High school literature

>tfw you went to an American public school
>never read anything but Dickens and garbage "American classics" authors like Hemingway, Orwell, Fitzgerald, and Vonnegut
>no Shakespeare beyond Romeo and Juliet, no Plato, no Bible or Dante, no Homer, no Sophocles, no Melville
>tfw you had to teach yourself quality literature and are just now feeling like you're catching up to other readers at age 22

>Orwell
>trash
Wtf.

It was your parents fault user. You can use sites like citydata now to objectively find schools that are white, rich, and motivated to place kids in AP classes.

My small town has a male population that is 7% doctors. That is fucking 10000x the american average. It is also 96% white with the rest being asians and amerindian. My kid is 6 in full day kindergarten that has a goal for 100% literacy by 1st grade.

Also
>hemingway
>orwell
>garbage
>22

Might be time to consider that your estimations of yourself might be based on youth and stupidity.

>"American classics"
>Orwell

Wtf were you expecting. It's high school. Most people I knew struggled to read those kinds of books, it would be much worse if you tried to force them to read even more dense literature. You shouldn't have expected so much from high school, it's mostly day-care, but now that you're out you can do what you want.

>mostly day-care
This, even when you are enrolled in an institution of learning, ultimately you have to become an autodidact using the resources at hand.

Your failings are your own OP

Perhaps its with good reasons that -18 y olds do not have to read those authors

Public education is, by definition, plebeian. Just admit you're either too poor to send your kid to a private school or hire a tutor, or too stupid to home school him yourself.

Also, Hemingway writes nothing but adventure stories filled with self-insertion, self-loathing, and misogynistic woman idealization. Orwell is a fine essayist but is incapable of writing a quality novel due to his poor prose and inability to write with subtlety.

>too stupid to home school him yourself
We were just having another thread about Dunning Kruger
>misogynistic woman idealization
kys

>kys
Okay, so you're 16 and are doing nothing but LRPing in this thread. Good to know.

I'm from an area like that with a very highly ranked public school, and we did the same shit as OP. It doesn't matter how rich and well equipped the school is if the state sets a garbage curriculum.

Unless you compare them to the ghetto/white trash hovel down the road where teachers spend 60% of their time managing behavior and home emergencies.

They're all bad. None of them teaches you how to critically think. The goal of mainstream public education is to make good workers, not good thinkers.

I went to one of the best schools in my state and struggled in my first 2 years of university as an engineer due to having to think non-linearly, which is all I was trained to do for 13 years of schooling. All I did in high school was rote memorize Powerpoints and solve problems with one solution. I was in AP courses and it made no difference.

see
Suggesting that all schools are the same implies a certain blindness on your part

I don't see the point you're trying to make by linking that post. IF I have to take matters into my own hands and teach myself, that demonstrates that the schools are indeed bad.

In Sweden the only thing we ever read was one Kafka novel and one Steinbeck.

>>never read anything but Dickens and garbage "American classics" authors like Hemingway, Orwell, Fitzgerald, and Vonnegut

My American Literature class last year only had us read books by Women, gays, and Jack Kerouac.

>I can't read a book unless someone tells me I have to.

>English Comprehensive (free school)
>Read Steinbeck, two plays by Shakespeare, a play by Priestly and a few chapters of Bronte

That's it. That's all we read. In college (optional high school senior) we read one more Shakespeare play, the Great Gatsby and a terrible book by Sebastian Faulks.

Even University is pretty piss-poor to be quite honest with you, familial. The English education system is one of the worst in the developed world. By college, even University, there were students who still struggled to read out loud.

Really, we should be the best in the world, but we've pissed it all away.

>stares in british

You should have gone to Catholic school.

I was a product of a good public school and I cliff noted everything. I liked reading but fucking hated being "forced" to read. I didn't read much until after college desu

Fitzgerald is excellent

>went to American public school
>we never read anything

During my entire time in the American public educational system, I did not have a single book that was required reading.
Everything I read in school was what I picked out at the library.

Only foreign book that I read in school was The Stranger and even that was just extra homework to compensate my non-attendance.

t. finnfag

it's your fault for not having any interest in the classics when you were younger, not the american educational institutes

>blames others for his problems, classic 21st century

I didn't even know they existed

OP is correct.
American public school is dogshit and caters to the lowest common denominator. It does absolutely nothing for your development. It isn't even intellectually motivated.

Aha now i see. It's their fault that they didn't know what you knew existed or didn't exist, since they're the only possible source of classic literature.

It really depends on the State/School District you are in. The quality of public school education varies so widely in the states you would be surprised.