QuoteCommon core sparks war over words
By Lyndsey Layton, Sunday, December 2, 8:29 PM
washingtonpost.com
As states across the country implement broad changes in curriculum from kindergarten through high school, English teachers worry that they will have to replace the dog-eared novels they love with historical documents and nonfiction texts.
The Common Core State Standards in English, which have been adopted in 46 states and the District, call for public schools to ramp up nonfiction so that by 12th grade students will be reading mostly "informational text" instead of fictional literature. But as teachers excise poetry and classic works of fiction from their classrooms, those who designed the guidelines say it appears that educators have misunderstood them.
Proponents of the new standards, including the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, say U.S. students have suffered from a diet of easy reading and lack the ability to digest complex nonfiction, including studies, reports and primary documents. That has left too many students unprepared for the rigors of college and demands of the workplace, experts say.
The new standards, which are slowly rolling out now and will be in place by 2014, require that nonfiction texts represent 50 percent of reading assignments in elementary schools, and the requirement grows to 70 percent by grade 12.
Among the suggested nonfiction pieces for high school juniors and seniors are Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America," "FedViews," by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (2009) and "Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management," published by the General Services Administration.
English teachers across the country are trying to figure out which poetry, short stories and novels might have to be sacrificed to make room for nonfiction.
Off the reading list
Jamie Highfill is mourning the six weeks' worth of poetry she removed from her eighth-grade English class at Woodland Junior High School in Fayetteville, Ark. She also dropped some short stories and a favorite unit on the legends of King Arthur to make room for essays by Malcolm Gladwell and a chapter from "The Tipping Point," Gladwell's book about social behavior.
"I'm struggling with this, and my students are struggling," said Highfill, who was named 2011 middle school teacher of the year in her state. "With informational text, there isn't that human connection that you get with literature. And the kids are shutting down. They're getting bored. I'm seeing more behavior problems in my classroom than I've ever seen."
But the chief architect of the Common Core Standards said educators are overreacting as the standards move from concept to classroom.
"There's a disproportionate amount of anxiety," said David Coleman, who led the effort to write the standards with a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Coleman said educators are misinterpreting the directives.
Yes, the standards do require increasing amounts of nonfiction from kindergarten through grade 12, Coleman said. But that refers to reading across all subjects, not just in English class, he said. Teachers in social studies, science and math should require more reading, which would allow English teachers to continue to assign literature, he said.
Social studies teachers, for example, could have students read the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter From a Birmingham Jail," while math students could read Euclid's "Elements" from 300 B.C.
The standards explicitly say that Shakespeare and classic American literature should be taught, said Coleman, who became president of the College Board in November. "It does really concern me that these facts are not as clear as they should be," he said.
The specifics are spelled out in a footnote on page 5 of the 66-page standards.
In practice, the burden of teaching the nonfiction texts is falling to English teachers, said Mark Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory University: "You have chemistry teachers, history teachers saying, 'We're not going to teach reading and writing, we have to teach our subject matter. That's what you English teachers do.' "
Sheridan Blau, a professor at Teachers College at Columbia University, said teachers across the country have told him their principals are insisting that English teachers make 70 percent of their readings nonfiction. "The effect of the new standards is to drive literature out of the English classroom," he said.
Timothy Shanahan, who chairs the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said school administrators apparently have flunked reading comprehension when it comes to the standards.
"Schools are doing some goofy things — principals or superintendents are not reading," Shanahan, who was among the experts who advised Coleman on the standards, said.
Sandra Stotsky, who wrote the outgoing Massachusetts' pre-K-to-12 standards, which are regarded as among the best in the nation, said the Common Core's emphasis on nonfiction is misguided.
Tackling rich literature is the best way to prepare students for careers and college, said Stotsky, who blames mediocre national reading scores on weak young adult literature popular since the 1960s.
"There is no research base for the claim that informational reading will lead to college preparedness better than complex literary study," said Stotsky, a professor at the University of Arkansas.
At a convention of English teachers in November, Stotsky got an earful. "They hate the Common Core, they hate the idea they have to teach nonfiction," she said.
Stotsky and others have accused Coleman, who studied English literature at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, of trying to elevate fact-based reading and writing at the expense of literature and creative writing.
In a speech last year at the New York State Education Building, Coleman derided the personal essays that characterize most writing in primary and secondary schools.
"Forgive me for saying this so bluntly, the only problem with . . . [that] writing is as you grow up in this world you realize people really don't give a [expletive] about what you feel or what you think," Coleman said, according to a recording. "What they instead care about is, can you make an argument with evidence, is there something verifiable behind what you're saying or what you think or feel that you can demonstrate to me? It is rare in a working environment that someone says, 'Johnson, I need a market analysis by Friday, but before that I need a compelling account of your childhood.' "
'We've hit a wall'
In an interview, Coleman said U.S. students must learn to read complicated text of all sorts.
"One of the striking things in American education is that reading scores at the fourth-grade level have been frozen for 40 years," he said. "We've hit a wall in reader literacy that these standards respond to."
Nonfiction reading can excite some students, said Nell Duke, who teaches language, literacy and culture at the University of Michigan. "Some students really prefer factual kinds of texts," she said, noting that some studies have suggested boys especially prefer nonfiction. "Historically, elementary schools haven't given kids much opportunity to read that kind of text. For those kids, reading storybook after storybook about talking animals could be a bit of a turnoff."
