What have people said that's interesting?
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tails. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
-Albert Einstein
My principal warned parents of a new directive school's are planning to take to read more non-fiction work for study and examination, such as newspapers and articles. I personally have a problem with this, and not just because I always enter into non-fiction thinking 'nothing is more boring than what actually happens.' No, I feel like this is a bad choice because it limits what us students can examine. In non-fiction, a character's action aren't the author's fault as much as the character's, because the author isn't the one saying what they did because they actually did it! Where's the room for unreliable narrative? Social extremes (a world without 1984 or Anthem? Gees...)? All that other jazz English teachers love? I know people have said that the problem with fiction is that you have to make everything make sense, and that reality is the truly unexplainable phenomenon, but come on, what are the chances a newspaper article would hold that sort of interest? Some non-fiction is just irreplaceable. There's no real-world-training literacy with better content to pick through. I'm not sure exactly how the school system plans on making this change, but if it's anything like I suspect, I hope it doesn't come to be. Even though I'm a senior, I wouldn't wish that on any student.
What's happening in education?
Josh Letterman of usnews.com explains that our Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, has a vision to go digital with textbooks. Like, completely digital. Apparently, South Korea is beating him to the punch, striving to ditch all the books by 2015. Obviously there's a concern that kids spend enough time on the computer as it is; why broaden that by centering education on it? Personally, I'm a bit torn. On the plus side, the world is getting more technological. Just because some parents don't like it doesn't mean it's going to change; too many careers just need a lot of desk work done, a lot including research. Still, this is just textbooks we're talking about. Heck, fifty pounds on a kids back can really do him some good these days, and it's not like they're really learning research skills by browsing their assigned pages. Real research is more in-depth than that (I once spent two hours pouring over old census data to find the average height of an American 49-year-old male back when John Wayne was 49 years old, just to use his extremely manly over-achieving to disapprove of an author calling him 'an average male.'), but it does give kids access for when a textbook would be lost, and experience when a future career may need them clicking through reports, and who knows what else. So I guess all the pros I can think of right now out-weigh the concern. Plus, kids are really good at gluing themselves to computers, so why not play to their strengths?
And what have I learned this weak?
Sometimes going the extra mile beyond simply 'completing' a task can pay off in innumerable ways. I've seen the 'prison-cell' classroom too many times; barren walls, covered windows, nothing personal, handcuffs on all the desks. Well, maybe not that extreme, but you get the point. Some classrooms make you want to die before entering them, no matter what the subject is, and it's worse when the subject is easy, believe it or not! Nothing is more grating to me than trying to stay awake to a droning, simple concept, trying to discover during the duration of the class how I might re-teach the subject in fifteen minutes or less. I don't know exactly what spurns some teachers to take this approach. Maybe they just aren't too creative, which is understandable, or maybe the required coursework intimidates them, so, rather than accidentally skip or do something wrong, they go by the book. Word. By. Word. Or, who knows, maybe they just stopped caring. Point is, they are 'teaching' the class. The material is getting thrown out there. But take fifteen minutes to liven up the room. And some personality so that kids remember you. Put something of yourself into the lesson so kids can see that you care, thus that they can care. It's so easy and makes such a difference, because then kids just ignore you because they're being slothful slackers rather than that the lesson is rougher to by than a good scrape across rugged cement. I love you guys, teachers! Keep on teachin'.
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