I'm an Aspie.
And Bay12 has to have one of the more interesting collections of people on the internet. Other then those REALLY strange places.
Now for my rant about English-
First off, I think that English is a rather useless class. I can understand some parts of it, such as needing to know about grammar, and hwo to convey an idea. I can even understand needing to read some older stories or poems, for whatever reason. But the way it's handled currently takes away almost all purpose in it. I was asking around during academic team practice today, and almost everyone there once liked to read before they were put through the grinder that is the educational system. First off, the Accelerated Reader program. It is designed to promote reading, but everyone agrees that it is fucking useless. You're not going to make people who hate reading like it any more by making them take tests on books, and it's going to make people who like reading hate it, making it another chore. And even if you see it as being somewhat useful, you're not allowed to read books below or above your reading range. So what if you want to check out a book because you're genuily interested in it? It's beyond your comprehension! Go read this boring book by some author that is in your range instead. Oh, you've already read everything in your range? Then I hope you enjoy the zero you're getting for that grade. Even most of my English teachers have agreed with me. The one good thing about high school English is that you no longer have go go through with this program.
Next is how grammar is taught. Yes, it's important and I understand that. But I have learned far more about the intrinsics of grammar by studying French then I'll ever learn in any amount of English classes. And at the same time I'll learn something I can actually use.
Now for the part of high school English that is currently destroying our love for reading. Almost everyone in my class agrees that when you write a paper on something, you either need to REALLY love that topic, or you should hate it. If you just like it, then you'll end up hating it. Like right now I'm writing an eight paragraph essay on how 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 are related. Previously, Ray Bradbury and George Orwell were among my favorite authors. Now I hate their guts.
And now on to the reason I have brought this up. Our English teacher, has, in the past week and a half-
Had us need to finish up the body paragraphs for our literary anylisis
Had us do a complete presentation on a poem by Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman
Upped our weekly vocabulary list from 75 words to 90
Had us read ten chapters in an assigned book
Had us take a test on seven poems by Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson (Today)
And for our test we were told that we would just be applying knowledge we learned to those seven poems. This is all we were told. What did we actually do? We had to write an entire essay that covered four different topics. In less then fifty minutes. The only reason I didn't make something like a 20% is because I have English near the end of the day, and had second period to describe it's difficulty so I could study.