Curriculum and academic standards have traditionally been determined by states and local communities. That has resulted in uneven results, with some states using lax standards while others are more rigorous. Sporadic efforts to create consistent, national standards have come and gone.
Several years ago, the National Governors Association began pushing the idea of common standards in English and math. The Gates Foundation invested tens of millions of dollars in the effort to write them. The Obama administration kicked the notion into high gear when it required states to adopt the common standards — or an equivalent — in order to compete for Race to the Top grant funds.
By this year, 45 states and D.C. had signed onto the math and English standards. Minnesota has adopted only the English standards; Alaska, Nebraska, Texas and Virginia have not adopted either.
The standards are designed to ensure that, for the first time, third-graders in Maine will acquire the same knowledge and skills as their peers in Hawaii. States will begin testing students against the new standards in 2014, making it possible for the first time to compare test scores across communities and states.
English teacher J.D. Wilson agrees with much of what the standards aim to accomplish. But he is disturbed by the subtle shift the new standards are already causing in his classroom at Wareham High School in Wareham, Mass.
"Reading for information makes you knowledgeable — you learn stuff," Wilson said. "But reading literature makes you wise."
Wilson has wrestled with which poems to cut from his lesson plans and which nonfiction to teach instead. And then he hit upon an idea.
This fall, he has taught "Literature Is Not Data: Against Digital Humanities," "Shakespeare, a Poet Who Is Still Making Our History" and "Who Killed the Liberal Arts?" They are all essays that emphasize the value of literature.
Good for them.
Read an excellent article in a previous Atlantic, the one with the special education supplement. It talked about the death of persuasive writing in US schools and its replacement with express-yourself anything-goes creative writing. Has led to a generation of kids who are unable to string a single compound sentence together and are oblivious to the concept of logic. Some schools are trying to reverse the trend.
The Romans had it right. Mastery of the language and its rules is the first building block of the thinking man.
Just to choose one specific point, poetry analysis and writing is such a specialized skill, IMO it's hard to justify its inclusion in the curriculum perhaps beyond a single unit in one of the high school grades.
Analysis of non-fiction texts should be common in the science and social sciences. The way I approach my units as an English teacher is two units devoted to literature and plays, two units devoted to other kinds of writing or media analysis, and one unit devoted to ongoing research and reading projects.
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/analysis/analysis_20121022-2100a.mp3
QuoteSchool of hard facts 22 Oct 2012
Mon, 22 Oct 12
Duration:
29 mins
Michael Gove is a fan of E.D. Hirsch, the American educational thinker. Fran Abrams explores Hirsch's radical ideas and how they could transform schooling in England.
I found this interesting and on topic for this discussion. I find the idea that there is a common cultural baggage that everybody in society needs to have to be part of it quite compelling. I see this in myself. I don't share the same children's experiences as my norwegian neighbors from kiddie tv to sports to elementary school. I can see somebody my age with my experience vis a vis norwegian society and not interested in learning for learning's sake getting into trouble. Many of my experiences which require understanding of norway have required that I go back to first principles to understand it or have simply required that I participate in something which doesn't make sense or have value to me just to fit in. Somebody less inquisitive or pliable than me would have trouble fitting in, and I know that I don't fit in too well here already.
QuoteAnd the kids are shutting down. They're getting bored.
Too bad. Welcome to the world. You aren't supposed to enjoy reading ten thousand spreadsheets, you little punks.
In a more serious vein, I'm really not bothered. Much of the fiction foisted upon students is boring too--at least when someone says READ THIS IT'S IMPORTANT about a nonfiction work, it may actually be more than just someone's opinion. What skill is likely to be developed--in the classroom--reading Lord of the Flies? Well, maybe making a fire with the fat kid's glasses.
Being forced to read novels one does not like along with some that one may, rather than just reading as a hobby, which is damned well what reading fiction is, does not tend to endear people to that hobby, if that is the point, and teaches few directly marketable skills, if
that is the point. It may teach advanced literacy--I'm not up on pedagogical literature, so if it does, I withdraw the assertion. But I doubt it does.
Yeah I was like...and the kids were riveted and entertained by The Scarlett Letter and Romeo and Juliet?
Quote from: Valmy on December 03, 2012, 01:14:20 AM
Yeah I was like...and the kids were riveted and entertained by The Scarlett Letter and Romeo and Juliet?
Kids today know all about slut shaming and slumming it with the wrong people.
Quote from: Pitiful Pathos on December 03, 2012, 12:01:49 AM
Just to choose one specific point, poetry analysis and writing is such a specialized skill, IMO it's hard to justify its inclusion in the curriculum perhaps beyond a single unit in one of the high school grades.
There is so much wrong with this statement, I don't even know where to begin. The purpose of literature and poetry reading and analysing in the literature class is not to give pupils a "specialised skill", it is to generate well-rounded people who know basics of the cultural foundations of our civilization. It's about creating a common network of ideas that is shared by our culture. Since most of culture created these days is for mass consumption (and thus mass appeal and mass understanding of new cultural works is a prerequisite for its success), this is more important than ever before.
If we make all education only skill-oriented, we will be creating horrible drones and our civilisation will be doomed in a few generations.
Quote from: Valmy on December 03, 2012, 01:14:20 AM
Yeah I was like...and the kids were riveted and entertained by The Scarlett Letter and Romeo and Juliet?
