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How are books treated in your countries (high- or university-) school curriculum and what changes do you think could be made?
I live in Sweden, and am currently in the gymnasium, our version of high-school. From what I understand, compared to other countries we don't have a lot of compulsory reading. In Swedish class we've read maybe four books this past school year, and about the same in English class.
Personally, I like reading, so I would have no problem reading more books. Most of the books we've read have been classics, such as The Metamorphosis and Therese Raquin, which I like. I think reading more classics would be nice.
How is it in your country? What do you think should change?
Many areas of the US also do just 4-6 books in a school year on the secondary level (high school, gymnasium) in the publicly funded school system. Other standards apply for privately funded or home school programs.
The books themselves are selected by the literature/language teaching team for each school. In Universities the choices are left more to the individual professors.
Most publicly funded schools still encourage a lot of reading, and require students to log books read. This is separate from the specific books required by the class and related to class activities.
I'm not a good one to ask on how it could be improved. I read extremely quickly, have excellent reading comprehension, and always read five or more class levels above my actual level. So the teachers would at most remind me to turn my work in when the class caught up. :/
Well. I suppose a little? Not very much day to day. My dad was a uni professor, so I already felt that the school work was never about my needs. Their job required them to prove in some way that they were doing it. Completed home and classwork did that. It also helped them see if I was having any problems, which ended up being forgetting what I had finished or not.
Even when I taught public school classes I knew that not all the assignments were constructive to learning. But to be fair, not all the students were either. ;) Unfortunately, resources don't often allow one on one teaching with a good instructor for everyone.
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Oh cool! Sweden's awesome :D what part of Sweden if I may ask?
I was actually homeschooled because my dad's job requires him to move very frequently, so I have a more unusual school path then most people, but I think I read a pretty good selection of books. Some of them were very dull classics (I can't stand Pride and Prejudice), but we also read some very engaging ones, like The Last Mohican and Beowulf. My favorites were the very modern ones that still had some very relevant themes, like To Kill a Mockingbird or Ender's Game.
If I had to change how the classes I took approached books, I'd place less emphasis on memorizing the information inside or especially writing paper reports. I never felt like I learned much from these or bettered my understanding. I think more discussion would have been beneficial, and more of a focus on "how could this apply to society today". For example, Ender's Game has a running theme of utter ruthlessness, a complete disregard for morals. We could perhaps talk about, was the ends of the book justified by the means? Was some of the cruel stuff the main character does necessary or acceptable? Things like that. And to clarify, I am from the US. Our education system is rather understandardized, so you could very easily get many different answers to this question depending on where someone lives.
Oh sorry, i didn't mean to put you on the spot, you can edit it out or delete it if you wish. I was just curious because I've been looking at Sweden's different regions recently, but I haven't gotten to the place you mentioned yet. It looks very interesting though! If it makes you feel better, I live in Hawaii, on the island of O'ahu. Our islands are very different from each other in almost every way, and at almost completely opposite ends of the earth, but that we can still casually hold a conversation like this is pretty amazing!
I think "rewriting Wikipedia articles" is now my favorite way to call this, it's a very apt description. And Wikipedia can be very dry sometimes too...