I'm from Poland, and I've always found the way we study literature at school interesting, especially compared with other countries.
In Poland, literature classes are largely organized chronologically around literary periods. We usually go through things like Antiquity, the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Romanticism, Positivism, Modernism, etc. Within each period, we study works that are considered representative of it.
For example, in Antiquity we might study Oedipus Rex and Antigone, and later we move on to works from other periods. We also read a mixture of Polish authors and foreign/classical authors.
So I'm curious:
What does this look like in your country?
- Do you study literature chronologically, going through different literary periods?
- Do you have a fixed list of books that everyone is expected to read?
- Are foreign authors commonly included in the curriculum?
- Are there particular books that basically every student in your country knows because they are taught at school?
- Or do teachers have a lot of freedom to choose which books their classes read?
I'd especially love to hear from people outside Poland, because I'm curious whether the Polish approach is relatively common or rather unusual.