Education, especially earlier education (pre-college) is about giving students opportunities and seeing what they may be interested in doing in future, and not as much about giving them actual skills. There is also a recognised correlation between exposure and enjoyment - that's why people from more cultured backgrounds are more likely to enjoy listening to classical music or going to an opera than their peers from less privileged backgrounds, for example.
If we only teach students hard professional skills then we will effectively shut off ourselves from creating more artists and creative people. Not to mention, early education is the only real tool we have to maintain some level of social mobility in modern societies.
This is a horrid, horrid idea. I find it surprising so many people here are so thoughtless as to support it.
Quote from: Martinus on December 03, 2012, 01:22:33 AM
Quote from: Pitiful Pathos on December 03, 2012, 12:01:49 AM
Just to choose one specific point, poetry analysis and writing is such a specialized skill, IMO it's hard to justify its inclusion in the curriculum perhaps beyond a single unit in one of the high school grades.
There is so much wrong with this statement, I don't even know where to begin. The purpose of literature and poetry reading and analysing in the literature class is not to give pupils a "specialised skill", it is to generate well-rounded people who know basics of the cultural foundations of our civilization. It's about creating a common network of ideas that is shared by our culture. Since most of culture created these days is for mass consumption (and thus mass appeal and mass understanding of new cultural works is a prerequisite for its success), this is more important than ever before.
If we make all education only skill-oriented, we will be creating horrible drones and our civilisation will be doomed in a few generations.
I completely understand where you are coming from here but we really have to develop basic skills before we can start on high culture. I would prefer our English classes focus on producing people who are halfway literate. I felt like my education really suffered when they just stopped teaching how to frame arguments and sentence and paragraph structure and the like and went to nothing but literature after 7th grade (age 13 or so). I would like to see a bit more balance.
We have study after study showing the shortcomings of the American education system in producing functionally literate adults. I am glad there is more focus on it.
Quote from: Martinus on December 03, 2012, 01:28:50 AM
This is a horrid, horrid idea. I find it surprising so many people here are so thoughtless as to support it.
We are thoughtless? Have you spent time studying the problems and challenges in American Education or something? You have put alot of thought and reflection into this have you?
Quote from: Valmy on December 03, 2012, 01:14:20 AM
Yeah I was like...and the kids were riveted and entertained by The Scarlett Letter and Romeo and Juliet?
Part of the problem with the latter is that Shakespeare is meant to be performed. Do kids read the motherfucking script to Casablanca? I'm not saying there is no value in reading the plays (or engaging with the precursor material to any work that is ultimately expressed in a different medium)--far from it--but the first exposure to any work should be in the medium for which it was made. In the case of Shakespeare, of course, this is Kenneth Branagh movies.
Quote from: MartinusIf we make all education only skill-oriented, we will be creating horrible drones.
Because people need formal educational settings to develop their interests and hobbies? Did we all take strategy game classes? Is that how we got here? :huh:
Quote from: Ideologue on December 03, 2012, 01:47:25 AM
Part of the problem with the latter is that Shakespeare is meant to be performed. Do kids read the motherfucking script to Casablanca? I'm not saying there is no value in reading the plays (or engaging with the precursor material to any work that is ultimately expressed in a different medium)--far from it--but the first exposure to any work should be in the medium for which it was made. In the case of Shakespeare, of course, this is Kenneth Branagh movies.
It is funny you say that. During my latest return to College that is how I rocked it during the three Shakespeare plays I had to read. I just watched the film of the play and read along....for the very reason you say.
Quote from: Valmy on December 03, 2012, 01:50:48 AM
Quote from: Ideologue on December 03, 2012, 01:47:25 AM
Part of the problem with the latter is that Shakespeare is meant to be performed. Do kids read the motherfucking script to Casablanca? I'm not saying there is no value in reading the plays (or engaging with the precursor material to any work that is ultimately expressed in a different medium)--far from it--but the first exposure to any work should be in the medium for which it was made. In the case of Shakespeare, of course, this is Kenneth Branagh movies.
It is funny you say that. During my latest return to College that is how I rocked it during the three Shakespeare plays I had to read. I just watched the film of the play and read along....for the very reason you say.
My favorite Shakespeare plays are Dead Again and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. :)
Which were the three? I hope one was Hamlet, if not, watch it when you've got four hours to kill, it's great.
Quote from: Ideologue on December 03, 2012, 01:55:57 AM
Which were the three? I hope one was Hamlet, if not, watch it when you've got four hours to kill, it's great.
Merchant of Venice, Othello, and Much Ado About Nothing.
I have already seen Hamlet, yeah that is a pretty great version.
Quote from: Martinus on December 03, 2012, 01:22:33 AM
Quote from: Pitiful Pathos on December 03, 2012, 12:01:49 AM
Just to choose one specific point, poetry analysis and writing is such a specialized skill, IMO it's hard to justify its inclusion in the curriculum perhaps beyond a single unit in one of the high school grades.
There is so much wrong with this statement, I don't even know where to begin. The purpose of literature and poetry reading and analysing in the literature class is not to give pupils a "specialised skill", it is to generate well-rounded people who know basics of the cultural foundations of our civilization. It's about creating a common network of ideas that is shared by our culture. Since most of culture created these days is for mass consumption (and thus mass appeal and mass understanding of new cultural works is a prerequisite for its success), this is more important than ever before.
If we make all education only skill-oriented, we will be creating horrible drones and our civilisation will be doomed in a few generations.
