Posted on 09/11/2009 9:07:44 AM PDT by Kaslin
Conservatives and other parents won their point. President Obama dropped his lesson plan for the schoolchildren of America. He didn't ask what they can do for him, as he first intended to do, but what they can do for themselves and country.
"We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect, so you can help solve our most difficult problems," he said. "If you don't do that -- if you quit on school -- you're not only quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country." Nobody can argue with that.
The furor that preceded the speech was rage against the "cult of personality," and the White House did a good job of changing the subject to misrepresent what the furor was about. But as the Bard would say, "All's well that ends well."
A good follow-up question might be how many of the kids he talked to would know who the Bard is -- the bright young man who introduced the president at Wakefield High would know -- but a lot of American kids are getting shortchanged by what they're reading, and not reading.
A new method of teaching reading has taken hold in many classrooms, allowing children in middle school to pick their own books for literature class. No more assigned classics. If a child prefers to read a Judy Blume novel or the "Twilight" vampire series rather than "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" or "To Kill a Mockingbird," he can get credit as a happy, satisfied reader. The idea is that he'll develop a love for reading -- a love he wouldn't develop if told what he should read.
Lorry McNeil, who teaches seventh- and eighth-grade English classes in a suburban Atlanta middle school, tells The New York Times how as a teenager she devoured the novels of Judy Blume and Danielle Steel. She disliked Mark Twain, even though she taught Twain later. Now she teaches "gifted" students and lets them choose what they want to read. She says they're more excited about their personal choices than the classics they're forced to read. She boasts that her students score well on standardized state reading tests, but standardized tests tell only how well a student tests to statistical standards, not necessarily to substance.
Many educationists have, as usual, boarded the Band-Aid wagon, teaching the "personal choice" method. Fads are always popular with the educationists. But Diane Ravitch, professor of education at New York University, asks the pertinent question: "What child is going to pick up 'Moby Dick'?'" Or "Julius Caesar?" or even "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," once the staples of literature classes. Kids can learn good reading habits in elementary school to be prepared to read the best of the classics later.
But few schools teach a reading "core" any longer, and students graduate from high school with no collective body of knowledge in common, a problem made worse when they're encouraged to make their own personal choices for book assignments. President Obama passed up a good opportunity to tell the teachers, in an avuncular aside, that dumbing-down is not the rigorous discipline he promised to encourage in the campaign. A dumbed-down curriculum inevitably leads to dumbed-down state standards.
Reading time-tested literature should be about enjoyment, of course, and a good teacher should see to that. But it's about a lot more than enjoyment. A reader of fine literature develops critical thinking that is both aesthetic and moral, probing profound questions of life from different perspectives. These are lessons not found in social studies courses.
Reading the classics is about raising universal questions in an imaginative context, challenging the reader to evaluate ideas outside the passing popular culture. It's never difficult for kids to read the trendy fluff after school, just as there's no shortage of diversions from the rigors of homework. Guidance to good literature is an obligation of teachers. This is a presidential reminder Obama could have given at Wakefield High.
The president told the students that when he was a boy, his mother got him up at 4:30 in the morning to do his homework with her. When he complained, she reminded him, "It's no picnic for me either, Buster." Learning, as the president emphasized this week, is hard work for everybody. Reading Harry Potter is fine, but not when it's instead of Huck Finn. There will be time later to "light out for the territory." Only those who have read their Mark Twain would understand what that means.
Heh. Wonder how many kids actually were in school to listen to him, or if the lack-of-attendance lists are now the will morph into the new s*it list of uncooperative parents.
My kids were in school that day. However, their school didn’t show the speech.
Exactly. Thats why they have schools, and thats why they have teachers.
If they aren't guiding the kids through the classics, if they aren't connecting them with the fundaments of the greater culture, then they aren't educating. May as well let them watch cartoon network.
Then again, same goes for history. I really didn't care when I was in school. School was an authoritarian institution, a jail, and I was just serving time. Later on, after I was free, I became an avid reader on my own. My screenname comes from Huck Finn. Great novel. Sometimes you have to discover things on your own terms, on your own time.
I wonder sometimes if force feeding really works. One might incentivize things for the kids. How about they can pick a book of their own for x number of credits or whatever, or they can pick from the classics list and get xxx number of credits or whatever?
The question should start from the objective, and work backwards. If the objective is that they know some Shakespeare, then teach Shakespeare. If it is that they learn about fiction, plot and character development, then it doesn't have to be Shakespeare. You can make them aware of that stuff. Just teach some classic scenes.
Anyway, I hated school. My teachers didn't make any of it seem important or interesting to me. I was bored and trapped, and really my life began once I got out. Actually, my life resumed once I got out.
Shakespeare is great. Teachers could teach all the popular phrases that derive from his works. That would be fun. But you know, there's more to life than Shakespeare. I haven't read any in years. It's not for everybody.
