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3/6/14 19:11Sometimes I have to read the reading comprehension packets that kids get assigned in school (I'm not talking about young adults -- I'm talking about middle elementary grades.)
I don't know if this is directly traceable back to Common Core or No Child Left Behind, and I don't know if this is typical just for certain kids in my area or if it's something that's happening more widely, but these reading comprehension packets consist of a bunch of very short (1.5 pages, largeish print) nonfiction articles and stories, followed by questions that very much resemble the things that standardised tests ask for. (Why did X happen? Give two details that support your conclusion.)
They are so bland. The prose is so bland, the information is so bland, the stories are so bland. Super-commercial series fiction, the kind filled with fairies and ponies, is less bland. Authentic literature has more in common with a boiled egg than with these stories, if the boiled egg has a little salt on it.
There are so many things I don't know about education and how to fix the problems with education but I do know that I am the person I am today because my elementary school teachers read "Charlotte's Web" and "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" and "A Wrinkle in Time" to the class. And because of the big boxes of Roald Dahl and Laura Ingalls Wilder and Beverly Cleary that I got via Sea Mail while I lived in France.
I do believe, very strongly, that even very easy reading materials can be interesting and stylish. (Hello Kevin Henkes! Hello Mo Willems!). And I believe, very strongly, that nobody gets to be a fast, fluent reader or a skilled writer without having read a lot of books because they were interesting and enjoyable.
If school systems in the US are throwing this kind of stuff at kids, and then acting surprised when they don't succeed at reading and writing, then we are in trouble.
I don't know if this is directly traceable back to Common Core or No Child Left Behind, and I don't know if this is typical just for certain kids in my area or if it's something that's happening more widely, but these reading comprehension packets consist of a bunch of very short (1.5 pages, largeish print) nonfiction articles and stories, followed by questions that very much resemble the things that standardised tests ask for. (Why did X happen? Give two details that support your conclusion.)
They are so bland. The prose is so bland, the information is so bland, the stories are so bland. Super-commercial series fiction, the kind filled with fairies and ponies, is less bland. Authentic literature has more in common with a boiled egg than with these stories, if the boiled egg has a little salt on it.
There are so many things I don't know about education and how to fix the problems with education but I do know that I am the person I am today because my elementary school teachers read "Charlotte's Web" and "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" and "A Wrinkle in Time" to the class. And because of the big boxes of Roald Dahl and Laura Ingalls Wilder and Beverly Cleary that I got via Sea Mail while I lived in France.
I do believe, very strongly, that even very easy reading materials can be interesting and stylish. (Hello Kevin Henkes! Hello Mo Willems!). And I believe, very strongly, that nobody gets to be a fast, fluent reader or a skilled writer without having read a lot of books because they were interesting and enjoyable.
If school systems in the US are throwing this kind of stuff at kids, and then acting surprised when they don't succeed at reading and writing, then we are in trouble.