Who's talking about all literature? I was talking about poetry. I do agree that part of the purpose of education is to instill culture. But even if we accept that premise, we must admit that poetry no longer forms an important part of our cultural (even high cultural) landscape. That role today is filled by novels, essays and magazine articles.
Secondly, though I view literature studies as important, I'm not sure I'd argue it's *more* important than building effective writing and argumentation skills.
I think making students read Democracy in America is a good idea, but I don't think there is much to be gained from forcing children to read government white papers.
Rigorously teaching children how to express themselves clearly in writing (Yi's point above, with which I agree) can be done with literary texts. Though this is a different issue to what children read in school.
I suppose the obvious point is that schoolkids should be reading non-fiction in their other subjects, like maths and history. I don't understand the chemistry teacher in the article saying they taught only the subject matter: presumably the students need to be studying a textbook? No need to fill English lessons with non-fiction, unless it's of particular literary merit. Although that said, in the UK at least we have a division between English literature and English language lessons, with the latter serving to educate about techniques of writing and comprehension; does this not already exist in the US?
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 02, 2012, 11:35:58 PM
The Romans had it right. Mastery of the language and its rules is the first building block of the thinking man.
Isn't that what basic grammar instruction is for? Why'd we diagram sentences in 7th, 8th and 9th grade then? Every schoolkid would get that little brick of a Simon & Schuster Handbook For Writers before they got novels to read.
When did they stop teaching English in English classes?
Quote from: Martinus on December 03, 2012, 01:28:50 AM
If we only teach students hard professional skills then we will effectively shut off ourselves from creating more artists and creative people. Not to mention, early education is the only real tool we have to maintain some level of social mobility in modern societies.
This is a horrid, horrid idea. I find it surprising so many people here are so thoughtless as to support it.
Yes, it is a horrid, horrid idea, but just like everything else arts-related, they're slowly pulling funding for that sort of stuff anyway. Everybody'll be proficient in Microsoft Project instead.
Lifespans and working lives are both getting longer and automation continues to take over relatively simple tasks. A youngster currently in school will probably still be working in 2060. Given that, it is a shame if they are being given training to be cogs in the 2012 workforce rather than a education.
Quote from: Warspite on December 03, 2012, 05:00:31 AM
Although that said, in the UK at least we have a division between English literature and English language lessons, with the latter serving to educate about techniques of writing and comprehension; does this not already exist in the US?
Well, yeah, though as always in America, it depends on the state or local jurisdiction you're in. In WV when I was in high school, you had to take 4 years of high school English. Basically, that was 2 years of language instruction and 2 years of literature (1 year of British literature and 1 year of American literature). I think that was fairly standard, and AFAIK, it still is. But the time spent on language instruction was spent on things like knowing the parts of speech, diagramming sentences, learning the history of the language, building vocabulary, etc. There wasn't really any time in the 4 years of h.s. English that we dealt with knowing how to read and write technical reports and the like.
At the college I attended, all incoming freshmen we required to take Technical English, regardless of their major, probably because they knew that most students wouldn't have learned how to deal with reading and writing technical material in high school.
Hmm. The thing about reading technical reports and so on is that they're often written very badly. Engineers and scientists generally (though not all) often have a poor style of written English; lawyers sacrifice readability for obvious considerations; politicians and diplomats have to couch ideas in the language of necessary ambiguity, confusion or consensus. I can't speak for other sectors, but even major government statements are often rushed and/or the result of contradictory demands and last-minute alterations.
You'll achieve much more by teaching every student how to write a clear essay: knowing how to express an idea simply and place it in a helpful structure is an essential skill for a lot of things in life... from dealing with bureaucracy to writing one's own technical reports down the line.
I can understand first-year university students having to do "Technical English", but isn't that more about learning the particular jargon of a given industry or sector? "Technical English" for someone going into a career in property law will be very different for someone going into labour economics, the military, health and safety compliance, nuclear engineering, etc etc.
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on December 03, 2012, 06:32:22 AM
Lifespans and working lives are both getting longer and automation continues to take over relatively simple tasks. A youngster currently in school will probably still be working in 2060. Given that, it is a shame if they are being given training to be cogs in the 2012 workforce rather than a education.
Probably best that we have them focus on the life of the mind, so that we can financially ruin them with a college education.
Btw, purely an anecdote, but while I liked reading as a child (strongly encouraged by my parents), I absolutely detested most things when presented with them during high school and earlier. Similar with history - they had a way of taking the joy of out of it. -_-
Quote from: Warspite on December 03, 2012, 08:16:56 AM
Hmm. The thing about reading technical reports and so on is that they're often written very badly. Engineers and scientists generally (though not all) often have a poor style of written English; lawyers sacrifice readability for obvious considerations; politicians and diplomats have to couch ideas in the language of necessary ambiguity, confusion or consensus. I can't speak for other sectors, but even major government statements are often rushed and/or the result of contradictory demands and last-minute alterations.
When did governmental writing get like that? I recently read the actual text of the Washington Naval Treaties and was surprised at how short (I've read purported summaries of them that were longer) and clearly-written they are.
QuoteYou'll achieve much more by teaching every student how to write a clear essay: knowing how to express an idea simply and place it in a helpful structure is an essential skill for a lot of things in life... from dealing with bureaucracy to writing one's own technical reports down the line.
I can understand first-year university students having to do "Technical English", but isn't that more about learning the particular jargon of a given industry or sector? "Technical English" for someone going into a career in property law will be very different for someone going into labour economics, the military, health and safety compliance, nuclear engineering, etc etc.
