politics and lit again

[Will Layman]

Agreed.

I reacted a little bit strongly to the "Kids these days!"  "Schools  
these days!" email because it's easy enough to cast a cynical eye on  
anything as complex as education.  Comparing today's schools to any  
version of "the good old days" is pretty much an exercise in  
nostalgia, I think, and the range of excellence in various of today's  
schools is vast.  What remains super true, of course, is that schools  
in wealthy areas are much better than those in low income areas.  I  
teach in a super-privileged independent school, so I'm certainly not  
boasting about or lamenting any any personal sacrifices on my part.

In my creative writing class we are working on some beginning  
exercises that prepare them to write poetry, including an assignment  
to write descriptive lists.  As the introduction to this exercise, I  
always read the class the description of all the layers of crap to be  
found on Slothrop's desk at ACHTUNG.  They love it.

-- Will

On Sep 30, 2006, at 6:51 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:


> Kids definitely get more homework these days, but a lot of it is  
> busy work: middle school kids have to keep a nightly reading log,  
> recording how many pages they've read, a list of 5 vocabulary words  
> with a "guess" at what the word means, its actual definition, and  
> use in a sentence; and keep a running list of page numbers that  
> relate to a chosen theme.  The kids are required to read 20 books  
> per year.  My son fell seriously behind because he was reading Tom  
> Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, which took him longer than the alotted  
> 2 weeks, so the teacher suggested he make it up by reading a bunch  
> of Goosebump books.  By the end of 8th grade, he seriously hated  
> reading.  The Middle School curriculum is so onerous, that all 3 of  
> my very bright kids nearly flunked (they've done very well in high  
> school).
>
> I sympathize with a lot of the reasons why the newer "goofy or  
> groovy" teaching methods : invented spelling vs. phonics, Chicago  
> Math (learning by doing rather than by rote), etc. were adopted.   
> But when taught by underpaid teachers who get in serious trouble if  
> they attempt to modify the curriculum or challenge the bureaucracy  
> in any way, the results are a mediocre education.
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
>> From: Will Layman <WillLayman at comcast.net>
>> Sent: Sep 30, 2006 5:00 PM
>> To: Ya Sam <takoitov at hotmail.com>
>> Cc: keithsz at mac.com, pynchon-l at waste.org
>> Subject: Re: politics and lit again
>>
>> 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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>>
>>
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