What is it about the liberal education monolith that so despises our cultural heritage? The bastardization of our history, the assault on values, the trivialization of profound truths that have defined western civilization for 500 years — there is a price to be paid in developing incomplete citizens who ignorant of the arts and unaware of the giants on whose shoulders they are supposed to stand.
Now it is literature under assault, as the Telegraph explains:
American literature classics are to be replaced by insulation manuals and plant inventories in US classrooms by 2014.
A new school curriculum which will affect 46 out of 50 states will make it compulsory for at least 70 per cent of books studied to be non-fiction, in an effort to ready pupils for the workplace.
Books such as JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird will be replaced by “informational texts” approved by the Common Core State Standards.
Suggested non-fiction texts include Recommended Levels of Insulation by the the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Invasive Plant Inventory, by California’s Invasive Plant Council.
The new educational standards have the backing of the influential National Governors’ Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, and are being part-funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Jamie Highfill, a teacher at Woodland Junior High School in Arkansas, told the Times that the directive was bad for a well-rounded education.
“I’m afraid we are taking out all imaginative reading and creativity in our English classes.
“In the end, education has to be about more than simply ensuring that kids can get a job. Isn’t it supposed to be about making well-rounded citizens?”
Supporters of the directive argue that it will help pupils to develop the ability to write concisely and factually, which will be more useful in the workplace than a knowledge of Shakespeare.
Just how is it going to help students to develop an ability to write if they have never read the achingly beautiful prose of Melville, the spare but rich dialogue of Hemmingway, the storytelling of Hawthorne? It is impossible to learn how to write well unless you can recognize what is good writing and what is schlock. I guarantee you’re not going to be able to discern what is good art by reading an EPA manual.
Beyond writing skill, there are the timeless ideas and themes in western literature that form the backbone of our civilization. Cultural relativity aside, there is a patrimony to be handed down from generation to generation that defines who we are and where we’ve been, and points the way to where we should be going. You are not going to discover this patrimony in government publications, but in the tangle of the minds of novelists who bring to life with words a time, a place, a circumstance that teaches us more than how to be a good writer or get a job in some government office someday.
As for literature, we could probably survive as a culture without high school students being exposed to either Catcher in the Rye or To Kill a Mockingbird. Salinger’s classic is horribly dated, although it still inspires a lot of rebellious teenagers to view the world through the eyes of Holden Caulfield. Harper Lee’s searing view of race relations in pre-civil rights America educates kids about that era far better than any reading of history, but many references are also badly out of date for contemporary readers. As examples of a certain kind of storytelling, they are valuable. But nixing them from the curriculum is not the real issue.
It will always be the case that there will be children who will read these treasures on their own, outside of class. More power to them. And I imagine many home-schooled children and students at parochial schools will still immerse themselves in great literature, asking the same questions and seeking the same answers that students have sought for hundreds of years.
But what does it say to students when public schools downgrade the importance of being exposed to the classics? More prosaically, what does it say about the creators of this new curricula who think it’s alright to abandon our most precious heritage in favor of teaching our kids to be drones — uninspired automatons who are churned out of educational factories equipped with the bare minimum to survive?
If you don’t challenge students to better themselves by acquiring knowledge for the sheer joy of learning, teachers, administration, and those governing bodies responsible for educating the young will be rightly seen as abject failures. Removing most good literature from the classroom cuts off a vital link to the past, and it should be fought by those parents and teachers who think kids should graduate as whole people and not simply potential cogs in in a planned economy.
Interesting…Fellow elementary teachers and I noticed the Common Core Writing standards for our grades make no mention of creativity in writing, either.
Creativity is counter-revolutionary and elitist, comrade! Some people can figure out how to do innovative things and do better than other folk, so no one can be allowed to be creative!
That is the real reason anonymous, you nailed it … creativity doesn’t serve the revolution; just ask Stalin. Children have to be “educated” to serve those authoritarian government dictators don’t ‘cha know. This substitution of classic works of literature with government manuals must have the CPUSA throwing parties on every street corner.
This is pure mockery of the U.S.A. and it’s a part of an agenda that the current administration is ramming down our throats.
And it will eliminate the “hero” – those who stand for the downtrodded, who take the impossible case against public opinion because it is the right thing to do.
That is what they want to eliminate.