No, you get the actual jargon in your core courses in your field of study. Technical English is (was?) more general, at least at my college.
Quote from: garbon on December 03, 2012, 08:30:14 AM
Btw, purely an anecdote, but while I liked reading as a child (strongly encouraged by my parents), I absolutely detested most things when presented with them during high school and earlier. Similar with history - they had a way of taking the joy of out of it. -_-
Yep, that was my experience as well.
Quote from: Ideologue on December 03, 2012, 01:47:25 AM
Because people need formal educational settings to develop their interests and hobbies? Did we all take strategy game classes? Is that how we got here? :huh:
We got there by reading history books first, which is provided by education. Besides, in many cases if such interests are not engendered by schools, they are engendered by parents - which brings me to my argument that education is the only great equaliser that can overcome cultural baggage (or lack thereof) in some, mainly poorer students.
Again, this is pretty basic - a society built around "equality of opportunity" is nothing if it is not creating these interests and does not enculturate kids. I am constantly surprised by your self-proclaimed leftism and yet a complete failure to grasph the basics of leftist ideology - you seem to just have a strong sense of entitlement and envy with not an ounce of leftist philosophy underneath.
Quote from: Valmy on December 03, 2012, 01:38:35 AM
I completely understand where you are coming from here but we really have to develop basic skills before we can start on high culture. I would prefer our English classes focus on producing people who are halfway literate. I felt like my education really suffered when they just stopped teaching how to frame arguments and sentence and paragraph structure and the like and went to nothing but literature after 7th grade (age 13 or so). I would like to see a bit more balance.
I don't see why appreciation of literature cannot be combined with learning to write clearly. From about third grade until the end of my pre-college education (so 9 years in total), my literature class essentially followed the same model - i.e. reading a work of literature, then discussing/critiquing it in class, then writing an essay on some related topic (sometimes spanning several works of literature, e.g. "Depiction of women in Shakespearean drama" or "Different visions of patriotism in Polish romantic poetry" etc.), and being graded both with respect of understanding of the work in question, as well as drafting concisely, in a structured manner and without spelling and grammar errors.
Sure, this meant myteacher had to read and grade around 10 or so essays a year from every student, which added to quite a large number compared to just grading multiple choice tests, but it offered a much better education experience.
Quote from: Martinus on December 03, 2012, 08:40:42 AM
Quote from: Ideologue on December 03, 2012, 01:47:25 AM
Because people need formal educational settings to develop their interests and hobbies? Did we all take strategy game classes? Is that how we got here? :huh:
We get there by reading history books first, which is provided by education. Besides, in many cases if such interests are not engendered by schools, they are engendered by parents - which brings me to my argument that education is the only great equaliser that can overcome cultural baggage (or lack thereof) in some, mainly poorer students.
Again, this is pretty basic - a society built around "equality of opportunity" is nothing if it is not creating these interests and does not enculturate kids. I am constantly surprised by your self-proclaimed leftism and yet completely failure to grasph the basics of leftist ideology - you seem to just have a strong sense of entitlement and envy with not an ounce of leftist philosophy underneath.
Is that really the goal of public education - so that some small handful of kids from poorer backgrounds try for a better life because they read Romeo and Juliet in freshman year of high school?
Quote from: garbon on December 03, 2012, 08:52:01 AM
Quote from: Martinus on December 03, 2012, 08:40:42 AM
Quote from: Ideologue on December 03, 2012, 01:47:25 AM
Because people need formal educational settings to develop their interests and hobbies? Did we all take strategy game classes? Is that how we got here? :huh:
We get there by reading history books first, which is provided by education. Besides, in many cases if such interests are not engendered by schools, they are engendered by parents - which brings me to my argument that education is the only great equaliser that can overcome cultural baggage (or lack thereof) in some, mainly poorer students.
Again, this is pretty basic - a society built around "equality of opportunity" is nothing if it is not creating these interests and does not enculturate kids. I am constantly surprised by your self-proclaimed leftism and yet completely failure to grasph the basics of leftist ideology - you seem to just have a strong sense of entitlement and envy with not an ounce of leftist philosophy underneath.
Is that really the goal of public education - so that some small handful of kids from poorer backgrounds try for a better life because they read Romeo and Juliet in freshman year of high school?
:lol:
"Small handful"? Seriously?
Quote from: garbon on December 03, 2012, 08:30:14 AM
Btw, purely an anecdote, but while I liked reading as a child (strongly encouraged by my parents), I absolutely detested most things when presented with them during high school and earlier. Similar with history - they had a way of taking the joy of out of it. -_-
I was a A to B student in German class, but during my last 5 years at school I didn't finish even one of the books, plays or novellas we were reading. I managed to bullshit myself through tests well enough. I've since read most of the books I shunned at the time.
I agree that it makes a huge difference whether you have to read something or want to read something.
Quote from: Martinus on December 03, 2012, 08:54:33 AM
:lol:
"Small handful"? Seriously?
Seriously. While it might be grand to envision how public education can transform the lives of its pupils - for how many does it actually do so? Isn't the news constantly abound with stories of how social mobility has hit dispiriting lows in the western world? If public schooling is supposed to be a great equalizer, it's doing an abysmal job.
Time to homeschool my brats.
I did English Language O level a year early then had the option to do English Lit or Film Studies AO level. Guess which I chose? :P
I've read next to no classics, though I have read some great literature and seen many a Shakespeare play.
