I'm gonna use this for both my EPS blog here and my ELNG reflective assignment, because the topic is pretty relevant to both I suppose... at any rate...
I'm also going to use proper indentation for paragraphs... whoopie...
My big consideration is what to teach students in English courses. Could there be more questions surrounding this topic? I mean... I'm going to come right out and say that I think it's a bit funny that I didn't get a whole lot out of my English class in terms of writing, and what little exposure I did get came in Academic writing. However, my teacher did such a poor job of it that I basically had to forget it all in order to survive English 100. That's besides the point though. I find it strange that academic writing is much of a focus at all in high school. For starters, what percentage of students head on to university? Secondly, it sends a funny message: "If you aren't going to be spending your twenties dissecting literature, there's not much of a point to you learning how to write." Now, I don't know if this has changed, and I think it has a bit, as my high school experiences are getting a bit more stale by now, but like, I don't entirely know where the balance lies. Should kids be writing to express their thoughts? Just to communicate? Hell, lately, by what I've seen on facebook, I'd be satisfied if my students didn't make fools of themselves in their status updates for god's sake. How would that be for a lesson? "Your facebook updates SHOULD contain the following: Capital letters when appropriate, punctuation..." I mean, it feels like the lesson should be "You SHOULD care if you look like a big fool!" Oh well, back on topic... But yeah, should they write to express their thoughts? to dryly inform? To argue? To create? To entertain? Well, to be honest, I think entertainment might be a cornerstone of most any writing, but writing is so damned multifaceted. Maybe students should be given some choice. Does expressive writing sound like a good class? Actually, I'm pretty sure my one prof has a good solution in the idea of a broad writing portfolio, giving students the freedom to write what they want. Even still, that doesn't leave much room for intensive instruction on any specific faction of writing.
On to reading, now... I really disagree with shoving canonical literature down students' throats. I, as a college student, find Shakespeare tough to approach, and even tough to relate to. While I agree that the stories are pretty timeless, and hold insightful commentary, they are just tough to get through. It's like eating a loaf of bread. I mean, it seems a bit sticklerish to hold students to something that I, as a university student, don't enjoy approaching, and in which I don't see the value. Maybe we should get students reading, and enjoying it, before we hand them a network of stuffy old works by dead British authors. Mind you, I do see that happening as well in classrooms. My literacy group teacher gives her students a pretty broad array of relatively new books to choose from, so I'm glad for that I suppose.
End Transmission....
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
The critical thought follow-up...
I'm writing this at someone else's super bowl party... I don't want to hear about any lack of dedication on my part...
I had planned on talking about this in my last post, the idea of teaching kids critical thought, but I felt like I was running a little long with that last post.
At any rate, the term "Critical thought" gets chucked around so much that it has basically lost all meaning, so I'm gonna kind of lay out the context in which I'm talking about this concept. Obviously, there is the general idea that you shouldn't accept information at face value, without being critical of it, or questioning its source, validity, plausibility, feasability, and basically ever "ility" there is to tack on to this sentence. However, what I'm mainly concerned with is critical thought in relation to current events. I remember, in high school, having a metric ton of teachers who crammed current events down our throats, but they never really gave us the tools to work with the newspaper, so to speak. To background this, I believe that most news sources are somewhat... alarmist, and understandably so. I mean, they have to sell newspapers, or gain viewers, or what have you, and it's a lot easier to do that if people think the news holds some privvy information that I can arm myself with when the world collapses. If you want evidence of this, look to the H1N1 outbreak... as far as the news was concerned, I was to be stocking up on canned food and encasing myself in a bubble... and it worked! I was glued to news sites for a while, until I just shut down to the whole idea, and realized that the sky was not, in fact, falling. However, as I was saying, I had a ton of teachers who would throw newspaper headlines in my face daily, but never really said that the news could concievably have an agenda of its own, just like anything else, and that nothing is truly impartial. Hell, even statistics, which are considered to be the world's impartial information safe-haven, require interpretation and representation to hold any meaning, and that representation and interpretation could hold a significant slant or bias. To get to the core of my philosophy here, students need to be shown the news, and taught how to dissect it. I, and the people in my classes, were taught to accept, well, everything at face value. I can remember only one teacher, our media studies teacher, teaching us about critically consuming media. The funny thing is that media studies is considered such a bird of a course, but it had one of the more lasting impacts on me. In fact, I spent a period of time resenting that course because I could no longer enjoy family guy, as I was aware of the parts of my like, lizard brain that it played off of. "Be aware of the high volume of 'shocks' and 'stunts' designed to re-grab your short attention span." I dunno. I think this sort of concept should spread throughout the whole curriculum. I mean, it's a biiiit tougher to incorporate it into English, depending on what you're reading, but Social Studies, my minor, is ripe for this sort of material.
