How to Get Kids to Hate English
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/opinion/english-literature-study-decline.html
Pamela Paul notes:
So what do kids read instead? To even be considered, a work must first pass through the gantlet of book bans and the excising of those books containing passages that might be deemed antiquated or lie outside the median of student body experiences. Add to that the urge to squelch any content that might be deemed “triggering” or controversial, the current despair over smartphoned attention spans and the desire to “reach students where they are.”…
Citing the need to appeal to fickle tastes with relevant and engaging content, teachers often lowball student competence….
By asking so little of students, schools today show how little they expect of them. In underestimating kids, the curriculum undermines them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/opinion/english-literature-study-decline.html
Pamela Paul notes:
So what do kids read instead? To even be considered, a work must first pass through the gantlet of book bans and the excising of those books containing passages that might be deemed antiquated or lie outside the median of student body experiences. Add to that the urge to squelch any content that might be deemed “triggering” or controversial, the current despair over smartphoned attention spans and the desire to “reach students where they are.”…
Citing the need to appeal to fickle tastes with relevant and engaging content, teachers often lowball student competence….
By asking so little of students, schools today show how little they expect of them. In underestimating kids, the curriculum undermines them.
The English Major, After the End
https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2023/03/09/reflecting-end-english-major-opinion
Andrew Newman notes:
As the neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf demonstrates in Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World (HarperCollins, 2018) literacy education, beginning in early childhood, involves the brain’s neuroplasticity. In a sense, the reading brain is a sort of artificial intelligence, because literacy, unlike language, is not innate. It doesn’t depend on existing “circuits”; it shapes new ones. Their most elaborate capacity is for the sort of deep reading occasioned by literature: characterized by contemplative, associative thought, empathetic connections and insights. She writes, “The expansive, encompassing processes that underlie insight and reflection in the present reading brain represent our best complement and antidote to the cognitive and emotional changes that are the sequelae of the multiple, life-enhancing achievements of a digital age.” In other words, as our absorption in digital media has affected our cognitive development, literature provides a necessary counterbalance.
https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2023/03/09/reflecting-end-english-major-opinion
Andrew Newman notes:
As the neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf demonstrates in Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World (HarperCollins, 2018) literacy education, beginning in early childhood, involves the brain’s neuroplasticity. In a sense, the reading brain is a sort of artificial intelligence, because literacy, unlike language, is not innate. It doesn’t depend on existing “circuits”; it shapes new ones. Their most elaborate capacity is for the sort of deep reading occasioned by literature: characterized by contemplative, associative thought, empathetic connections and insights. She writes, “The expansive, encompassing processes that underlie insight and reflection in the present reading brain represent our best complement and antidote to the cognitive and emotional changes that are the sequelae of the multiple, life-enhancing achievements of a digital age.” In other words, as our absorption in digital media has affected our cognitive development, literature provides a necessary counterbalance.
The Decline of Humanities Debate
https://vivekjayakumar.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-decline-of-humanities-debate.html