French litterature classics are a part of the curriculum, especially in good high schools (for Entre les Murs-style schools it's Latin with past historic and subjunctive imperfect). Now, these 19th-early 20th century novels are not the easiest to read when you're between 12 and 15. Twenty years later, things change cf. Proust ;)
QuoteAmong the suggested nonfiction pieces for high school juniors and seniors are Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America," "FedViews," by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (2009) and "Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management," published by the General Services Administration.
The first selection is a fine idea but the other two are ridiculous and fairly raise the concerns expressed variously by warspite and Martinus.
"Fedviews" are terse pronouncements of Fed economists and require considerable background knowledge and understanding of underlying statistical compilation and some experience in Fed Kremlinology to really make use of. Terrible choice for high schoolers. The Executive Order cited is written in mind-numbing bureaucratese and for high school students is only useful as a sleep inducer. And again, without an understanding of the underlying statutory and regulatory scheme, and the details of exeuctive branch management, the value that can be extracted is limited.
I am very skeptical of the use of a general eduction program to teach specific technical skills. It would be different if we had a German-type system that tracked students into techical trades but requiring the mass of students to slog through regulatory promulgations on environmental policy doesn't make any pedagogical sense.
A more practical approach if one really wanted to go in that direction would be to give reading assignments from the Economist or the WSJ.
Quote from: Martinus on December 03, 2012, 08:50:02 AM
I don't see why appreciation of literature cannot be combined with learning to write clearly.
I don't see why not either. But if you have to choose one...
Quote from: CountDeMoney on December 03, 2012, 06:14:46 AMYes, it is a horrid, horrid idea, but just like everything else arts-related, they're slowly pulling funding for that sort of stuff anyway. Everybody'll be proficient in Microsoft Project instead.
I'm still mad my highschool teachers spent hours teaching me such outdated things as Shakespeare's sonnets and Milton's "Paradise Lost". I would have been much better served by learning the cutting edge, up-to-date skills, like using DOS or replacing paper rolls in needle printers.
Quote from: Valmy on December 03, 2012, 11:39:31 AM
Quote from: Martinus on December 03, 2012, 08:50:02 AM
I don't see why appreciation of literature cannot be combined with learning to write clearly.
I don't see why not either. But if you have to choose one...
Then, I would say, all things considered, the great works of literature are more timeless than the art of writing which changes much more to reflect the times. Writing clearly and concisely is an entirely different skill in the era of instant communication, e-mail and twitter, than it was in the time of carrier pigeons.
Quote from: Martinus on December 03, 2012, 01:28:50 AM
If we only teach students hard professional skills then we will effectively shut off ourselves from creating more artists and creative people.
If, and when, someone proposes this idea, you will be ready for them. Until then, keep the straw man in the barn.
QuoteThis is a horrid, horrid idea. I find it surprising so many people here are so thoughtless as to support it.
I'm surprised at how many people were so thoughtless as to bite on this troll. It was a horrible, horrible troll because it was so obviously pulled out of your ass.
No one is proposing that we "only teach students hard professional skills."
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on December 03, 2012, 06:32:22 AM
Lifespans and working lives are both getting longer and automation continues to take over relatively simple tasks. A youngster currently in school will probably still be working in 2060. Given that, it is a shame if they are being given training to be cogs in the 2012 workforce rather than a education.
Agree, and agree that it is a good thing that no one is proposing what you fear.
Quote from: Valmy on December 03, 2012, 01:14:20 AM
Yeah I was like...and the kids were riveted and entertained by The Scarlett Letter and Romeo and Juliet?
I was entertained reading Agaguk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agaguk). Treasure Island and Shogun were fun reading too. :)
But I had my best grades doing an expose on a book I never read :P
I had the large majority of my mandatory state eduction during the 1970s, on the whole a bit variable in quality, but overall rather good and a fun time, not the dreadful target driven bullshit laden modern system.
Quote from: Brazen on December 03, 2012, 09:40:35 AM
I did English Language O level a year early then had the option to do English Lit or Film Studies AO level. Guess which I chose? :P
The one that came with popcorn. :lol:
Quote from: mongers on December 03, 2012, 03:07:25 PM
I had the large majority of my mandatory state eduction during the 1970s, on the whole a bit variable in quality, but overall rather good and a fun time, not the dreadful target driven bullshit laden modern system.
My education came in around the time that they'd started a lot of the state testing but it wasn't binding or enforced yet. My English (literature) was pretty free wheeling but still pretty dreadful. Turned me off on a lot of things that only latter did I come to enjoy.
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 03, 2012, 09:34:32 AM
Time to homeschool my brats.
What's the worst that could happen, I mean look at RockyHorror and me? :w00t:
Quote from: katmai on December 03, 2012, 05:59:58 PM
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 03, 2012, 09:34:32 AM
Time to homeschool my brats.
What's the worst that could happen, I mean look at RockyHorror and me? :w00t:
Didn't know you was home schooled. Knew Rocky was.
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 03, 2012, 06:05:13 PM
Quote from: katmai on December 03, 2012, 05:59:58 PM
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 03, 2012, 09:34:32 AM
Time to homeschool my brats.
What's the worst that could happen, I mean look at RockyHorror and me? :w00t:
Didn't know you was home schooled. Knew Rocky was.
