Rant about the mundane and seemingly useless

I suppose this is a form of glorified complaining but I'm going to do it anyway (despite my half-hearted attempts at trying to reducing such drivel).

So I'm taking this American Literature class. It's pretty much early American Lit - from Puritan writings to I think Emily Dickenson and Walt Whitman (whatever era they're supposed to be).

There's a lot that could be gleaned from these writings, I'm sure. Have I gotten anything from this class? No.

What's the format of the class? You read the text. You answer these ridiculous, tedious, time-consuming but mind-numbing questions that simply confirm whether or not you understood the text, or what you think the significance of something is (What do you think the forest symbolizes in Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown?).  These are the types of questions you give to middle-high school students to get them to think about the text. You can bullshit your way through these questions. And I mean the latter question is better. It at least requires some thought. However, there's no deeper analysis, no deeper thinking. There's no analytical slant (e.g. how would you look at the text from a feminist point of view? Marxist? Historical? And so on.). So from this point, you're like, well the questions may be tedious but they can't be that bad. They're to ensure that the students have read the text so that when the class discussion takes place using the questions as a starting point, the professor can ensure an engaging and in-depth discussion about the text. That would be so ideal.

Instead, what is it?

Professor: "So... From the homework, #1. 'Describe Anne Bradstreet's life.' What did the text say?"
Student 1: "Well, the book said [insert random facts from text]."
Professor: "Okay. Anyone has anything else to add to that? Okay! Number two...."

And so the class goes on. Where's the discussion?! -_- Answering questions about what the text is about, something that was painstakingly done at home, is simply regurgitated back in class. There's no point to the class.

I call the class uninspired. Everyone's bored. I could do a better job teaching the class. Once, I asked about how the text related to the author. "How religious was Hawthorne?" Professor's answer?

"What did your book say?"

What?! I mean okay, yes, this is a very large overview of American Literature and we live in an era where degrees are extremely specific so the professor may not know. However, if you're teaching the class, wouldn't you know a little more than whatever's in the freaking book? I mean really?

I suppose it's unfair of me to say that I expect the professor to do extra reading on what we're reading in class when he 's probably got a ton of other things going on - other classes to teach, papers to grade and all that. However! I keep getting the feeling he doesn't know anything more than we do - he only reads the texts as we read it (well a little earlier than we do since he has to post those extremely mundane and once again, uninspired questions on the readings). Otherwise, he has no idea what he's doing.

How irritating. He probably thinks I'm a slacker because I did well on the midterm but I don't always do the homework.

I'm not a slacker. Your class just sucks.

Hmph.

[edit]

In his defense, I do realize that I'm being really hard on him. It just annoys me because there are so many directions one can take the class, and he just barfs all over any kind of teaching methodology that would engage the students. And I just suck at doing things that are necessary but seem pointless to me.

[edit2] 10.30.2012

So today's class was considerably better. Seems like he knows a little something about Poe. Perhaps he doesn't want to be teaching this class but was forced into it. ^^ Well, things are getting better. I shall try to be less critical.