NOT only is creativity shunned, but indoctrinating forces at U.S. academia – and the west in general – are akin to mental boot camps. Parents have no idea what is in store for their kiddies.
Here is just a sampling of the mental hijacking – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/08/21/the-paradox-pitfalls-of-liberal-democracies-in-a-time-of-immoral-relativism-the-havoc-wrought-by-leftist-academia-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/…and this is just the tip!
Common core is another fetid Obama program.
Since Barry can’t write ( what has he ever written, except paens to himself ?)
He figures nobody else should write either. ( excepting paens to himself)
Knowledge is an impediment for the progressives.
Blind obedience will do.
Why don’t they make ‘em read the healthcare reform bill? We’re supposed to find out what’s in it now that it’s passed, you know.
Good one, anonymous!
who passed obamacare were too busy reading mein kampf and das kapital
Common Core is a ruse to push American K-12 classrooms and college as well away from the transmission of knowledge since that fosters the abstract, independent mind and inherently leads to unequal abilities. Common Core as it is actually designed to be implemented, which is only nominally related to the Standards themselves, is mostly about social interaction and engagement and equity of credentials.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/if-standardsoutcomesobjectives-what-is-the-real-common-core/ is a good introduction. College and Career Ready, the supposed goal of CCSSI, is actually defined in collateral documents unlikely to be read as mandating an Altruistic Mindset that puts the Common Good first and seeks daily evidence in the classroom of such a “Put Others First” Commitment.
As scheming Ed Prof, John Goodlad, said to a group of true believers about a year ago, if people understand [Obama's] education agenda they would be more upset than with Obamacare.
Public outrage at replacing Great Lit with Nonfiction propaganda is a start. But Changing Minds and Hearts at a Deep Level is meant to be life-altering at an unconscious level that permanently affects daily living. Education really is where the True Transformation is to emanate from.
“As scheming Ed Prof, John Goodlad, said to a group of true believers about a year ago, if people…”
Source? Because I can’t find that.
E plebnista.
Hopefully, we won’t get to the place where some of our descendants have to say that.
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Common Core is Bill Ayers’ Weather Underground dream of re-education camps legitimized.
Mary Grabar, a Pajamas contributor, has a great report on Ayers and the Common Core at Accuracy in Media. Sorry if it isn’t appropriate to offer a link here, but it’s a really interesting read: http://www.aim.org/special-report/terrorist-professor-bill-ayers-and-obamas-federal-school-curriculum/
Heil Ayers!
I’m sure he’ll appreciate that (it’s his secret fantasy).
As an English teacher myself, this is absolutely repugnant to me. I just finished teaching MacBeth. It is a masterpiece; it is also fiction! Shakespeare understood that human nature does not change. How, pray tell, can our students understand that for themselves if they do not read the Bard and discuss the treachery of MacBeth, the mad ambition of Lady MacBeth, the horrific murder of Duncan and the ultimate justice meted out by the Universe through the bereaved father and husband, MacDuff? I got into teaching literature in order to share my love of literature with young people. I do not see myself continuing in this profession that I love if I have to teach filling out resumes. God help us.
No, Jenny. You are no longer part of the Minitrue program. From now on, IGNORANCE IS MACBETH.
Not to worry, though. I hear that Room 101 has been refurbished and rebuilt in the last few decades, so plenty of good reading is ahead for you.
X Contra, could it be? Indioviejo.
Jenny-the last thing someone engaged in Social Engineering to try to change human nature wants is to have the English teacher pointing out how the basic human motivations and foibles have endured over the centuries.
Accurate history is the same problem. So we get the bad history which is what I am seeing in the “Facing History” curriculum or Cultural Anthropology hiding under the name History.
It is actually nonrational, habituated responses from emotion that is desired. Paul Ehrlich refers to what is sought as Newmindedness. I call it the rejection of the Axemaker Mind after reading James Burke’s book The Axemaker’s Gift on why the logical, abstract mind is deemed to be such a threat.
You keep teaching great lit and I will keep trying to get the word out on what is really going on. By the way the teacher evals getting so much attention are designed to be mechanisms of compulsion to prevent teachers like you from closing the door and teaching the academic content. The Rand Corporation did a federally funded Change Agent Study from 1973 to 1978 to figure out why the original changes in the 60s that were part of ESEA did not get implemented as desired. The Study showed the problem was local–the schools and classrooms. So now what is to constitute Effective Teaching has been redefined based on the Outcomes Based Education Handbook from the late 80s (Charlotte Danielson wrote it). The nature of the Educational Leadership degree was also redone to make it about a willingness to implement John Dewey’s Social Reconstruction theory.
