[stylist] What I've been reading- Education

Mon Apr 16 16:24:10 UTC 2012

That is scary that future English teachers did not know basic grammar .  I
was talking with my older sister the other day and she said she never
learned grammar in school.  She and I went to the same school but she had
special ed classes and I had a mixture of honors and general class as well
as special ed math.  I learned all the grammar rools and even if I cant
remember everything off the top of my head it comes back to me when I need
it.  I had honors English and wonder if I learned grammar, and my sister did
not in special ed, what did the general ed classes learn was it a partial
grammar lesson?  Why did special ed classes not teach this information?  I
realize people in special ed classes learn differently but that doesn't mean
they shouldn't be learning at all.  I am with you Bridgit, the education
system is going down.  I realize there are good and grate teachers, and
there are good and grate schools, but in general the school system is a
machine that just pushes kids along and teaches for test scores and not
actual education.  It is almost as if honors classes are the only curriculum
that isn't watered down as much.  However some of the things I learned in
honors classes I feel  should have been taught in general ed classes so
maybe it is watered down as well.  Also I believe special ed classes should
be learning the same things as general ed classes just taught differently,
but they are not even learning a third of what the rest of the classes are
learning.

Andi

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Bridgit Pollpeter
Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2012 6:11 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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