Posted on 12/07/2012 10:25:09 AM PST by grundle
American literature classics are to be replaced by insulation manuals and plant inventories in US classrooms by 2014.
A new school curriculum which will affect 46 out of 50 states will make it compulsory for at least 70 per cent of books studied to be non-fiction, in an effort to ready pupils for the workplace.
Books such as JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird will be replaced by "informational texts" approved by the Common Core State Standards.
Suggested non-fiction texts include Recommended Levels of Insulation by the the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Invasive Plant Inventory, by California's Invasive Plant Council.
The new educational standards have the backing of the influential National Governors' Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, and are being part-funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Related Articles
Letters reveal the secret side of JD Salinger 27 Jan 2011
Why Harper Lee has remained silent 01 May 2011
JD Salinger 28 Jan 2010
Jamie Highfill, a teacher at Woodland Junior High School in Arkansas, told the Times that the directive was bad for a well-rounded education.
"I'm afraid we are taking out all imaginative reading and creativity in our English classes.
"In the end, education has to be about more than simply ensuring that kids can get a job. Isn't it supposed to be about making well-rounded citizens?"
Supporters of the directive argue that it will help pupils to develop the ability to write concisely and factually, which will be more useful in the workplace than a knowledge of Shakespeare.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Guess I get to look forward to grandchildren who are as dumb as a bag of hammers.
By the time they hit school age (I still have teens) the curriculum will consist of looking at pictures and pressing buttons.
think of all the things that pushed the "okay" button back in the radical leftist 60's and this was one of them...sexual experimentation, and exploration etc is ALL GOOD....
we started losing whatever social norms right about then....along with Playboy and the pill.
so when people complain about legalizing weed and legalizing homosexual "marriage"....well it had its beginnings back then.
Reading Shakespeare probably forces you to think no matter what. But the way they teach it nowadays, usually it’s to find what’s “relevant,” as entertainment, or as “look at what those foolish people thought back then.” Hardly ever is it in the most instructive way, which is to study it as actually worthwhile on its own merits. That presents interesting questions and answers and a way of thinking and expressing itself that’s not only different but superior to what you bump into in regular life.
If they think crappy, dry textbooks written by committee will help people write more concisely and factually, they are morons. They don’t think that. It’s just that they don’t value what’s said in most great literature. If they could write like Shakespeare and drill into your head what they think you need yo know, they would. But it’s easier to crank out industrial education manuals than write something people want to read, so that’s what they do.
It probably would be impossible to express their ideas in Shakespearean form, given the paucity of higher culture or homespun wisdom in their brains. But even if they could, they wouldn’t, because they don’t value it.
You’re right that it’s not a fiction versus nonfiction thing. Literature, after all, is only one subject. I don’t know about the percentages, but the rest require a different sort of learning. The problem is the paucity of higher culture that will get into students’ heads no matter the subject.
If we wanted to go another way, for instance turn high schools into trade schools, I could see that. But then I’d wanna channel those destined for college into a seperate course. As it is we’re not going to give low- or middlebrow kids marketable skills, and we’ll churn out doctors, lawyers, and scientists who can’t think. Which is to say nothing of all the loafabout English or philosophy majors who can’t be trusted to know anything about English or philosophy, even.
Other than the propaganda, I don’t see a problem here. I got through school without having to read “Catcher in the Rye.” Thank goodness.
For some reason, English lit classes select only the most excruciatingly boring books as “literature.” Why not let the kids read Sherlock Holmes stories, “The Scottish Chiefs,” “Kidnapped,” “Beau Geste,” or even “Tarzan?” They’re good books, well written, and reasonably entertaining. The kids might actually learn to LIKE reading; something they won’t get from Catcher in the Rye or Earth-First propaganda.
Catcher in the Rye was always a liberal propaganda book:
Why Academics Love Catcher in the Rye
8/1/2010
The American left requires adolescents read J.D. Salingers Catcher in the Rye because they want young Americans to become false prophets of doom. They are sowing the seeds for the next generation of Paul Ehrlichs and Al Gores.
http://www.humanevents.com/2010/08/01/why-academics-love-catcher-in-the-rye/
"He's the only guy in the whole movie wearing a suit. "
Then they will go home to watch “Ow My Balls”.
Never cared for “Catcher in the Rye” - I found it incredibly boring. I do love “To kill a Mockingbird” - in fact I read it again last week! It’s a delightful story about growing up in rural Alabama during the depression. The only downside is that the story was interrupted by some sort of trial. (The trial part was boring, so I skipped over it).
Thanks to Core Curriculum and people like Bill Ayers and Linda Darling-Hammond - they will be mumbling to themselves about the Revolution
I think this is a tongue-in-cheek article. A brief look at the Common Core State Standards Initiative home page (http://www.corestandards.org/) doesn’t bear out any of the way-out elements from the article. The Telegraph was having a little fun.
“the objective must be to raise a generation of kids that hate reading”
Bingo. Nailed it in one shot.
I’m a history teacher. Let me get my hands on the requirements for non-fiction and I’ll make a list of interesting things that had significant impact on the world.
Replacing mid-20th century fiction with early 21st-century fiction
True, that.
Thank you for an excellent review. Maybe I’ll try reading it again one of these days. I think I was too young the first time around.
Plutarch, Josephus, Plato, Gibbon and Churchill can't be used to discuss and analyze moral values?
Beg to differ.
This is part of Obama’s ‘Common Core’ curricula that in intended to dumb down our schoolchildren while advocating all the socialist rubbish you can imagine and undermining traditional Judeo-Christian values. Do not allow your state to accept this for the federal money. It is another form of brainwashing. Better yet, home school.
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