politics and lit again

[Will Layman]

As a high school teacher who's here on the list, let me add a few notes:

Despite the continual feeling among older people that the younger  
generation is going to hell (see, natch, Elvis/The Twist from the  
50s, rock 'n' roll generally from the 60s, etc, right up to hip-hop  
in the 90s and onward), kids today are pretty much the same as they  
ever were.  They still mostly don't like to do homework, and they  
still get plenty of it.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that kids get MORE homework these days, and  
that the general pressure to perform, to get into college, and all  
that is ramped up to a fever pitch.  MORE kids take calculus in high  
school now than before, and MORE kids take the AP English exam --  
which requires them to read lots of great books and write lots of,  
um, essays.

There probably are more goofy-sounding or groovy assignments -- like  
casting a play with celebrities -- but I'm not sure that it's a bad  
assignment (particularly for a 7th grade class) if it gets a  
discussion of the work going.  You hope that the teacher assigns some  
more traditional work too, but non-traditional education is generally  
a good thing -- even when it makes for an easy target in isolation.

 From a Pynchonian POV, you can certainly see how an education that  
considers movies and popular culture as well as the stone cold  
classics is important.  Besides, I'd argue that it's the analytic  
skills that matter more than the substance anyway.

Go kids!  Go teachers!  Go rock 'n' roll!

-- Will

On Sep 30, 2006, at 2:43 PM, Ya Sam wrote:

>
>
>
>> create a collage using Victoria's Secret catalog photos.
>>
>
> Sorry, have not been keeping up with the secondary/high school  
> education these days. Do they still write, hmm, essays?
>
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