School should be more individualized. Kids should be allowed to develop their own interests. It takes all kinds. Sure, they all need some basics in various subjects. And they all need to suffer through some math. In the humanities though, the latitude should be wide.
What makes “Moby Dick” so damned important? It’s quite possible to have a productive, fulfilling life without reading that long boring tale. School reading lists are a total appeal to authority. Books like “Moby Dick” take on this mystical importance that isn’t supported by the facts. It’s just a story. Big deal.
No, they have schools and teachers to socialize children. To indoctrinate them with rot. To mold them into nice little citizens. To establish the authority of the state. To domesticate them, and break their spirit.
My DIL were just having a conversation about the reading list 2 weeks ago. They don’t read the classics and they certainly don’t read Shakespeare. Last year in one class they did study the Bard and the homework was to watch a movie that wasn’t even a good representation, I think it had Brad Pitt and I don’t know the name.
I was telling her how imperative it was for a well-rounded person to have and that if they weren’t getting it in school, they needed to get it outside of school.
I despise my ex-DIL but I will give her credit, she lets the kids read fun books but they also have to read the classics and report to her. By the time they get to HS they will have quite an education.
Well said. As someone who has to hire the product of our public schools though, my biggest gripe is the kids who came in my office wanting to know what I can do for them. They want to know how I can accommodate them, how can I help with their “issues”. If you are ignorant, but are teachable and have a good work ethic, you can go far. If you are a self centered individual who knows it all - I don’t need you. This is only my opinion, but turning out kids who are only concerned about themselves and their “feelings”is destructive. If we turn out enough of them - then we will commit suicide as a nation.-—JM
I keep telling people to get their kids out of public school. The best educated and best "socialized" kids in the positive sense of the word are the home-school kids. Second best are kids educated in decent God-friendly private schools. Public schools are failing on all levels.
My senior year I was working 40 hours, getting out of school by 1pm, working til 9 or 10. Getting a car and a job was my first taste of freedom. Funny isn't it? For most people a job is a trap, but for me it was freedom. I think that sensibility is what turned me into a conservative. I hate institutions. I love freedom. And my best days came from me being in control of my own destiny.
Way before Harry Potter made it to the big screen, I introduced the Philosopher's Stone to my grade 6 classes, and many stayed with the series throughout (reading).
I have introduced "Into The Wild" by Erin Hunter (Pseudonym)this year.
What do both books have in common? First, the kids can't ( couldn't) watch the movie, so they all experienced the characters differently. Secondly, they are part of a series, so if the kids enjoy one, they will probably move onto the next without lesson plans and teacher "prompting" etc.
Gatto wrote a book titled, 'The Dumbing Down of America," which coined that phrase in the first place - he was NY state teacher of the year after a 30-year career, and abruptly quit, stating that he wanted to stop hurting children in the system. He's quite the rebel.
Anyhow, his basic premise is that the public school system works to create followers and consumers, not leaders and entrepreneurs, and it does so purposefully.
He gives numerous examples of successful people who weren't subverted by the school system (usually by dropping out or getting an education despite it), and the concept of open-source learning, he calls it.
There's a study of geniuses, and the 3 elements (Edison, Einstein, etc.)(cited in the Moores' books) they had in common were 1) an adult, usually a parent, who loved them unconditionally; 2) isolation from peers; and 3) plenty of opportunity for exploration. Hmmm....essentially that tells you to keep your children FAR AWAY from the public school system...
What I find rather ironic is that at the same time schools embrace “choice” in reading, they are trying to restrict choice in other areas, specifically food. I suspect some of these schools that let kids read “Twilight” rather than the classics are the same schools that ban soda and cupcakes on birthdays. It is as if the schools have decided to become authoritarian in diet, rather than intellect, isn’t it?
I agree - schools should put more emphasis on basic reading, writing, and math skills, and those who want classic literature could register for the appropriate classes.
More to the point of Obama’s talk, though, is that there is no place for the Federal government in education. I don’t care if he read the Declaration of Independence, he shouldn’t have been given a place during the school day, and neither should any other president.
As a homeschooler, I have no personal stake, but as a taxpayer, my county schools superintendent said, “This isn’t on the test. F*** it!”
My older kids love the classics. My 18-year-old, now in the Coast Guard, was always nagging me to take her to the used book store for more Shakespeare plays, which she would act out with various siblings, adding interesting elements like the arrival of Richard III’s Mother Ship. My 12-year-old loves the Greek classics in translation, and he listens to Willa Cather and Edith Wharton novels on CD with me. My 7-year-old is learning Greek so he can read the originals.
Maybe there are more children and teenagers who want this literature for its own sake, but we need to remember that the “classics” are the classics because *adults* wanted to read them, spent their own money to buy the books or pay the library fees. It wasn’t because they were forced on school kids at gunpoint.
My children love the Erin Hunter books about the cats. I guess we’re in our 8th year of them, as older children move on and younger ones check them out.
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