"As for English.... In today's high schools, there is very little literature
being taught (nor grammar, nor critical thinking). A former student, now a
high school teacher, tells me they can no longer assign novels, because the
kids can't/won't read them!!! They use only short stories, and the kids
write primarily about how the stories make them feel, or how their own
experiences are similar, or about what they've learned from the "moral" of
the story."
A shame about the novels. On the other hand, most of the classic short
stories I've read were in junior high and high school, and I'm kind of
grateful that I was exposed that thoroughly to a form that is not my
favorite.
If they cannot or will not read novels, their parents should be tortured,
upside-down. But, um, I mean that in a good way.
The notion of stories having "morals" is indeed rather repugnant, but I'm
not sure it's bad to start with how the stories made them feel, or having
them compare their own experiences to those of the narrator/characters. That
might be another way of figuring out if the authors achieved the universal
by means of the specific.
The fact is, people like you and I can agonize all day long about the state
of literature and language arts education, but Keith and Paul are right:
most semieduated people have a command of language, at least as speakers,
and an inkling of its potential for beauty, even if they don't have the
ability to produce bitchin' prose. Certainly, they can appreciate good
storytelling (in the form of movies--even when they cannot articulate it,
they know it when they see it).
But the idea that numbers are not real, but rather part of a playful,
hypothetical world, is something I didn't hear until I was in my
twenties--by which time the system (and my relationship with my math-teacher
mom) had carried me past the best moment for delving into it.
There is an argument to be made that only you, John, Paul, and Lenny (and,
of course, the parents among us) are really doing anything about the
educational problems we all love to wring our hands over. Maybe the rest of
us need to be tutoring our best subjects on Saturday mornings.
Although I feel about getting up on weekend mornings approximately the way I
feel about arithmetic.
--J
On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 9:33 AM, Rin Watt <katecwatt_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I would certainly agree that, as taught, most math is not useful to most
> people. Teaching problem-solving and logic and the "poetry" math types say
> they see there would be much better, would make kids smarter, even if they
> didn't go into careers that use any math. Of this I approve. Such an
> approach might not have made me so math-phobic.
>
> As for English.... In today's high schools, there is very little literature
> being taught (nor grammar, nor critical thinking). A former student, now a
> high school teacher, tells me they can no longer assign novels, because the
> kids can't/won't read them!!! They use only short stories, and the kids
> write primarily about how the stories make them feel, or how their own
> experiences are similar, or about what they've learned from the "moral" of
> the story.
>
> Or, to quote Dickens,
>
> "Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts.
> Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything
> else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing
> else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I
> bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up
> these children. Stick to Facts, sir!"
>
> The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom warehouse....
>
> The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all
> backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little
> vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of
> facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.
>
> Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities. A man of Facts and calculations.
> A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing
> over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas
> Gradgrind, sir - peremptorily Thomas - Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a
> pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir,
> ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly
> what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple
> arithmetic.
>
>
>
--
Joy M. McCann
Goddess of Ink and Paper
(But pixels obey me, too.)
Mistress of proofreading, fact-checking,
Line-editing, and copyediting
Copy Write Editorial Services
818/429-9806
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Received on 2009-04-15 09:55:17