From 7th grade till went to college 2 years later :P
RH was a tragic loss to the forum. :(
Quote from: katmai on December 03, 2012, 06:08:59 PM
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 03, 2012, 06:05:13 PM
Quote from: katmai on December 03, 2012, 05:59:58 PM
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 03, 2012, 09:34:32 AM
Time to homeschool my brats.
What's the worst that could happen, I mean look at RockyHorror and me? :w00t:
Didn't know you was home schooled. Knew Rocky was.
From 7th grade till went to college 2 years later :P
Showoff. :lol:
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 03, 2012, 06:24:03 PM
Quote from: katmai on December 03, 2012, 06:08:59 PM
From 7th grade till went to college 2 years later :P
Showoff. :lol:
He was 18 years old when he graduated from 7th grade.
Quote from: katmai on December 03, 2012, 05:59:58 PM
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 03, 2012, 09:34:32 AM
Time to homeschool my brats.
What's the worst that could happen, I mean look at RockyHorror and me? :w00t:
Your kids could end up lawyers. Not sure whether I should be happy or sad I keep getting left off the homeschool list.
Quote from: ulmont on December 03, 2012, 07:36:50 PM
Quote from: katmai on December 03, 2012, 05:59:58 PM
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 03, 2012, 09:34:32 AM
Time to homeschool my brats.
What's the worst that could happen, I mean look at RockyHorror and me? :w00t:
Your kids could end up lawyers. Not sure whether I should be happy or sad I keep getting left off the homeschool list.
I didn't know you were on the list :P
I was home recessed.
Oh yeah, well I was home detentioned.
Quote from: Ideologue on December 03, 2012, 12:46:05 AM
QuoteAnd the kids are shutting down. They're getting bored.
Too bad. Welcome to the world. You aren't supposed to enjoy reading ten thousand spreadsheets, you little punks.
In a more serious vein, I'm really not bothered. Much of the fiction foisted upon students is boring too--at least when someone says READ THIS IT'S IMPORTANT about a nonfiction work, it may actually be more than just someone's opinion. What skill is likely to be developed--in the classroom--reading Lord of the Flies? Well, maybe making a fire with the fat kid's glasses.
Being forced to read novels one does not like along with some that one may, rather than just reading as a hobby, which is damned well what reading fiction is, does not tend to endear people to that hobby, if that is the point, and teaches few directly marketable skills, if that is the point. It may teach advanced literacy--I'm not up on pedagogical literature, so if it does, I withdraw the assertion. But I doubt it does.
Good god sir, could you be more of a PHILISTINE? I feel I've forgiven much of your low-brow ways over the years, but I feel another breaking point coming. In a more respectable age I'd have full right to set my manservants upon you to have you flogged in the public square for your un-gentlemanly ways.
Ide needs those kids to eventually create a cure for that case of super diabetes that he is gonna get.
See? Otto's read his Brontë. One of them, anyway. They're all interchangeable.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on December 03, 2012, 08:38:00 PM
Oh yeah, well I was home detentioned.
I was at home playing pretty pretty princess.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on December 03, 2012, 08:45:51 PM
See? Otto's read his Brontë. One of them, anyway. They're all interchangeable.
Anne! :wub:
Anyway, Lord of the Flies? Yeah we need a book that kids will take as an encouragement to pick on others.
Quote from: garbon on December 03, 2012, 09:13:23 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on December 03, 2012, 08:45:51 PM
See? Otto's read his Brontë. One of them, anyway. They're all interchangeable.
Anyway, Lord of the Flies? Yeah we need a book that kids will take as an encouragement to pick on others.
If taught well, it should be doing the opposite. -_-
Quote from: Pitiful Pathos on December 03, 2012, 09:21:02 PM
Quote from: garbon on December 03, 2012, 09:13:23 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on December 03, 2012, 08:45:51 PM
See? Otto's read his Brontë. One of them, anyway. They're all interchangeable.
Anyway, Lord of the Flies? Yeah we need a book that kids will take as an encouragement to pick on others.
If taught well, it should be doing the opposite. -_-
Please. Even as a young teen the "good" characters come across as insufferable.
Quote from: garbon on December 03, 2012, 09:35:24 PM
Quote from: Pitiful Pathos on December 03, 2012, 09:21:02 PM
Quote from: garbon on December 03, 2012, 09:13:23 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on December 03, 2012, 08:45:51 PM
See? Otto's read his Brontë. One of them, anyway. They're all interchangeable.
Anyway, Lord of the Flies? Yeah we need a book that kids will take as an encouragement to pick on others.
If taught well, it should be doing the opposite. -_-
Please. Even as a young teen the "good" characters come across as insufferable.
Well, the text ought to be presented more as evidence at the harm that our destructive sides can cause, rather than a tediously moralistic good/bad character dichotomy.
Quote from: Pitiful Pathos on December 03, 2012, 10:00:16 PM
Well, the text ought to be presented more as evidence at the harm that our destructive sides can cause, rather than a tediously moralistic good/bad character dichotomy.
Sure. That doesn't mean that such is what an individual will take away from it though. Particularly not as a child to whom the book is just an exaggerated version of the type of things that go down among children in school.
Quote from: garbon on December 03, 2012, 10:02:56 PM
Quote from: Pitiful Pathos on December 03, 2012, 10:00:16 PM
Well, the text ought to be presented more as evidence at the harm that our destructive sides can cause, rather than a tediously moralistic good/bad character dichotomy.
