Salinger and Harper to be replaced by Invasive Plant Inventory in US school curriculum

Originally posted by Thorneblood
reply to post by tport17

 

Nor would i think it would be, but as we see throughout our society there are simply many, many lessons that we learn from life and even from school that when given as pure facts simply don't make an impact on us.

Charlotte's Web and how it deals with the cycle of life and death in nature is a great example.

I guess it's simply comes down to this for me.

Most people don't remember reading 4th Grade Science by McGraw-Hill and thinking it changed their life, yet how many young children can remember reading any of the great novels they were forced to read in class and thinking (Maybe just in that one moment) that they could be alot more then anything they had dreamed of?

Is it important for children to have information and use logic? Absolutely. But i have always believed that the thing that really makes America great is our often astounding ability to simply dream and weave a beautiful story. We are, after all, a nation of creators and inventors.

I couldn't agree with you more. I often wish that kids could have time to just read whatever they want for a while. My school had zero free reading time until this year. Now they have half an hour, but they have to be quizzed over the book when they finish. That just means that kids pick easy and short books that they can easily pass a quiz over. Where is the enjoyment for reading? I'd bet I am not the only teacher who feels this way.

When it comes to life lessons, or life and death in nature as you suggested, of course you can use fiction. Even teaching character traits like friendship and respect can be taught using good literature.

Yet, when it comes to certain topics, nonfiction is the best way to go. It doesn't mean you get rid of the other literature.

To speak of the original topic of the thread, I still feel nothing is really changing from how it has been in regards to informational text and literature. Teaching with nonfiction has always been there. It has just never been "required" to the extent it will be. Teachers will still teach great literature. Though, I will say I have noticed the idea of great literature has changed.

The idea of great literature changes as each generation grows into the next but the classics are still the classics for those who want to read. As for the rest, 70% non fictional material seems like a travesty for every student in 6th grade and below to me. Above that it should be up to the kid to read what he wants in his free time, and hopefully beyond what is required, but i really doubt that kind of attitude will develop when the child has primarily been exposed to "Informative Texts." It just sounds so....bland....for a child's education.

reply to post by Thorneblood


ok - lessons based on the invasive species directory - to make students think :


1 - what is an invasive species

2 - where did the invasive species come from

3 - how did they get here and why

4 - why do they spread

5 - how do we get rid of them

One of the many reasons to home school instead. Thank-you for this post, OP.

oddpenguin

reply to post by ignorant_ape


Nice.

Now do this one and tell me which a child will remember for the rest of their life...
The Call of the Wild

Hint: It's about invasive species too.

I don't know how much the classics influenced me during high school. Most of my influences came from my own exploration of arts and literature, not the books they have us read in school.

If anything, being assigned a book makes it less enjoyable to read, because it's not by choice that you are reading it. I didn't retain much from anything assigned to me in high school, except perhaps All Quiet on the Western Front and Catch 22, both of which are great reads.

As much as I hated reading the books they assigned me in high school, I think most people, myself included, come full circle and find literature enjoyable later in life.

This coming decade will likely mark a sharp spike in creativity from kids.

Curriculum like this, guards in school, TSA, etc. They are conditioning kids to not think, just work and be trained to an assembly line mentality.

Originally posted by Thorneblood
As i am not a teacher, obviously, i feel i should ask this directly of the two who seem to be in this discussion.

Do you believe that you could not effectively teach the children in your class a topic through fiction?

And for the record, I have nothing against Non-fictional literature in general, i can think of a few great books in the area that would be useful in a classroom setting, "An Introduction to the Natures and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" for social sciences, "The Articles of Confederation" or "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" for history.

Much of what I know about history has come from historical fiction. I just read a couple of Ken Follett's books that were amazing and I learned so much about WW1 and WW2 that I didn't know. So YES, you can definitely learn a lot from fiction.

My 8th grade son is reading To Kill a Mockingbird now. He's learning a lot about life in that era from reading it.

My point is that the common core is not going to do away with fiction.

Originally posted by Thorneblood
hmmm good point...

This should help explain to anyone who doesn't want to read (ironic huh!)

edit on 29-1-2013 by Thorneblood because: (no reason given)

Baaaaaaaahh. I can't finish this communist nonsense! Really. I couldn't finish it.

My son is home schooling, my youngest, and he wasn't really progressing with his apraxia and learning disablity, they had him not adapted but the lesser one, and never getting out of it. My father, an ex teacher, took over his schooling this year and he doesnt teach the school way. Mind he you, when he taught he was a teacher of the teachers and often organized their course material. He took the special needs kids and had 100% caught up always. He focuses on very good methods for learning math and reading every day for an hour. And other tailored to the student methods. He wasn't interested in reaching the percentage in the middle of the bell curve. My son is catching up enormously.

