[stylist] What I've been reading- Education

Mon Apr 16 05:34:33 UTC 2012

Bridgit,
I share your concerns about the declining curriculums and standards in our 
schools. I know it’s a huge problem overall, not in my county, but in  other 
areas. This county is affluent and we have many white collar professionals 
so this area may be quite educated and insulated.
I have a number of frightening stories too; I was asked to edit papers in 
upper level English classes  and they did not know the basics. Fragments, 
fragments, and fused sentences were rampant! I did not know where to begin. 
I think the basics of writing and grammar need to be taught in our schools 
and yes let's get back to the  literature classics and thinking; we did not 
analyze too much in high school, and I struggled with that in college and 
still do. I'm not  a very abstract thinker. When my dad was in school they 
were actually taught grammar, spelling and semantics; sadly this is not the 
case in many schools today. Then we wonder why students in higher ed cannot 
write well or read critically and then either get poor grades or drop out; 
they are not prepared for college.
Yes we need some reforms.
Ashley
-----Original Message----- 
From: Bridgit Pollpeter
Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2012 6:10 PM
To: stylist at nfbnet.org
Subject: [stylist] What I've been reading- Education

Chris,

That's great about your daughter's education. I absolutely love To Kill
a Mockingbird and read it for the first time when I was 12 or 13, long
before it was assigned my sophomore year of high school. It sounds like
your daughter will be much better prepared for university, if she
chooses that route, and life in general than a lot of people who are not
receiving a similar education.

I know not all schools are slacking with educational efforts, but many
are. My sister Brook is a social studies teacher for the Des Moines,
Iowa school district, and she was telling me how some of her students
were talking about how their English teacher allowed them to read
Twilight to meet a required English grade. Regardless of where you stand
on the Twilight series for entertainment, it's not reading material
students should be using in English classes in order to learn about
literature, writing along with those analytical skills.

I am sometimes asked to assist edit various things for people, and I had
a university student ask for help in editing a history paper. I read the
actual assignment from the prof. and it was largely meant to be
analytical. The student wrote a summary of the assignment with no
opinion whatsoever incorporated throughout, and the summary itself was
not well-written. When I expressed this, the student had no clue why
their paper wasn't considered to contain any analysis of the text. It
was frustrating to try and explain this to someone who clearly had not
been taught to analyze material and construct an academic argument for a
university-level paper.

My mom is a early ed teacher, and she often expresses her concern over
current curriculums and the lack of skills children are not being taught
or taught properly.

And here's a frightening story. My last semester at university, I had to
take a writing course in the English department; my degree was in fine
arts, so most my writing classes were taught in the fine arts department
and work shopped based, which was very different from the few writing
classes I took in the English department. Anyway, this was a senior
level class with a few masters students. The entire class were education
majors with their emphasis in English and/or language arts, except me.
About half the class, which was very small, were not aware of basic
English rules like the difference between verbs, adjectives and adverbs,
passive and active voice and basic sentence structure. During a small
group session, we were suppose to high light the noun and verb in each
sentence of one paragraph from each others essays. My group turned to me
and asked if I understood what the prof. meant; they were all ed majors
and I was just a FA writing major. I don't pretend to know all the rules
of grammar and structure, or think I'm an English expert, but you would
expect English teaching majors to know the basics at the very least.
These are the hands future children will be in. Terrifying, grin.

Anyway, it's great to know not all education experiences have been
dumbed--down, and I don't pretend to have had a stellar high school
experience, though it certainly was not terrible, and I feel like I
learned necessary and valuable skills while in high school that are not
always taught these ays in all schools. To "dumb-down" or water-down a
curriculum is not giving kids and teens due credit. Yes, many kids have
various learning and behavioral problems that can hinder the learning
process, but often through different learning styles, most kids can be
taught certain skills.

When my younger brother and sister were in sixth and third grade, my mom
home-schooled them along with two neighbor kids in the same grades. They
were a brother and sister as well, and both struggled academically, the
brother having been determined to have learning disabilities and at a D
average, the sister diagnosed with behavioral disorders and not at a
high academic level either. Through trying various tools, methods and
styles, by the end of the year, both were at much higher reading levels
and averaging grades in the Bs and As.

I think teachers, especially these days, have one of the toughest jobs
around and are given very little credit, but I also think education
administrators water-down curriculums in order to make things easier.
Students are not being challenged and learning skills, such as
analytical skills, that are necessary.

So sorry for the rant; I know how "rants" are disliked here, but I feel
strongly about this topic and it is writing related, or in a nearby
vein, smile.

Sincerely,
Bridgit Kuenning-Pollpeter
Read my blog at:
http://blogs.livewellnebraska.com/author/bpollpeter/

"History is not what happened; history is what was written down."
The Expected One- Kathleen McGowan

Message: 4
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2012 21:08:07 -0400
From: "Chris Kuell" <ckuell at comcast.net>
To: "Writer's Division Mailing List" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [stylist] What I've been reading
Message-ID: <3ED6E644ECF94DE6A85F2B60AB99E0BD at ChrisPC>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=original

Bridgit,

All is not lost. Both of my kids have had challenging English classes in

high school. My daughter is a junior and this year in her honors English

class she's read To Kill A Mockingbird, The Help, Into the Wild, and
right
now she's reading The Things They Carried. She also had to read two
books on
her own and write analytical papers. She read The Tenderness of Wolves,
which was an excellent book, and The Saddness of Lemoncake, which I
didn't
read but it has to do with a family of synestesiacs. I  like to read
what my
kids are reading so we can discuss it, and both of my kids are not only
excellent readers, they are excellent writers and know how to look for
the
deeper meaning in works of literature. Which, although it's a YA novel,
is
where I'dplace the first book in the Hunger Games series. To me, the
violence was used as a tool to show how both Catness and Peta try hard
to
hold on to their humanity. And the wealth and pagentry of the government
was
used to show how far away from the people of the nation the elite are. A

message that we Americans should consider very carefully in our own
world of
today.

chris

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