Sure. That doesn't mean that such is what an individual will take away from it though. Particularly not as a child to whom the book is just an exaggerated version of the type of things that go down among children in school.
The problem with that argument is that, if we want to ensure that all texts have a clear and unambiguous message that every student takes away from it, then texts will mostly be super boring and didactic, or else the students don't really learn any techniques of analysis from reading the text.
Alternatively, giving students texts that have no relationship to their lives would not be terribly productive either.
Lastly, is there any evidence at all that LotF has a pernicious effect either on bullies / the bullied?
I don't really think it does. Point was is that I thought it was a pretty shitty thing for us to read. :P
I consider in all truth, one of the great blights of the modern era is how "simply literate" we are. The vast majority of Americans have been literate for a long time (even in the 19th century we had alarmingly high literacy rates.) Most countries of consequences have literacy rates in the high 90s or higher. But we are "simply literate", very few Americans write with the fullness of the language, and very few Americans exist who want to read such writing and who can understand such writing.
Take any extremely popular novel published today, or even simple opinion pieces in the newspaper and while sometimes the author might be capable of a more full-throated prose the reader is not desirous of it. Many of the "simply literate", people who may even read as a hobby, assume that in the past speech patterns were different as were things like word usage, slang and etc, but that more or less we're as sophisticated in literate as any who came before. That simply is not the truth. Yes, go back far enough and random scribblings like the Canterbury Tales are barely better than peasant folk tales, but compared to writing of the 18th and 19th century our current prose is simply childish. I can literally show you children's books from the 18th century that are written with more literary weight than some of the most "serious" fiction today.
It isn't just a vast vocabulary, but that's definitely part of it--because master craftsmen in the written word do not shy from the unused words, but embrace them, but it's also the way writers link to various cultural references that are understood to be timeless and simply part of any educated person's realm of understanding. Not pop cultural references, but references of a classical nature to timeless knowledge. Knowledge that, at least among the truly educated, really is timeless.
Here's a paragraph from the 1860 edition of The Atlantic Monthly, this was not some great work of literature with the author deliberately trying to sound heavy with prose. This was an article penned by the editor coming out in support of a political candidate. So compare that with a like article in even the most sophisticated American paper today and weep for our weak, childish prose:
QuoteWhile all of us have been watching, with that admiring sympathy which never fails to wait on courage and magnanimity, the career of the new Timoleon in Sicily,—while we have been reckoning, with an interest scarcely less than in some affair of personal concern, the chances and changes that bear with furtherance or hindrance upon the fortune of united Italy, we are approaching, with a quietness and composure which more than anything else mark the essential difference between our own form of democracy and any other yet known in history, a crisis in our domestic policy more momentous than any that has arisen since we became a nation. Indeed, considering the vital consequences for good or evil that will follow from the popular decision in November, we might be tempted to regard the remarkable moderation which has thus far characterized the Presidential canvass as a guilty indifference to the duty implied in the privilege of suffrage, or a stolid unconsciousness of the result which may depend upon its exercise in this particular election, did we not believe that it arose chiefly from the general persuasion that the success of the Republican party was a foregone conclusion.
So they were verbose back then...:huh:
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 03, 2012, 08:45:09 PM
Ide needs those kids to eventually create a cure for that case of super diabetes that he is gonna get.
With these new automated checkers, I don't even need liberal arts majors to ring up my Reese's cups at the store, man.
Lol "new Timoleon." Did anyone ever call Eisenhower the new Rollo? They happened to operate in the same general geographical area, so the comparison must be apt. :)
Anyway, I, a philistine? I read books from France. :frog:
I do bemoan the loss of classical allusions etc. in everyday works of educated writing, but I don't see why the prose in Otto's example should be something we should aspire to. Paragraph-long sentences? Yeah, no thanks.
Quote from: garbon on December 03, 2012, 11:38:36 PM
So they were verbose back then...:huh:
I've never cared much for the flowery prose of the 18th and 19th century. I think it's a hold over from when literacy wasn't common and people who were literate liked to show off. I don't see the less verbose style as a dumbing down of language as much as getting to the point quicker.
Quote from: Pitiful Pathos on December 04, 2012, 01:23:34 AM
I do bemoan the loss of classical allusions etc. in everyday works of educated writing, but I don't see why the prose in Otto's example should be something we should aspire to. Paragraph-long sentences? Yeah, no thanks.
I agree, and would point out that Otto is missing the fact that people who wrote magazine articles back then tended to get paid by the word.
It looks like they got paid by the syllable.
What's more deplorable, with the continuing switch from printed to electronic media (including e-books), soon we will reach a point when a good sun storm will wipe out the entire cultural product of several decades. :P
Quote from: dps on December 04, 2012, 02:46:10 AM
Quote from: Pitiful Pathos on December 04, 2012, 01:23:34 AM
I do bemoan the loss of classical allusions etc. in everyday works of educated writing, but I don't see why the prose in Otto's example should be something we should aspire to. Paragraph-long sentences? Yeah, no thanks.
I agree, and would point out that Otto is missing the fact that people who wrote magazine articles back then tended to get paid by the word.
I suspect that magazines and newspapers were the reason for the brevity. People bought more newspapers that got to the goddamn point. People don't care that the writer can read Homer in the original Greek, and aren't interested in how many classical allusions he can squeeze into an article. They just want to know who won the race for county commissioner, what the verdict on that local murder trial is, if that Balkan crisis has been resolved yet, if the Cardinals won last nights game.