If principals want promotions they must go along. This is also the real reason tenure has been weakened.
Nothing this time is supposed to interfere with full implementation. Except I realized the deceit several years ago and managed to document it all before an erupting controversy sent the materials into the abyss. Or Cloud to be more precise as that is where the controversial aspects will hide. That’s a big part of what North Carolina is piloting with its part of the Race to the Top grant.
In high school, I had the good fortune to encounter an English teacher who hammered me into a reasonable imitation of a literate person. I will feel a great deal of empathy for teachers forced to teach this new curriculum – and even more for their students! Insulation standards? I felt ill-used while being forced through an entire year of reading and analyzing the Book of Job (private school). The ACLU should get involved to prevent this cruel and unusual punishment.
Having stated the above – I do see a need for these courses in our educational establishment, just not as a replacement for “traditional” English classes. Despite my excellent education, it took me several years to learn the type of communication that is required in the business and technical world.
As a High School English teacher there are many opportunities to introduce age appropriate literature by authors who rebuke Communism, totalitarianism and the loss of the individual: Holocaust literature (many great authors in “Art out of Ashes”) Anna Anakhmatova,annotated versions or short storys by Tolstoy,Kafka,poems by Wislawa Szymborska and Gombrowicz and of course small doses of Kundera (Kundera should be mandatory in college but most won’t be ready in high school for him). The Eastern Europeans who suffered the loss of freedom under the Communist regimes have obviously a first hand accountof the emotional devastation that this caused. It was always the teachers these regimes feared most and with good reason-we have records of their failures in history to use against them-
The writings of such people as Armando Valladares and Eugenia Semyonovna Ginsberg could be studied in high school if the goal is to repudiate Communism. Valladares was a Cuban, Ginsberg is a Russian. Both were Communist supporters who were lied about and falsely imprisoned, and terribly abused.There are LOTS of first hand accounts in books of the evils of Communism available online. Such studies ought to be mandatory in ALL public junior high/middle and high schools to teach our children and youth the TRUTH about the evils of communism,and socialism, too. The problem is that somewhere in the last 4 decades or so, such anti-Communism teaching has disappeared with the rising tide of Leftism in the schools.
The end result can only be an increase in semiliteracy, which is already rampant. What kid, or adult for that matter, wants to read dry government directives? Having recently completed law school – not Harvard or Yale, but law school nonetheless – I was appalled at the incoherence of many of my peers’ writing. This will only make things worse. Abstract thought will be exclusive to professional elites, which makes the masses (including not so elite professionals) much easier to control.
“Beyond writing skill, there are the timeless ideas and themes in western literature that form the backbone of our civilization. Cultural relativity aside, there is a patrimony to be handed down from generation to generation that defines who we are, where we’ve been, and points the way to where we should be going. You are not going to discover this patrimony in government publications,”
It’s almost as if there is a desire by some to destroy Western Civilization.
Post-modern progressive dogma sees Western civilization as materialistic, aggressive, bigoted, brutal, and a despoiler of Holy Mother Gaia.
In comparison, it views Eastern cultures as mystical, spiritual, enlightened, and “living gently on the land’, and as such morally and ethically superior to the West.
Also, Eastern cultures tend to be ruled by small cliques’ of “elites”, who have absolute power over everyone else. Said power delivered from the business end of guns.
(Progressives do not “hate” guns; they just hate guns that are not controlled by people who they control. Distinct, but often overlooked, difference.)
Post-modernists believe Western civilization is a “failed paradigm”- because they aren’t in charge, making decisions based on their “feelings”, and not being allowed to punish anyone who dares to disagree with them. They are convinced they can create a Utopia- with themselves as its eternal rulers- if everyone else will just stop being so damned rational.
This is why they can look at a Third World pesthole, and have happy dreams of all of us living that way. With them, of course, living in castles and lording it over everyone else.
There’s an important difference between not knowing how to reason, and simply refusing to learn to do so. To paraphrase Lord Peter Wimsey, it’s the same as the difference between the artist who can’t draw, the one who can draw but won’t, and the fellow who can’t draw at all, but insists that his lack of talent is the very thing which make his art “beautiful” and “true”.
