. On the class looking up spark notes and working off that, that’s a major failing of how we do the leaving cert. It’s mainly a learning off exercise.
Would they drink a few pints doing it?
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We studied Emma as our novel. Not cool.
We did have Hamlet and Playboy of the Western World which were both brilliant.
Most importantly we had The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot. Magnificent.
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Let us go then you and I