For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for January 06, 2025

Sort of a complicated activity.

It’s called learning.

Did he just wander in from the “Archie” strip? This is something Jughead would ask.

Because in the course of this discussion, it is possisble that you might improve not only your understanding of English literature, but also your own abilities to converse, to think, and to communicate more effectively.

We never learn how the Montague/Capulet feud got started in the first place. Could it have been a dispute over a pig like the Hatfields vs the McCoys??

“Because I said so! Want a smack?”

“10% of your final grade. Any other questions?”

Never take any drastic action unless and until you have direct first person communications. Do not trust even second person messages except as a need for more direct communications.

Best question ever.

Exactly.

Anybody ever notice how often teachers ssy, “I want…?”

“Hur-dee-hurr-hurr because it’s funny!”

Is this where I get to say that this story is only a tragedy because Friar Laurence’s messenger is slower than molasses in January? While he dawdled about delivering Friar’s message to Romeo that Juliet was NOT dead, only “sleeping” until that night when he could take her off to where he’d been banished to, Romeo’s friend got there first and told Romeo that Juliet was dead! Romeo shows up and kills himself thinking she’s dead, then she wakes up immediately afterward! If that durned messenger had hightailed it like he should have, Romeo would’ve gotten the message!

Don’t count on it. The education they get today would more likely cause them to initiate a “peaceful protest” and start burning up the books.

Isn’t the phrase: “Compare and Contrast”? Thankfully, I never had to do that as I don’t even know what it means. I think it is just teacher jargon.

Amen!

“Because this project is going to make you so miserable, that by the time you’re done with it you will have made up your mind that whatever major you pick when you get to college, it absolutely for sure won’t be ‘liberal arts.’ Believe me, it’s for your own good."

To be or not to be in a group of four or three, that is the question. Oops, wrong play.

great question… you all are still doing it. :j

I’m 73 and I’ve noticed over the years that people know and understand less and less. Kill your television, reject social media, and read.

I’m still scratching my head over being taught the difference between whisky and whiskey in junior high school.

Now you’re summarizing Hamlet, son…

“Fail to communicate”? Cool Hand Luke?

Didja ever noticethat, in any film, Paul Newman never needed a shave? Watched Hombre the other day. A week out in the badlands and Paul was still clean shaven. What a guy!

“What we have he-ah is a failure to communicate!” Rod Steiger

“Why?”

“In order to justify my being paid to be here.”

Why is always a valid question.

Wrong question.

Teacher wants to learn them talk English goodly!!

I always hated doing groups in school. Teacher, just discuss and engage with the class as a whole!!

Today’s strip would have Elly, John, Michael, Elizabeth and April out in the street pumping their fists and saying in unison: “Eh eh, oh oh, Justin Trudeau’s got to go!”

Being a former teacher of English, literature, and composition, this strip brings back many memories. The child’s question is exactly what I began to think in my second or third year of my thirty-year career.

I won’t go into all of the many reasons. That would require an essay of considerable length.

Seriously. And do it without the assistance of available tech, just for the chance to try new things.. THEN you might learn how to communicate.

We did the same thing, but with “The Taming of the Shrew”.

It’s Shakespeare, and analyzing Shakespeare is a time-honored method of teaching. This is sometimes referred to as the “It’s a bypass. You’ve got to build bypasses.” argument.

Probably the most spine chilling thing I could hear in class when in Junior high school or High school was "Ok, form in groups of 3 or 4 and work on. . . " I suppose I don’t play well with others.

“Because I’ll give you an ‘F’ if you don’t!” O<[|;o)

There is a good point here. In my experience the very best teachers don’t just teach, they also explain WHY what they’re teaching is important.

So you can answer pub trivia questions that no one else would know, obviously!

I hated these group participations. I preferred to do it on my own.

I really don’t like the whole “translate Shakespeare into modern dialogue” idea, especially when that translation ends up being in prose. Shakespeare was a poet, so much of his dialogue carries multiple layers of meaning, and it’s obvious that tremendous effort was made to craft each sentence just so. Stripping all that away greatly impoverishes the work.

There seems to be the idea that this somehow makes it easier for students to understand, as if Elizabethan blank verse were completely beyond them. It’s not. In fact, the ability to push its cadence into a specific template is one of the things that opens it up to being understood more easily. That’s one reason it was universally employed on the stage in those days: Actors could, and still can, memorize these long monologues and soliloquies more easily by ensuring that they match up with a chanted “buh DUH buh DUH buh DUH buh DUH buh DUH.” It’s like memorizing song lyrics. And having memorized them, meaning can be extracted much more deeply.

Yes, it’s necessary to familiarize students with a lot of obsolete vocabulary, but since when is that undesirable? It’s an enriching experience. And this isn’t just crotchity old me saying so. I clearly remember being in ninth grade English and being given a crash course in constructing Shakespearean insults. Later that day, at lunch and on the bus, my classmates and I were constantly hitting one another with things like “Thou wh-reson, runnp-fed rabbit sucker!”

EDIT: Seems GoComics’ bot is impoverishing the language by forcing me to substitute dopey misspellings in that last line.

Trudeau just took a walk in the snow.

English class can take all the fun out of reading.

Answer: “Getting a good education is very important. Until you graduate college, you are lower than whale excreta at the bottom of the ocean. Dropouts are second-class citizens.”

Today is the Black Monday of Canada. The wokest leader has been put to sleep.

Maybe discuss why an 16 year old is trying to date a 13 year old? In modern day language please.

3’s company, Shakespeare, it’s the one with some sort of misunderstanding, right ??? ;-)

The kids communicated great. It was the adults who were morons

yeh, back when it was a ‘thing’, Latin. as in needing to be able to pick up any actor in Julius Caesar and ace it in Latin, a course requirement to graduate from high school. i have not used one bit of that drivel since 1969.

Well young man, here’s your broom then…

Still, why?

Because that’s the assignment.

I never understood ruining a good story, whatever the book was, by trying to dissect it. I loved reading literature in school, whether it was Tom Sawyer or Grapes of Wrath, but I always hated trying to dissect the story for meaning, and then report it. I’ve a whole library of science fiction/fantasy that I’ve read, and loved every one of them, but never do I want to try to report on why this or why that. By the way, one of my favorite authors: Terry Brooks!!! Discworld Series!!!

I hated being made to work in groups. I was always the kid that got left out and had to be shoehorned into a group because there wasn’t an even number of kids in the class.

“Do as I told you "

Hey, it’s a valid question. Sometimes you learn more from an exercise if you understand why you’re doing it. (Even if Bad Hair Kid didn’t actually mean it that way.)

He needs a remedial course on the nature of “schooling”.

My favorite teacher had us reading Romeo and Juliet side by side with the music from West Side Story.

cmxx stated it concisely. Nicely done!

Because your survival in the world will likely depend on you carrying out instructions which you do not see the importance of, in order to receive a paycheck.