(The original quote can be found in The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club- another book I am quite sure is not in the curriculum today.)
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Which tells me that they know nothing of Eastern art either. For the heroes of Eastern art more resemble Cincinatus than Julius Caesar; they are the wise warrior who wins the battle and liberates the people, and then retires or rules them justly, without lording it over them. What they are idolizing is not the Orient, but a caricature thereof.
I have to disagree about To Kill A Mockingbird. The book is about far more than race relations. It is about small town life, how kids play and learn, the importance of fathers, and about how character is recognized. The book offers examples of real empathy, not the phoney feel-good stuff advertised as empathy today.
I thank god my son attends a small, independent school in Boulder, CO, Tara Performing Arts High School, whose entire curriculum is based on everything this new curriculum is determined to destroy. The students are immersed in the history, art, literaure, drama, and music of Western Civilization. They learn it, they live it, they sing it, they perform it, they travel to see it. The final results are amazing, educated, mature, insightful, thoughtful human beings.
I fear the destruction the regulators might achieve on schools like this.
MR-it is the accreditation agencies who go after the private, independent schools. Given the fact that Colorado is always cutting edge in pushing education reform (it is partly the McREL ed lab in Aurora but also the Goodlad National Network for Educational Renewal alliance among the state universities), the accreditors will be coming after you.
I actually have a PowerPoint from the Colorado Dept of Ed on how to use accreditation to force this on all schools. Bela Banathy’s Achieving Excellence Template was first piloted in Colorado starting about 1991.
As you probably know, William Spady and Spence Rogers created the Transformational Outcomes Based Education template and they have both always operated their teacher training programs from Colorado. Although Spady moved to Australia and South Africa for extended periods after Columbine produced a justified uproar over Transformational OBE. My research shows it merely became a reason for new names, not a real change in practices pushed.
Potwntially Robin, we couldl trace the arizona and aurora shooter, and the new ct shooters to OBE and the works of current prog anti american self hate radical llpedagogy and psychological teaching manipulation. Jared loughner attended an ayers small school… Combined with techno addiction,social isolation, parental absence,and conditioning through tech games violence etc, and maybe some
aDD meds anti depressants, manipulative psychiatry, mood levelers and psychotropics. One cannot help but connect the dots. There was no such thing before columbine in 1999, UNESCO plans well under way by then. What would possibly posess a young man to committ such heinious acts so premeditated??? these shootings help advance the UN goals of gun control already present in the EU and scandinavia… They are about 10 years ahead of us with the transformational agenda… So, thisis a theory…a hegel?
Justified by “ends justifying the means”.
Please excuse what might seem like a silly question but it’s been a long time since I’ve thought about what is being taught nowadays. What is being taught now in classes like American History and Civics courses? When I was in school back in the 50s and 60s we spent a lot of time on both of these in both Junior High and High School. Are these even required courses now? I really would like to hear from some of the teachers that post on here as to what has happened with them. Most of what I read lately is that just about every type of course is being turned into a social studies course.
Read A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, Earth in the Balance by Al Gore, The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich, and pretty much anything by Noam Chomsky.
The basic “modern” curricula in those areas pretty much all stems from the same theories as those writers advocate.
A suggestion; don’t read them after dinner, unless you have an exceptionally strong stomach. And keep in mind that most school-age children being taught this worldview have no prior standard to compare it to.
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perry-most of what is pushed via Civics as in the Civic Mission of the Schools reports that Sandra Day O’Connor is involved with actually push a Common Good view of Civics that is alien to the structure of the US Constitution. I am actually a lawyer and am really hoping Sandra does not read those reports. So be careful about saying more Civics please.
The new Common Core Social Studies Framework called C3 that slipped through the Tuesday before Thanksgiving was based on erroneous views of the Constitution coupled with a Soviet inspired view of people as embedded in larger social systems that is called Bronfenbrenner Ecological Systems Theory. It is a metaphor for a view that who people are is a product of their social interactions and their environment and is based on Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s druthers on a theory to produce the perfect Soviet Man. Not good.
I have also been looking into the “Facing History” curriculum and its is bad history about what caused the Holocaust and the Eugenics Movement. But the false causes nurture sense of grievances and create an urge to “do something.” It is far more of what are now called Positive Behavior Support curriculum that put an emphasis on social and emotional learning. But like most things having to do with the Common Core, you have to dig to realize what you are looking at.
