Posted on 02/11/2024 3:32:01 PM PST by algore
Recent years have seen successive waves of book bans in Republican-controlled states, aimed at pulling any text with “woke” themes from classrooms and library shelves.
But at the same time, the appropriate response is, in principle, simple... and we can replace those individuals with people who want to reverse those policies.
Defeating the open conspiracy to deprive students of physical access to books will do little to counteract the more diffuse confluence of forces that are depriving students of the skills needed to meaningfully engage with those books in the first place.
As a college educator, I am confronted daily with the results of that conspiracy-without-conspirators.
I have been teaching in small liberal arts colleges for over 15 years now, and in the past five years, it’s as though someone flipped a switch.
For most of my career, I assigned around 30 pages of reading per class meeting as a baseline expectation—sometimes scaling up for purely expository readings or pulling back for more difficult texts.
Now students are intimidated by anything over 10 pages and seem to walk away from readings of as little as 20 pages with no real understanding.
Even smart and motivated students struggle to do more with written texts than extract decontextualized take-aways.
Yes, professors never feel satisfied that high school teachers have done enough, but not every generation of professors has had to deal with the fallout of No Child Left Behind and Common Core.
Finally, yes, every generation thinks the younger generation is failing to make the grade—except for the current cohort of professors, who are by and large more invested in their students’ success and mental health.
We are not complaining about our students. We are complaining about what has been taken from them.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
1984?
Brave New World?
Fahrenheit 451?
No?
Then I don't wanna hear it from them.
“Now students are intimidated by anything over 10 pages and seem to walk away from readings of as little as 20 pages with no real understanding.”
Parents are equally as responsible as teachers. There will have to be a new evaluation soon of the Bell Curve for intelligence.
Very young kids lost important years of language development. Middle School kids lost important years of learning to focus their attention on challenges. And High School kids lost important years of learning to communicate and interact at anything like an adult level.
The damage is incalculable and will be felt for generations to come.
And, quite apart from COVID, you have social media and terrible -- terrible -- education practices in government schools. This is all going to snowball and "Idiocracy" will be right here.
“Recent years have seen successive waves of book bans in Republican-controlled states...”
As far as anyone needs to read on this stupidity.
I have seen what students are forced to read in school today. It is dreadful, they way they are taught is dreadful, and the result is students recoil from reading.
100 years ago we taught Greek and Latin in high schools.
Now we teach remedial English in colleges.
I have many unusual books of various kinds—many very controversial on a wide variety of subjects—and I have been able to find anything I want.
Sometimes it takes a little digging but everything is out there somewhere.
The censors seem to have eased up recently—I can’t put my finger on why—but something is going on....
Yes. The 'switch' was you. When you first allowed mush brains to create words like 'conversated' and 'commentated' to sound educated. You should have immediately corrected them - converse and commented. But you didn't. You didn't because you didn't want to hurt their little psyches.
Stopped reading a half-dozen words into the first sentence.
Why are they "invested" (whatever that means) in their students' mental health?
I'm so sick of everyone always blathering about their "mental health." People don't show up to work because "My mental health requires that I take a rest." And when they commit mistakes or even crimes, they blame it on their "mental health" and seek sympathy for their wrong-doing.
Whatever happened to "Feeling depressed? Well, suck it up and tough it out."
I’m convinced most K-12 schools don’t teach real subjects anymore. It’s all about behavior management and self esteem. You get a B for simply showing up.
That being said, the author felt compelled to start the article off bashing conservatives. Only toward the end does he concede that cultural factors may be playing a role.
The author is not alone in that and there are editors to blame as well.
I read printed works and have to stop because the author and the editor are rank amateurs at best. It's the Dunning-Kruger Effect applied to literature and it's repeated again and again.
And that is the answer.
People will not like this answer because it puts it on the teachers. They prefer the answer that the "children of today are stupid" because there is nothing you can do about that.
“Because they are being taught using “whole word” where you learn a certain series of shapes mean a certain word. You memorize this list. If you are very bright you can remember thousands of series of shapes. “
I don’t know about that, but “Aoccdrnig to a study at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.”
You asked a question but because you do not want to actually solve the problem you reject it.
Not my problem.
“I understood what he is saying as I have a college degree.”
Ok. Help me understand this from the article:
“... deprive students of physical access to books will do little to counteract the more diffuse confluence of forces that are depriving students of the skills needed to meaningfully engage with those books in the first place.”
Well said and I agree. Case in point here, humanities instructor at a small college tries to postulate various positions in early childhood development, education, technology, curriculum development, reading comprehension, etc. with no research, resources, citations, or foundation other than a few links to wikipedia and motherjones.
Last year I took a class in ConLaw. I was shocked at what I observed.
Students could not read well. Their timing and pace was off. Paragraphs were read as though they were one longggg sentence. Students could not easily pronounce multi-syllabic words.
The professor would ask what the holding was in a case. Just blank stares. I hated chirping in with the answer as the other students rarely answered. Just a lack of engagement.
I talked with the professor after the course was over. He said it was like this before COVID-19, but its gotten worse post-COVID.
We had great teachers a century ago. Women who could not enter other professions took up teaching. And they were wonders. I recall with great pleasure Mr. Pimentel, my grammar school teacher from 1st to 5th grade. In our class of thirty it was thanks to her that six of us went on to obtain our Doctorates, and more than twenty attended college. In those days, in a small farming community, such a thing was unheard of. Today it is unheard of because we are graduating illiterates.
Sorry, Mr. should have been Mrs.
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