Having just come from high school I'm going to share my experiences there that have to do with "expanding the canon" and non-Eurocentric questions. Then we can contrast and compare and have a dandy good time. The problem with high school quiz bowl (well, one of them), is that, because the tournaments are so large compared to college that it turns into a massive exercise in capitalism. Teams go to tournaments expecting to be able to answer most of the questions in a round, so the canon is self-propagating. There are effectively two divisions in the canon in high school: the stuff every team with half a clue knows, and the stuff every team in the playoffs knows. The Joe Blow category (as we shall call it) exists to give all the teams that show up a chance at answering questions. Similar in nature to the worksheet, this canon is there so that any team, no matter how weak and superficial their knowledge is, can answer questions. You will never see a perfect game in a high school tournament because of these questions. They are the lollipop and the hug that the TD and question writers give to players for showing up, like in rec league sports when everyone on the team gets a trophy =D. Then we go to the playoff canon. While the Joe Blow cluster of knowledge is easy to figure out, the playoff team canon is slightly more difficult. If it's too easy and in the playoffs teams will complain that the questions boil down to buzzer speed, which is more than likely not what the TD has in mind. If, on the flipside, they're too difficult, the teams will complain that they're too hard and, rather than bother to learn more stuff, will simply complain, rave that they will not come back to the tournament, then, more often than not, return. The interesting part is that, as compared to college (from what I can tell from my limited experience), the canon is static in both cases. If an Aztec deity comes up it will always be Quetzlcoatl, just as an example. The only change is current events things like Nobel Prizes and Pulitzers, and, on occassion, some daring writer will mention a newly released hit book (as with the plague of Harry Potter questions that hit the circuit my junior and senior year). And I will now characterize everything in that canon: If it's science, it's very introductory chemistry or biology, and with physics it's either a physicist or mechanics/emag. Modern physics is rare unless the answer is involved with a Nobel Prize (ie, photoelectric effect is accessible because of Einstein). If it's history it's European, US, or something to do with colonialism. If it's about Japan it boils down to something involving Feudal Japan, if it's China it's Taiping Rebellion, Boxer Rebellion, dynasties or the first/last emperor. India is just as limited, and forget about Africa, there's Mansa Musa, Shaka, their respective empires, and the crusades. MAYBE something about Arab-Israeli wars. If it's lit then it's European or US. Oe Kenzaburo is a stretch, and Yukio Mishima is outright dead. Basho and Murasaki Shikibu come up with some regularity, but anything else is such a stretch it's ridiculous. Mythology is Norse or Greco-Roman unless somebody's feeling real adventurous and throws in something from India. Or Quetzalcoatl. Similar issues exist with every other category. It's all Eurocentric except for some stuff that somehow slipped past the powers that be. Contemporary stuff is a stretch (Tanizaki, etc. = no go) while films, no matter what their artistic merit, are regarded as trash by the coaches. I believe the problem lies with the curriculum in the high schools. AP English my senior year everything we read was European. Granted, it was supposed to be the Brit lit year, but even going to the years that were supposed to be dedicated to "world" literature it was mostly british and American literature. We didn't even venture into French lit, and it was pretty much the happening thing in that whole existentialism thing. "World" history suffered the same fate, spending a grand total of maybe two weeks out of the year on ancient asia, another week or so on the middle eastern early civilizations, and then perhaps another two weeks, out of the entire year, on modern non-european history. US history is 'nuff said. Science doesn't bother to delve too deeply into the subjects giving a cursory overview of things then moving the kids along. I went to high school where the PTS(sic)A pretty much ran the show, and while I know the president, he still had to bend on many issues. There was a move to kick out Huck Finn because it's "racist" rather than analyzing the actual literary merits of the novel. I lobbied to read Lolita for four years, a novel with undeniable literary and social merit, but we all know how that went. Works like "No Exit" are too morbid for the bright cheery paint a rosy sky attitude that the powers that be in curriculum writing have. And keep in mind that yesterday's high school players are today's college players, the guys writing the packets. And if they've been exposed for four years to nothing but Eurocentric literature and history it's no wonder that other areas of knowledge have managed to avoid the college bowl canon. If we're going to gripe about the lack of diversity in the questions we hear, let's hit the root of the problem, back in high school, where Matsuo Basho and the Rape of Nanking are ignored by the curriculums that the teachers basically must follow or else (our school system had county standardized finals, which just escalated the problem). Needless to say I have a pretty low opinion of high school 'education'. Stephen Webb --- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, "cellinis_ego <matthew.schneller_at_l...>" <matthew.schneller_at_l...> wrote: > White man making fun of Nkrumah's strange career = "colonistic > essentialism." > > Black man making fun of Nkrumah's strange career = "Kongi's Harvest" > = great literature. > > Right. The young Nkrumah's role in Pan-Africanism was vitally > important to the move towards self government, and he is rightly > famous for it. However, his wierd paranoia (living on a fortified > island), self-induced cult of personality, unwillingness to abandon > ineffective economic policies set a pattern that has been enumlated > by reams of petty African dictators. Both are equal parts of his > legacy, and are fair game for praise and ridicule, respectively. > > Matt > > > > To solve what problems do exist, speaking as a white man, I guess > the > > best thing to do is to write questions that are not essentializing > or > > stereotyping. No needless ridiculing of Lord Krishna or Kwame > > Nkrumah in bonus parts (anyone who remembers the Nkrumah "bust a > cap" > > bonus part from some tourney or another may agree). Be faithful to > > the reality that your question research reveals to you, and try > when > > possible to eliminate the bizarre sort of colonialistic > essentialism > > that gobbles up lots of non-European history. And be open to new > > knowledge. It's out there and worthwhile.
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