Anyway, whether parents home school or not, and even if they don't have money for special hooked on reading things, it might be very good to get collective groups and volunteer and learn something that can be impacted to students. Why not have a few "sitters" getting kids to do some reading, and then worksheets on comprehension, and learning to write essays on this? Why not add to it something rather fun, so its 1 hour 3 X a week of that, and 1- 2 hours of something they may like? Like music. Make some instruments, even electric guitars out of paper mache or burroughs, anything practically, left hand or right, and guitar lessons or anything cool, art. At least with teens the music lessons, like riffs, and/or tai chi, could be from dvd's, younger kids art. So you get both the learning and growing and the fun, which is also learning.

I would go one step further. Most of the philophers were taught in college, such as the stoics and seneca, and I'd include that too.

There are only so many choices if people don't like the corrupt leaders, or their plan to crash the economies.

1. You protest and never stop.

2. You write in and let them know how informed you are and that you know they are dark hats, wolves, illuminati, and the world you are only standing for or give permission for, abundance and freedom, clean energy and sovereignity of all. And that they are fired. All karma is there own. You will never vote for them and choose only real people.

And then opt out. Become the local governments, get community counsels. Provide the world you want, the education you need, or fill in the gaps. Put aquaponics in every home, property, and farm, and provide heritage food and sustainability for every single person even the disabled and elderly. Get together and create grass roots abundance, and economy they can never ever crash, by replacing their businesses with your small ones and only buy from each other. Enlist the aid of good doctors and dentists to participate for the people. Do the right thing.

But don't just take this up assault without doing something real and for the kids.

I like plan B by the way.

reply to post by Thorneblood


no - i am not jumping through hoops

i made the claim that : thinking can be taught from the ` directory of invasive species ` - and when challenged - demonstrated how

my work here is done

reply to post by Thorneblood


Why wouldn't they teach it in biology? We didn't read any great lit when I was in school.. I wish we had read salinger and more of the classics, but I had to seek that out on my own. 9 stories is one of the greatest collections I've ever read.

reply to post by Thorneblood


In fact, Thorneblood, the very quotes you use say directly and unequivocally that the ELA classrooms are going to remain dedicated to teaching literature.

Originally posted by Thorneblood
Do you believe that you could not effectively teach the children in your class a topic through fiction?

Ah, and there's the rub.

I'm not a teacher either, but the whole idea of teaching critical thinking is not to teach students a topic, but to teach students how to learn a topic.

Informational Texts of all stripes use a very different sub-language of English than Fiction. Go try to read some technical documents from a company you work for, or that someone you know works for. It's going to be all but incomprehensible, unless you know how to read it. Social Rhythms of Bipolar Disorder is a wall of bland, dry text to someone who has only learned how to critically examine A Tale Of Two Cities.

--------------------------------

I find it deeply amusing, though even more deeply alarming, to see people claiming that students are going to be stripped of their critical thinking skills in a way that very clearly lacks those very same skills. (And I don't mean to pick out Thorneblood for that zing. You're clearly thinking about this -- you're the best person I disagree with in this thread to engage! It's nice to see that in an OP. )

I think Most people here, and the author of the cited news article, needed a lot more instruction on reading informational texts!

I think people are over estimating children's ability to grasp critical thinking skills, most teenagers and adults rarely show that capability as people keep pointing out

As for the CODE, it seems less specific on the what and more centered on the why, which i would think people would find the most disconcerting considering that it is making a lot of promises based on things that even a teacher has said are already in use.

70% non-fictional material, according to the article, from K-12. Generations and generations of authors that many children will never learn about. Libraries are disappearing, KINDLE and AMAZON will sell em smut faster then you can blink (50 shades of gray has outsold everything except the bible), and the average parent would rather watch the Voice or the Real Housewives for hours on end then read a book themselves or a real one to their kids.

Now the government wants to cut even more culture from schools after all the decimating the early level art and music programs in their schools and the effective loss of P.E, while at the same time prescribing more and more prescription drugs to children, but hey maybe I am the one over-reacting.

Well, when you replace education with regulation across society, who needs or wants critical thinking ability among the population? That's a dangerous thing to authoritative government of all kinds. Far better to have books instructing the masses in what the proper opinions and ways of seeing the world must be. After all, Uncle Sugar is never wrong, eh? It'd be silly of us to question such wisdom.

Regardless of how you feel about the topic, we all know reading is fundamental...especially for kids.

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Enjoy

Well, from a person who LOVED Language Arts/reading classes, I have to say we need to protect these books.

But Scarlet Letter can just burn.

Classic American Lit or not, I hated that book with a fiery passion.

It's funny that the history books are considered "non-fiction", when most of them are just made up to push patriotism on the students.

I'm gonna home school my kids.

reply to post by Thorneblood


We can always hope people continue to self educate. God knows they need to. I'm in math classes to catch up what I never learned a couple decades ago (algebra.. ewww) and am shocked. They start at the bottom so it's all review stage right now but it's about things like basic-long division of whole numbers. Well....we aren't being taught division. They're teaching the proper use of a calculator and 'estimate solving'.

Kids these days are in trouble and don't even know enough to know they are. At least I read the many of Greats/Classics by seeking them out where it wasn't assigned way back when......and I learned things like math when calculators were considered outright cheating and something to get an F for being caught with.

This is why clerks just look stupid if the register isn't telling them precisely what change to give on the $1 amount.