This is just venting.
I recently moved to Israel and am currently teaching two honors 8th grade English classes. It's a little different than what I did back in the States since the focus is more on grammar, but being a writer, I try to push my kids to write, even if their command of English is still more limited since it's a second language for them.
Anyway, the text book has a whole unit on books and authors which were are currently discussing. One of the authors mentioned was Mark Twain (who by the way only three of my kids -- out of 60 had heard of). It mentioned that this was his pen name and his real name was Samuel Clemens.
So I was explaining the concept of a pen name and said, "you know Stephen King famously used a pen name for some early work as well." I could not believe it, but the whole class had blank stares. I tried the same in my second class, same thing. I also asked about John Grisham. "who?" came the response.
Now I'm not expecting them to have read any of their books, even though both have had their stuff translated into Hebrew. I'm not even expecting that they've seen a movie based on one of their books, though all the movies were released in Israel with Hebrew subtitles.
But they had never even heard the names! When I explained the two of them were among the wealthiest, best known authors alive and between the two of them, they'd probably sold more 500 million books, they were shocked. . .
I don't know. I mean these are honors kids. I'm not teaching the lower levels. And they've never even heard of two of the biggest names in writing?
I gave them a homework assignment to print out some information from the internet about one of about a dozen famous authors (none were familiar, names like Hemingway, Asimov, etc.).
A couple of them missed the point and e-mailed it to me but didn't bring it with them. I just wanted them to read it in class so they would at least know the names. . .oh well. . .
Anyway, I'm done with my venting. . .
Eric
I recently moved to Israel and am currently teaching two honors 8th grade English classes. It's a little different than what I did back in the States since the focus is more on grammar, but being a writer, I try to push my kids to write, even if their command of English is still more limited since it's a second language for them.
Anyway, the text book has a whole unit on books and authors which were are currently discussing. One of the authors mentioned was Mark Twain (who by the way only three of my kids -- out of 60 had heard of). It mentioned that this was his pen name and his real name was Samuel Clemens.
So I was explaining the concept of a pen name and said, "you know Stephen King famously used a pen name for some early work as well." I could not believe it, but the whole class had blank stares. I tried the same in my second class, same thing. I also asked about John Grisham. "who?" came the response.
Now I'm not expecting them to have read any of their books, even though both have had their stuff translated into Hebrew. I'm not even expecting that they've seen a movie based on one of their books, though all the movies were released in Israel with Hebrew subtitles.
But they had never even heard the names! When I explained the two of them were among the wealthiest, best known authors alive and between the two of them, they'd probably sold more 500 million books, they were shocked. . .
I don't know. I mean these are honors kids. I'm not teaching the lower levels. And they've never even heard of two of the biggest names in writing?
I gave them a homework assignment to print out some information from the internet about one of about a dozen famous authors (none were familiar, names like Hemingway, Asimov, etc.).
A couple of them missed the point and e-mailed it to me but didn't bring it with them. I just wanted them to read it in class so they would at least know the names. . .oh well. . .
Anyway, I'm done with my venting. . .
Eric