Part of the Common Core implementation is to emphasize the cultures and experiences of each student so that the “curriculum” will have a personal and emotional connection. Then all students can succeed because so much of what is asked for can be related to through feelings. Plus the 1:1 computer use that is the desired component makes this largely a visual curriculum similar to a movie or a video game for most students. Unless you read phonetically and fluently what print is encountered is still seen as an image, not as a symbol for sound. That means a different part of brain is processing.
This is horrifying:
“Plus the 1:1 computer use that is the desired component makes this largely a visual curriculum similar to a movie or a video game for most students. Unless you read phonetically and fluently what print is encountered is still seen as an image, not as a symbol for sound. That means a different part of brain is processing.”
I say good. Let the little tykes, if they actually read the assigned books, will learn exactly how intrusive the government weenies really are. It might turn the kids into conservatives. Most kids don’t always come away with the message the propagandists think they will come away with.
Naw – it turns them into good little brown shirts. I’ve already ran into young people today who thoroughly believe that if you don’t have anything to hide then any government intrusion won’t hurt you.
Which, of course, is true for certain values of “nothing to hide.” The real problem from government intrusion arises from the fact that it runs afoul of modesty and enables the government to define dissent as a crime. Someone who has no modesty and wholeheartedly embraces the party line indeed has nothing to fear from an intrusive government, for such a government will praise him as a model citizen. He would, in turn, be a most loathsome and dangerous neighbor.
Good Lord. You mean to say you find it bad if 70% of books at school are non-fiction? I’d argue that’s been a pretty standard percentage for decades. But by all means, fight for your kids’ right to learn about the world via the “Tek War” series.
It wouldn’t be a problem if the “non-fiction” was actual history based on actual research. Since it’s more likely to be either political polemic based on an authoritarian worldview, or else irrelevant material which is intended to inculcate obedience and discourage curiosity (EPA manuals are excellent for that), the “non-fiction” is not especially useful.
Or in other words, if Howard Zinn and Company are the ideal, rather than James Burke, Arnold Toynbee, or even Jack Coggins, then yes, 70% “non-fiction” is a problem. A K-12 student could learn more, and more accurate, history from a novel by John Jakes, C.S. Forester, Patrick O’Brian, or Eric Flint than they could from the authors favored by modern progressive “educators”.
(I might add that Flint largely writes “alternate history”- type SF, which requires a very good knowledge of the real thing to make the story work.)
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They are talking about American Literature Classics, not textbooks in general. Yes, it certainly is a problem, particularly when History is no longer emphasized either.
In England Shakespeare is gone. Kipling is gone. They have also bastardized every bit of history of their nearly 2,000 year history. Today, adults, after two 2 generations of this “education” don’t know who Churchill is, nor of Nelson and Trafalgar. They just know they have a Trafalgar Square.
arnold toynbee said jewish culture and tradition were extinct, and that the jews were nothing but “living fossils”
Absolutely no punning intended here, but some of us of a certain age will remember that the mark of a well rounded individual was to have had a “Liberal Arts” education or, a “Liberal Education”.
There was a time, long ago, when if one wanted to go into a technical field, one did that after having completed the Liberal Arts, or at least taken the courses simultaneously.
I know, I know, that’s so very, very, long, long gone…..but I wanted to mention it anyway. Maybe I should “Slow Down”?
Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times” classic movie comes to mind.
cf:
“Modern Times Synopsis
CHARLIE is a factory worker in this hectic age – a minor cog in the grinding wheels of industry. His job -mechanically tightening bolts on a moving belt. The monotony of the work drives him beserk. Taken to hospital he soon recovers and is discharged, cautioned to avoid excitement.”
It’s the Behavioral Order Remediation Group…… No inspiration, no dreams, no life, only gray rainy days. “Resistance is futile.”
The four states that have not adopted the Common [Communist] Core State Standards (CCSS) are: Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia. Minnesota has only adopted the English language arts part of the standards. In Texas, the tea parties have been very active in promoting and electing conservatives, who oppose the CCSS and other progressive education initiatives, to the Texas State Board of Education. If you are conservative and care, you would do well to unelect your state’s CCSS supporters.
