Reading fiction has been such a joy for me that my heart broke a little to learn recently that many schools no longer assign full books to high school students.
Rather, teens are given excerpts of books, and they often read them not in print but on school-issued laptops, according to a survey of 2,000 teachers, students and parents by the New York Times.
The reasons are many – including the belief that students have shorter attention spans, and schools’ efforts to teach students to perform well on standardized tests.
One factor is the Common Core, a set of standards adopted by many states in the US more than a decade ago. Given those standards, many schools use curriculum products like StudySync, which uses an anthology approach to introducing students to literature.
Well, OK, horse’s mouth and all that. Given that schools get ever larger budgets to get ever worse perhaps that near exclusive control of the school system by Democrats might be the thing to change?
There’s a lot of overlap between Common Core and Least Common Denominator.
They’ve always been shit. When I went to university I found in the bookshops American textbooks with names such as College Algebra, College Chemistry, and so on.
The content turned out to be O-level stuff.
Mind you, to their credit they often contained nice diagrams. On the other hand the index would always be lousy.
If that is the case, it might be an idea to try to stretch them. If it isn’t, then it will be if you’re giving them just bits to read.
You’re assuming modern universities feel it’s their task to improve students, rather than simply invent new ways to praise them as ‘their authentic selves’
And instruct them sternly on that narrow range they’re allowed to think.
I’m not sure of the value of forcing students to read stuff that they don’t find interesting. I can’t say that I’ve ever felt the need to re-read The History Of Mr. Polly or Of Mice And Men. I’ve always enjoyed reading but there are some who have never picked up a book after leaving school because they were made to hate it so much.
True. Just because someone is capable of writing a book doesn’t mean it’s worth reading. First random author name pops into my head: Maya Angelou.
Maya Angelou got to be the token black poet.
Although really, the best black American poets were working at Tamla Motown.
Once in a fit of extreme self-loathing I forced myself to read Joyce’s Ulysses. It had an unexpected benefit. Now I know for absolutely bloody sure that the literary establishment is a bunch of poseurs with no critical ability whatsoever.
Did the same with Portrait. Came to same conclusion.
Moby Dick for me. That’s a week of my life I won’t get back.
Oh, I found Ulysses funny. But the jokes are obscure and it helps to have had a fairly old-fashioned Catholic education to spot a lot of them.
I was totally put off Literature at school, not least by the teachers. I am an avid reader, but not of the classics, nor Shakespeare, nor poetry. I have read both Les Miserables (mostly) and War & Peace. I might even re-read the latter were it not for lots of other stuff on my bookshelves that I want to revisit.
OT at a Christmas gathering I spoke with a likeable 14 year old who told me her GCSE English Lit options included Priestly’s An Inspector Calls.
I duly did the Lords work by praising and precising the Alastair Sim film adaptation while warning that it missed much of the nuance of the full play. I think she will take the bait.
I am grateful that a book such as this is still an option fearing the works of Ibrahim X Kendi, Marjorie Atwood and David Walliams (ok maybe not any more) would dominate the list.
Given what the Teens are *required* to read… actually a Good Thing…
And to be fair.. In the Days of Yore, when the Internet was still a Thought Experiment and a “Computer” was something for Nerds, and at best something to replace the typewriter…
we used excerpts of the Mandatory Literature ( 4 languages for me, being a Cloggie prepping for Uni..) made by our Predecessors…
Our teachers could actually tell *which* excerpts we had used, and did the Trick Question thing , for which there were addenda..
You don’t think we actually *read* the bloody pile of Pontiferous Pigswill our Teachers and Betters thought we’d need for our “Development” did you?
We had better things to do… Like chasing girls, and maybe buff up on the subjects we intended to go to Uni for, and chase girls, and go to parties, and chase girls.
So despite all the screaming…. *nothing* has changed since the ’80’s and before..
I read voraciously at school, but not in school. Devoured my way through the local library, mainly the science fiction section. Occasionally I’ll try and remember the title of some story I remember and try and track it down.
The only fiction I remember reading at school that I enjoyed and would dig out again are Of Mice And Men (sorry Stony), Lininghan Vesus The Ants, and a couple of others I can’t remember. Oh, primary school had a shelf full of Tom Swift that I went through, probably perfect for 9-year-old me.
The author is mixing up two different types of reading. There is reading because you have to (assigned texts, work-related reading, instruction manuals, and such) and there is “ludic” reading, or reading for pleasure. Reading assigned texts will almost never translate into ludic reading.
Here is a pretty good explanation of ludic reading.
It does occasionally. I absolutely loved Sons And Lovers, an A Level set book. Could barely give a fuck about the rest.
I’ve certainly enjoyed myself reading “literature”, and from it learned some moral lessons (for what they’re worth) and a bit about how people think and what motivates them, but “literature” has taught me the square root of jack shit about how the world actually works, because “literary authors” have no fucking idea.
I’ve learned that from non-fiction. History, Cleese & Skinner, Sowell, our host. And some biographies.
Mississippi has made great strides in improving grade and high school education over the past dozen years, suggesting that Tim is exactly right – get the Democrats out of education.
Quiz question that NO ONE will miss:
Was this written by a man or a woman?
I read huge quantities of SciFi when I was a lad. The only title I remember is Flowers for Algernon. That’s probably because it was by miles the best of them. I found Asimov rather mechanical and pretentious. In other words, predictable.
I’m no SciFi fan but funnily enough I’ve read Flowers for Algernon too. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Given that most of Asimov’s short-form work, especially his pulp days, is actually rewritten Greek tragedies… Which he freely admitted himself.. yeah… can imagine.
IMHO Asimov was a genius whose Foundation series (and others) met my (maths graduate, possibly slightly autistic) requirement that the environment of the story be internally consistent: no magic wands. There are a horrible number of self-styled SciFi books that fail this test