**This question isn’t so much towards Irish/British people since you obviously speak English so there’s a lot of literary crossover!**
Obviously as an American we got introduced to mostly American or Anglo literature growing up. However there were some non-Anglo books that were translated and introduced to us like Dante’s Divine Comedy, Homer’s The Odyssey, and Anne Frank’s Diary. And probably some others I’m not thinking of at the moment. Lots of foreign poems and such too.
And America herself has produced a lot of literary classics too. To Catch A Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, The Scarlet Letter, Lolita (Russian-American lit?) Catcher In the Rye, The Giver, Fahrenheit 451; and Canada also produced The Handmaiden’s Tale & Life of Pi.
If you have read American/Canadian literature during your educational years, **did you have any considerations or class discussions about the themes in these books specific to America**? Obviously America’s history of racial issues like slavery & civil rights, Manifest Destiny, and political/cultural base founded upon principles of liberty and the American Dream, as well as being a major immigrant nation causes American literature to have a very different focus and identity to the literature of other cultures. In the same way that many authors like Dostoyevsky are influenced by the course of history and circumstances of their homeland, and are best analyzed within those contexts. Similarly, did you have to reframe the books you read from an American lens too?
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Some do, some don’t. There isn’t a pre-determined list of books for curriculums in Denmark, so the individual teacher has a lot of autonomy in choosing what material to use in their teaching, as long as they remain within the predetermined lines of the curriculum.
Personally, North American literature was very rare in my education, but we did spend some time, in conjunction with the history-subject, talking about the Slave-owner’s Rebellion and the Civil Rights Movement, and we _did_ discuss subjects such as ‘the American Dream’; though without much literature. But in terms of literature, we mainly went with—sadly, one could add—English literature and poetry. Instead, we mainly worked with what could rather be considered ‘sources’ in terms of the US; reading stuff like ‘the Emancipation Proclamation’ and the ‘United States Declaration of Independence.’
I don’t remember literature from any specific nationality except Swedish being promoted.
You could choose some classical words and some American books were part of them. I think I remember the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick were among the classics we could read.
The only American book I read for school was *Of Mice and Men,* and while main themes may have been discussed during Literature lessons, anything deeper regarding, for example, Manifest Destiny was dealt with in History lessons.
>America’s history of racial issues like slavery & civil rights, Manifest Destiny, and political/cultural base founded upon principles of liberty and the American Dream
All stuff that would be discussed in a History lesson in Wales, not Literature. Something as contentious as Manifest Destiny definitely wouldn’t be discussed any deeper than surface level in a Literature class — how it affected the characters, sure, but not more than that unless the teacher was particularly interested or educated in the topic. It would’ve been an aside rather than the main thrust of the lesson.
Honestly, at least in Spain in school you are not introduced to foreign literature per se. In some subjects like philosophy or sociology they may recommend books from foreign authors, but not in language and literature class (in fact I Galicia we have two, Spanish and Galician). We also have English class, but I don’t recall they made us read anything besides some short example texts.
No, never read an English book during my education. It was mandatory to read some few Dutch literature. But American/Canadian literature/culture isn’t relevant over here.
I’m Polish and since we live in Europe, we focus on the European literature. We discuss works of Polish literature most of all, and apart from that there’s also some French, English and Russian literature. Other literatures are only (and barely) mentioned, we didn’t even discuss thoroughly *La Divina Commedia* by Dante, which is a shame.
When it comes to American literature, the ONLY book I had to read for school (and it was in middle school) was *The Old Man and the Sea* by Ernest Hemingway and I had a hard time reading it, to be honest, because it was kinda boring to me. Mind you that the books that we have to read for school are later discussed about in class and usually you’re also examined on them so that the teacher can see if you did indeed read the book, but those tests are BS because the questions are often way too specific to know the answers for them.
But yeah, it was the only book I *had* to read. Other than that, in high school I had a very short phase of interest in Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry, so I’m familiar with that name. I also read *The Catcher in the Rye* by J. D. Salinger and enjoyed it, I read *Fahrenheit 451* by Ray Bradbury and it was very intriguing, and I also read *Slaughterhouse-Five* by Kurt Vonnegut and it was… well, you know if you read it. It’s set around WW2, so you can guess.
My high school literature teacher mentioned once a book called *The Bell Jar* by Sylvia Plath and she warned us to not read it for some specific reason but I don’t remember what it was.
EDIT: Canadian literature? Duh, we barely learn about Canada in school except that it’s in North America, the maple leaf is its symbol, people speak English in French there and that’s it. It’s pretty much as irrelevant to us as Poland is to the USA. Even the history of North America is barely covered in school because we focus most of all on European history.