You are correct that Texas did not adopt CCSSI but because the actual implementation looks more like the old Outcomes Based Education template from the 90s and Texas went to OBE in the late 80s, what is going on in classrooms there aligns with what is happening in the states that adopted the Common Core.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/the-intentional-insurrection-in-texas-supers-override-governor-legislature-and-taxpayers/ is the story I did months ago on how the STAAR assessment controls. And a group of school district supers in alliance with the accreditors, SACS, are actually pushing the most aggressive form of OBE, Transformational.
There’s also a subsequent post quoting the document the school supers signed recognizing that tablets and laptops and 1:1 technology use is actually all about the potential of technology “to capture hearts and minds” and thus further John Dewey’s democratic schooling vision.
The Dana Center at UT-Austin does a great deal of the professional development course prep for the Common Core, especially math.
How much easier to distort history when no one is encouraged to read books set in earlier times.
If anyone has a few bucks to donate to a worthy/tax deductible cause Archive.org http://archive.org/ the digital library that makes public domain texts, audio books and so much more freely available, is holding a fundraiser this month. Some generous soul is matching three-to-one all donations. I urge all who can to help this valuable online resource, or at least help spread word about the fundraiser. I make use of the historical texts quite often for research, and am always downloading audio books to listen to while working around the house. I would much rather listen to a classic novel than watch anything on TV. Regardless of what our shortsighted schools choose to do, we should help keep the classics freely available online.
Here is a little more on the Archive.org fundraiser if anyone is interested.
From their site:
https://archive.org/donate/?n=1
3-for-1 Match for All Donations!
A generous supporter has offered to match every dollar we raise 3-to-1 through December 31st. We are trying to raise $150,000 in donations by the end of the year – with the match, that will give us $600,000, enough to buy 4 more petabytes of storage.
Help us keep the library free for millions of people by making a tax-deductible donation today.
I am sure that highschool students will be enthralled with insulation primers. What we definitely need are a few million trained insulation experts with no work except government jobs. Typical government interference as in Russian style organization. Your elite sipping fine wine.
1. Optimistic Take: C S Lewis once recommended that the way to get school kids to read poetry, was to put a strict ban on it, but make sure it was poorly enforced. Given the known ineptitude of our schools, the one thing we can be sure of is that the possession of a H S diploma will be a guarantee that a person cannot read government publications.
3. Pessimistic Take: OK, Ray was right. Which book will you commit to memory? Dibs on the Alice’s.
Hey, we elected the Communist Party of America to run our affairs. What did we expect from them, a free country or something? Sheesh. We are already merely servants of the State but I will assure everyone, just like I tried to assure everyone that Romney was running against a Communist Politburo, that the worst is yet to come. Hold on to your wallets, this term they will work on eliminating what is left of private property rights. Next term will be the installation of selective access to Government. Finally, there will be a great purge of of those of us who still refuse to join the Party. And then, God willing, the whole house of cards will come crashing down on them and what is left of the inalienable rights crowd will have to start the rebuilding program. I hope that by then enough of us will still understand the meaning of individual liberty to give the only path to universal opportunity the same chance that our founders tried to give us.
Schools now train kids to be tolerant of boredom and heartless. Schools train kids to “behave” using shallow praise, candy and social or play activities as rewards. “A hard heart is no recompense for a soft mind”- C. S. Lewis
Also look into this question: Why is the DOJ (since the Obamster regimé) took over enforcing PBIS (Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports) which came out of the OSEP (Office of Special Education Programs) in order to make certain that non-caucasian children are not punished unfairly more than other caucasians?
Only a small amount of kids will be able to function under the Common Core system and fulfill it’s requirements, leaving many to falter and thereby be placed in Special Education or phony “Advanced” classes.
Fiction teaches kids logic, while non-fiction teaches them persuasion. Both are essential elements of an education, and to ignore one leaves a student who cannot draw conclusions from facts and articulate those conclusions. It is, in a sense, Orwellian Newspeak, whose primary purpose was not Political Correctness, but rather to render opinions contrary to the Party line impossible to articulate coherently. This is not a teaching style, but rather a malicious act intended to make students easier to deceive.
It is no different than math. A student who cannot pass algebra has no business receiving a high school diploma, because algebra is absolutely essential to functioning in society. Why? Because algebra and higher mathematics teach you how to figure out you’re being lied to. Without, at the bare minimum, a working knowledge of algebra, it is impossible to project data or understand why it is impossible to power the country using solar panels. Calculus would be of enormous help, but at least algebra allows for rudimentary approximations. Similarly, not understanding compound interest or the fact that percentages are multiplied rather than added sets them up for slavery. Why a few weeks ago, Occupy Wall Street was demanding to know how Mitt Romney could accumulate an IRA of $87 million in fewer than 14,500 years, as though money just sits in an IRA rather than accumulating returns!
