It's great that you are willing to keep learning. Don't think art is somehow "less worthy" than knowing classic literature or physics or other subjects. You are great at art and that's something you can be proud of.
Literature has been covered pretty well by others, but I would remind you that there are many Russian classics like Anna Karenina, The Master and Margarita... Also European literature outside Shakespeare and Austen like The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas, The Egyptian by Mika Waltari and Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. We were also told to read poetry by Baudelaire and Edith Södergran in high school, although admittedly I never got around to do that. There are also classics outside the western world like The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which you could try.
I would also recommend a few of Sherlock Holmes short stories, a James Bond movie, a detective novel by Agatha Christie, a Philip Marlowe novel, Lord of the Rings (preferably the books, but the movies will also give you a pretty good understanding of what happens), Dracula by Bram Stoker, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and Naïve. Super by Erlend Loe if you are not only trying to gain knowledge about classical but also iconic literature.
I can't really help with physics or other natural sciences that much, since they were never my forte. You could try borrowing a high school level textbooks about them from a local library and browsing them.
You could also read philosophy a bit. I think out basic course in high school covered Sokrates, Platon, Aristoteles, Hume's critic of causality, Hegel's zeitgeist, Hume's and Locke's opinions on the monarch's right to rule and the basics of metaphysics. Since philosophy may not be that useful for you, I think wikipedia might suffice as a source for information on these. Of course, if you want even more books to read, go check the closest library for any of those topics.
I also second the idea of learning (at least the basics of) a new language.
I agree with the previous commenters that knowing the basics of the history of your own country is pretty much expected. I'm not sure where you live, but knowing what happened in the first and second world wars is also considered common knowledge (at least in most of the western world). The same goes for Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, Columbus, Louis XIV of France (the Sun King), Elisabeth I of England, the French Revolution and the revolutions of Russia in the early 20th century.
This might already be totally familiar to you (or at least interest you more than centuries old plays and books), but we also had the basics of different art periods in Europe (from Ancient Greece to 1990s) as mandatory stuff to learn. Please note that architecture is also included in art. We had to be able to recognize famous paintings, sculptures and buildings like the Laocoon, Mona Lisa, Birth of Venus, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Guernica, Casa Milà, Michelangelo's frescoes, The Pieta, different types of pillars from Ancient Greece (no, I'm not making this up), the basics types of churches and temples from different periods... list goes on and on.
This paragraph only applies if you are a Christian, but the origins of the institute of popes (and the name of the current pope, of course) along with the birth of the Anglican church of Great Britain and Martin Luther of Germany and the reasons for both events are, as far as I know, common knowledge. Also the basics of Jesus' life, but if you are a Christian over the age of ten, you likely already know the most important stuff. :)
I'm sorry I can't offer anything more specific, but what is common knowledge and mandatory reading in high school depends so much on where you live. I mean, unless you live in Finland, you likely don't need to read Kalevala or The Seven Brothers in high school. Actually, if you don't live in Finland, you probably have never even heard of those books (if you have time and inclination, read Kalevala. You can find the English translation in the internet legally and while it sucks as a novel due to the plot jumping around a bit too much, the mythology behind it is amazing and the poetry is pretty).
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2011-01-16 10:05 pm (UTC)Literature has been covered pretty well by others, but I would remind you that there are many Russian classics like Anna Karenina, The Master and Margarita... Also European literature outside Shakespeare and Austen like The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas, The Egyptian by Mika Waltari and Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. We were also told to read poetry by Baudelaire and Edith Södergran in high school, although admittedly I never got around to do that. There are also classics outside the western world like The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which you could try.
I would also recommend a few of Sherlock Holmes short stories, a James Bond movie, a detective novel by Agatha Christie, a Philip Marlowe novel, Lord of the Rings (preferably the books, but the movies will also give you a pretty good understanding of what happens), Dracula by Bram Stoker, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and Naïve. Super by Erlend Loe if you are not only trying to gain knowledge about classical but also iconic literature.
I can't really help with physics or other natural sciences that much, since they were never my forte. You could try borrowing a high school level textbooks about them from a local library and browsing them.
You could also read philosophy a bit. I think out basic course in high school covered Sokrates, Platon, Aristoteles, Hume's critic of causality, Hegel's zeitgeist, Hume's and Locke's opinions on the monarch's right to rule and the basics of metaphysics. Since philosophy may not be that useful for you, I think wikipedia might suffice as a source for information on these. Of course, if you want even more books to read, go check the closest library for any of those topics.
I also second the idea of learning (at least the basics of) a new language.
I agree with the previous commenters that knowing the basics of the history of your own country is pretty much expected. I'm not sure where you live, but knowing what happened in the first and second world wars is also considered common knowledge (at least in most of the western world). The same goes for Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, Columbus, Louis XIV of France (the Sun King), Elisabeth I of England, the French Revolution and the revolutions of Russia in the early 20th century.
This might already be totally familiar to you (or at least interest you more than centuries old plays and books), but we also had the basics of different art periods in Europe (from Ancient Greece to 1990s) as mandatory stuff to learn. Please note that architecture is also included in art. We had to be able to recognize famous paintings, sculptures and buildings like the Laocoon, Mona Lisa, Birth of Venus, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Guernica, Casa Milà, Michelangelo's frescoes, The Pieta, different types of pillars from Ancient Greece (no, I'm not making this up), the basics types of churches and temples from different periods... list goes on and on.
This paragraph only applies if you are a Christian, but the origins of the institute of popes (and the name of the current pope, of course) along with the birth of the Anglican church of Great Britain and Martin Luther of Germany and the reasons for both events are, as far as I know, common knowledge. Also the basics of Jesus' life, but if you are a Christian over the age of ten, you likely already know the most important stuff. :)
I'm sorry I can't offer anything more specific, but what is common knowledge and mandatory reading in high school depends so much on where you live. I mean, unless you live in Finland, you likely don't need to read Kalevala or The Seven Brothers in high school. Actually, if you don't live in Finland, you probably have never even heard of those books (if you have time and inclination, read Kalevala. You can find the English translation in the internet legally and while it sucks as a novel due to the plot jumping around a bit too much, the mythology behind it is amazing and the poetry is pretty).