Not when I was in school, and apparently still not now. The Cyprus Public School curriculum only has [a European Literature component](https://archeia.moec.gov.cy/sm/16/anthologio_evropaikis_logotexnias_lyk.pdf) (large PDF warning) for the last two years of secondary education. And still only based on excerpts. The rest of the time is dedicated exclusively to literature and poetry from Greece and Cyprus.
Greek and Greek Cypriot public education generally doesn’t look far outside its cultural borders (not the same as the political borders, read on). Particularly in Cyprus, the focus of education reform in literature has been to introduce literature of non-Greek-speaking Cypriots in the curriculum as a political priority, rather than expand to the literature of the Americas and other continents. And it’s understandable – if your education doesn’t even introduce you to the writings of the people who live in the same country as you but speak a different language, it’s a bit of a leap to focus on giving you a working knowledge of NA literature first.
No. Although I had English as a foreign language from year 5 to year 9, we did not learn any English literature. Teaching was focused on writing and speaking functionally in real live scenarios.
American authors – yes, quite a lot of them. The most notable are Mark Twain, Jack London, O. Henry, Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe. As for Canadian writers… I don’t think so, I can’t even remember anyone.
I remember some *british* novels we studied in middle school (Treasure Island and a few Agatha Christie) but the only american book I studied was a collection of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe (Nouvelles Histoires Extraordinaires) and it was the translation by Baudelaire, the only school assigned book I read from start to end in highschool. I found french authors from the 19th century boring.
Not in elementary school. But in highschool we were.
In our English classes we read Of Mice and Men and we also watched some movies like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Crucible and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s nest.
In our Czech classes we pretty much only learned literature. We didn’t read all the books, but we learned what they are about and why do they matter. You could obviously choose some of them for compulsory reading, but they would be translated. From what i can remember i read there was 451° Fahrenheit, A cat on a hot Tin roof and The Old Man And the sea. We learned more but literature was never my favorite, so i don’t remember.
At least when I was in school in Portugal, the focus was almost exclusively on Portuguese literature, at least when it came to studying full works or any particular author in depth. The few exceptions were from other Portuguese speaking countries. (I mean the subject was called Portuguese so, you know…)
And for foreign language classes like English we didn’t do literature at all that I remember.
>If you have read American/Canadian literature during your educational years, did you have any considerations or class discussions about the themes in these books specific to America? Obviously America’s history of racial issues like slavery & civil rights, Manifest Destiny, and political/cultural base founded upon principles of liberty and the American Dream, as well as being a major immigrant nation causes American literature to have a very different focus and identity to the literature of other cultures
Both the Canadian books you mentioned are relatively recent and don’t really have Canadian themes – neither is even set in Canada. Anne of Green Gables is the only book I can think of which fits with this. It feels like Canada doesn’t have the same long history of classic literature like the UK, Ireland, and US do. I’ve noticed the same with Australia and New Zealand. I’m not sure why that is, possibly because they’re young countries that were part of the British Empire for so long?
As /u/TonyGaze mentions, some of it was in History class about Emancipation.
The only American text I recall reading for English class was a Kurt Vonnegut short story.
The only American book that i read in school was Of Mice and Men, but we also learned about Mark Twain and another guy that i cant remember. But we talked about them as authors and didn’t read their books. I think we did something with Uncle Tom’s cabin, but not sure.
No.
And I actually took the subject for Worldwide Literature in high school. But it was extremely European-focused.
Not what I can recall. We were concentrating on learning the language itself, not on finesses like literature.
Things may have changed in the last half of a century, dunno about our schools nowadays.
Yes, in English class. It’s been a few years, but I remember reading Fahrenheit 451, América, The Crucible and Catcher in the Rye. Maybe Handmaid’s Tale too, but I can’t remember if that was for school or just for me. And of course we also learned about the history and the context.
Not really, at least in the 80’s and 90’s during my school years.
“Literature” classes are primarily about Dutch writers and translated books were (are?) not covered there.
Foreign books are covered in their respective language classes (English, French, German, Roman, Greek). Typically English classes here in NL were (are?) much more focused on the UK than the US, like using British spelling and pronunciation. (Canada, like Australia or NZ, were not a topic at all) This reflects on the reading lists as well. We mostly read Shakespeare, Dickinson etc, but maybe in other schools more American books were covered as well. Using the books to reflect on themes or leitmotifs in a cultural context was definitely not part of my English classes.