BTW, it’s getting to the point where comic books are superior learning aids than what the schools want kids to read. Make sure the content is appropriate, to be sure, but otherwise do not forbid your kids from reading comics; in fact, encourage them.
“The Grapes of Wrath.”
That was a book about the Great Depression in the US, particularly the plight of farmers also suffering from the Dust Bowl. It painted a pretty bleak picture. So during WWII, the Nazis had copies distributed in Germany so people could see how terrible things were in the US as a propaganda measure.
It failed. Why? Because the Germans saw that even as bad as things were in the book, Americans still had cars and could move around their country freely without papers or seeking permission. They could even choose where they worked!
So, modern day Socialists have learned to take away such books lest people get funny ideas that there might be a better life possible or worse, that things were once much better than under the current leadership. Fairy Tales, superheroes and high science fiction are all OK: those are so fantastic that most people won’t really believe in those worlds and those who do, well, they’ll be in asylums, real or of their own making in their basements and closets and so are no threat at all.
Citizens of the Soviet Union didn’t get to see Grapes of Wrath until the early 1950s when Stalin finally permitted it to be seen. It had only a brief stay in Soviet theaters. To the great embarassment of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, people watching the film did not take the intended message from it. Instead of using the film as a basis for denouncing the American system for its cruel, heartless capitalism, Soviet citizens were astonished to see that even an obviously poor family like the Joads had their own house and car. Many talked openly about emigrating to America so that they could enjoy such things! Obviously, this could not be tolerated by the regime so they removed the film from theaters….
The claim is that this will teach kids “comprehension.” What it will actually teach kids is to hate, hate, hate reading so that they will grow up incurious and unlikely to seek knowledge and understanding for themselves. It will also make sure that they never develop any rudimentary reasoning skills at all, even less than today’s liberals have.
Fight for homeschooling while we fight to get rid of this travesty.
Reasons not to encourage students to read the classics. Horror of horrors they may discover:
Imagination takes us where our feet can never tread.
People actually endured greater hardship than is known in our country today.
Courage and sacrifice made the ordinary man a hero.
Against all the odds a man born with nothing could succeed with little more than determination.
Good and evil are real.
Dragons can be slain.
Family matters.
Freedom matters.
Faith matters.
Some living writers are OK as well if one would give them a chance. Oh, maybe me, for example.
A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:
http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1
And here are some reviews and comments on said book:
http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/04/dagness-at-noon.html
The real question is whether these links will work. I’m not a computer guy,
I agree that it will impoverish the lives of the following generations if they are deprived of reading the classics in favor of “job related” “non-fiction”. If they don’t get them in school, they most likely never WILL, school is what hooked ME on good literature. Mom and Dad read a lot, but not classical literature. Mom read modern novels, Dad read mostly history and engineering books. It was I who brought Shakespeare and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “Wuthering Heights” and “The Scarlet Letter” home as assigned reading, or books recommended by teachers I respected.
I put non-fiction in parentheses above because to me any publication by any pressure group is apt to have some fictitious,unproven,non-scientific gobbledygook propaganda in it masquerading as “fact”. I am appalled that the Gates Foundation is funding it,their pockets are VERY VERY deep and getting deeper all the time. All the more reason to dump my PC and try something ELSE.
I would,however, hope that when Moby Dick IS studied nowadays, it is in some sort of annotated form, with charts and illustrations. I read a plain copy on the Kindle last year. I am a person of high intelligence and widely read, too, and yet there were SO many archaic terms for the parts of the ship and the tools of whaling and so on that I could actually not understand parts of the book. A dictionary of the archaic terms and perhaps a complete diagram of a whaling ship with its parts labeled would have been tremendously helpful.
”What is it about the liberal education monolith that so despises our cultural heritage?”
Whoa whoa there partner, I’m a liberal myself (and an avid reader) and I think that this new curriculum is disgusting too. Replacing classic literature with manuals that will not only bore students and discourage them from reading but won’t give them any exposure to creativity, storytelling and so on is awful. I mean, what’s even the point of getting kids to read if they /just/ have to read, and don’t have to read between the lines or anything? That might make good workers, but it won’t make good citizens.