That's my speech this time. Has anyone seen a performance so cheap as the autotuned routine that the Black Eyed Peas put together for the superbowl half-time show? Also, for a superbowl meal, my sister put together grilled cheese burgers... it's a burger sandwiched between, get this, two grilled cheese sandwiches. Also, there was ham and a fried egg on it. As a joke, I decided to put literally every condiment they had on top. Let the good times roll.
I had planned on talking about this in my last post, the idea of teaching kids critical thought, but I felt like I was running a little long with that last post.
At any rate, the term "Critical thought" gets chucked around so much that it has basically lost all meaning, so I'm gonna kind of lay out the context in which I'm talking about this concept. Obviously, there is the general idea that you shouldn't accept information at face value, without being critical of it, or questioning its source, validity, plausibility, feasability, and basically ever "ility" there is to tack on to this sentence. However, what I'm mainly concerned with is critical thought in relation to current events. I remember, in high school, having a metric ton of teachers who crammed current events down our throats, but they never really gave us the tools to work with the newspaper, so to speak. To background this, I believe that most news sources are somewhat... alarmist, and understandably so. I mean, they have to sell newspapers, or gain viewers, or what have you, and it's a lot easier to do that if people think the news holds some privvy information that I can arm myself with when the world collapses. If you want evidence of this, look to the H1N1 outbreak... as far as the news was concerned, I was to be stocking up on canned food and encasing myself in a bubble... and it worked! I was glued to news sites for a while, until I just shut down to the whole idea, and realized that the sky was not, in fact, falling. However, as I was saying, I had a ton of teachers who would throw newspaper headlines in my face daily, but never really said that the news could concievably have an agenda of its own, just like anything else, and that nothing is truly impartial. Hell, even statistics, which are considered to be the world's impartial information safe-haven, require interpretation and representation to hold any meaning, and that representation and interpretation could hold a significant slant or bias. To get to the core of my philosophy here, students need to be shown the news, and taught how to dissect it. I, and the people in my classes, were taught to accept, well, everything at face value. I can remember only one teacher, our media studies teacher, teaching us about critically consuming media. The funny thing is that media studies is considered such a bird of a course, but it had one of the more lasting impacts on me. In fact, I spent a period of time resenting that course because I could no longer enjoy family guy, as I was aware of the parts of my like, lizard brain that it played off of. "Be aware of the high volume of 'shocks' and 'stunts' designed to re-grab your short attention span." I dunno. I think this sort of concept should spread throughout the whole curriculum. I mean, it's a biiiit tougher to incorporate it into English, depending on what you're reading, but Social Studies, my minor, is ripe for this sort of material.
That's my speech this time. Has anyone seen a performance so cheap as the autotuned routine that the Black Eyed Peas put together for the superbowl half-time show? Also, for a superbowl meal, my sister put together grilled cheese burgers... it's a burger sandwiched between, get this, two grilled cheese sandwiches. Also, there was ham and a fried egg on it. As a joke, I decided to put literally every condiment they had on top. Let the good times roll.
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