I’m French, the only non french books I remember studying are Animal farm and lord of the flies which were both written by English authors.
Otherwise we only studied french literature, with Rabelais, Molière, Corneille, Hugo, Maupassant, Le Cliézo and such.
My English teacher had an aversion to Shakespeare. In year 10 we read *Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry* by Mildred D Taylor, which is set in rural Mississippi in the early 20th century and is unflinching in its depiction of racism. For GCSE (state exams taken at 16) she chose *All My Sons* by Arthur Miller as the play. But the rest of the curriculum was British and Irish authors.
Only one I can recall reading was Red badge of courage, it’s been a while, and that was in English class. We all read different books though, so it’s not like it was in the corriculum.
Not at all.
The portuguese book curriculum focuses exclusively on portuguese literature, except for the Odyssey and the Illiad.
We would, sometimes, read excerpts of foreign books, but only for text analysis purposes. We never studied those books in depth like we did with portuguese works.
However, we did have a “Portefólio” which was s kind of trimestral book assignment. Every trimester, you would basically pick a book that you wanted, and at the end of the trimester you had to do a presentation on it for the class. And you could pick foreign book, as long as they were translated (it was portuguese class after all).
In foreign language classes we never really studied that languages literature besides things like famous writers or poets.
English is a compulsory subject, and in high school we take English literature, so we also studied American literature, especially Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass) and John Steinbeck (especially The Grapes of Wrath).
Of course, there was also T.S. Eliot, although I don’t know if he can be properly called American literature.
We didn’t read a whole lot of books in school, the only one I recall is “Sophie’s world” in the mishmash philosophy/religions/morals class we had, which we then used as basis to discuss the things it’s based on.
The norwegian class school book had some short stories and book excerpts, and we were encouraged to pick up stuff from the school library, but not specific stuff. Interpretation of literature was more along the lines of recognizing build-up, climax, plot twist, metaphor and other literary devices.
To discuss social issues domestically or abroad, we were given information about things rather than interpreting literature. We did cover slavery and apartheid, as well as lots of other things, but at a non-fiction level.
Went to school in Ireland. In primary school we read Chinese Cinderella which is by a Chinese-Canadian author. In secondary school we read poems by Robert Frost and also the book To Kill a Mockingbird.
There might have been more but I don’t remember. Most of the books and poetry we did was Irish or British.
We started reading American books quite early. It started with Diary of a Wimpy Kid in maybe seventh grade. After that, I can remember To Kill a Mockingbird and How I Live Now. At some point, everyone in my English class had to read a different book and present them to the class. I chose a British book, but other people read The Great Gatsby, The Help and Lord of the Flies.
And we spoke alot about some of the topics you mentioned. Segregation, racism, slavery and immigration were always big topics, for example we analyzed a speech by MLK. Also the American Dream was talked about (and crushed) in detail. I remember dreaming of moving to the US when I was like 13, but after few lessons on that topic… nnnope
We read Catcher In The Rye in school. There were book presentations where the kids could chose books on their own and so 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 were at least talked about. The Great Gatsby was part of English class.
While the content of the books were discussed I can’t remember anything being specific to America. Yes the authors where american and the original text was in english and with the Great Gatsby the prohibition was mentioned as a background, but that’s about it.
We didn’t read that many books, but our English textbooks would contain 2-4 page excerpts from British and American literature. *Of Mice and Men* was one, I also remember something dedicated to Mark Twain in general, featuring excerpts from *Adventures Huckleberry Finn,* *The Adventures of Tom Sawyer* and *A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court*.
I can’t remember any Canadian stuff.
In my primary school, the first real book we read was uncle Tom’s cabin (in German of course) at the age of 9 or 10. But this is absolutely not standard. Most schools start with something easier for children. I guess our teacher wanted to try something innovative and chose uncle Tom’s cabin but I think it was not such a great idea. We were too young and most of us struggled with working through such a long book.
Later our German literature classes were focused on German literature. I think the only books we read that were not originally in German were Anne Frank’s diary which was written in dutch and the ancient Greek drama Antigone.
In English lessons we didn’t read any books for a long time. Only in the last two years we covered “Big mouth and ugly girl” which I found terrible, totally boring high school story. And then we als read “of mice and men” which I found actually good and meaningful.
We never had any American literature in school, only German, English and Russian.
We had to analyse an excerpt of the script/book to the movie The Devil’s Own with Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford in an exam, though.
That was back in 1997, IIRC, when the peace process in Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement was in the making and we had whole semester dedicated to the conflict.