Ironic that they’re removing classical literature- think they’re getting rid of Fahrenheit 451 from curriculum too?
There really isnt much more to be said, that PJ Media posters havent already in this thread.
Except maybe that MacBeth and Western Classics are racist, and therefore to be sh itcanned to the dustbin of history along with the old white male and Christianity, in the Brave New Thrid Communist World. No wonder the majority of White European Christians get it…
AMERICA NEARS EL TIPPING POINTO – Anne Coulter Dec. 5th
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2012-12-05.html
Time for White Europeans to organize and create alternative organizations outside what were once our institutions for the preservation of and promotion of our culture to individuals in our group and as lobbying the government for inclusion in the Multicultural institutions, we need White European Student Unions, White European Studies Departments, NAAWP, subgroups of whites within all organizations and fields.
The goal is to teach them not to think, and to accept uncritically what they are told by those in authority. And of course to limit “authority” to mean the state.
You want more non-fiction in the curriculum? Great. Have them read Orwell’s essay on Politics and the English Language; then turn them loose on the governmental garbage and let them critique it.
Look at the bright side. No student is every going to try to dodge a reading assignment on “Recommended Levels of Insulation” by watching the movie.
School bored me out of my mind. I’d read the chapter assigned, do zero homework, read library books in class, and ace the tests. (Drove the teachers batty, but the tests were written for the lowest denominator, and poorly written so if you knew the way the teacher thought you could pass the test without knowing anything about the subject.)
My father read some SF and took me with him to a used book store, and I was hooked for life. I learned more from Asimov than any text book.
Note: this was in the middle of that idiotic “Learning should not be entertaining” fad.
Eustace Scrubb should be delighted.
It is about time we introduced some practical curriculum to students. I taught in a school where one of the English teachers was attempting to teach Shakespeare to special ed students that would have difficulty using a telephone directory. We are wasting resources believing all students should go to college. The European model is more efficient.
This whole discussion strikes me as odd. I spent 37 years teaching English and all my liberal compatriots taught fiction, drama, and poetry 80% of the time. In fact, I sensed that a bit more challenging non-fiction such as Orwell Essays, Walden, Civil Disobedience etc was needed, not to mention more rigorous grammar and usage units with more writing and rigorous correcting of student writing.
A greater problem in this era is to get the average student to actually read the difficult works and not rely on Spark Notes and the like as an easier substitute. To READ the work, not pretend to read it or to write their own paper, not cut and paste it from the internet or mechanically follow some teacher’s spoon-fed formula. Nevertheless, I seriously doubt if Shakespeare, Steinbeck, and Harper Lee have been, or will be abandoned. The rigor with which they are taught in this age of internet access to everything and the shorter attention spans of the virtual age students undoubtedly ARE serious problems. A dumbing down to teaching too much adolescent lit and avoiding challenging texts of any sort is also a problem.
Anyway, I love the irony of the conservatives here bemoaning the lack of our touchy-feely teaching of English literature, where students learn empathy, to identify with characters different from themselves, talk about their feelings about the characters etc.
As a young teacher, I once told our department head who was trying to introduce a “criterion-referenced” curriculum that I had not become an English teacher to become a “word technologist.” I made my point, but in fact we all could have used a bit more organization and accountability in our curriculum, which did not have to do with an overlord plot to control society, but rather a bit more consistency and accountably regarding what any given student might experience as he/she went through four years of English course in our high school. At that time we were coming out of the phase where there had been tons of electives, and a lot of free-spirited (or teach what feels best) courses. And, of course, once I became the department head, I saw the consistency accountabilty needs even more clearly.
Bottom line: I don’t think this discussion is getting close to confronting what good English teaching is or is not, and there is no one simple answer, that’s for sure. The topic deserves a better response from all, beginning with me, but that’s all the time I have at the moment. I can respond more if anyone cares, or wants to fight.
So, the NEW MAN™ is to be the product of trade schools – what we used to call shop class – all neatly presented and prepared by Party authorized government “instructors”? Sounds like drone heaven. Hopefully I won’t live to see it.
Frankly, I wouldn’t even bet that current western schools provide many children with even a necessary minimum.
Otherwise, I recommend literature in the public domain. Bookmark pages like gutenberg.org .