Gallagher titles his second chapter “Endangered Minds”, and I find this extremely appropriate to the product of today’s education system. It has not been very long since I was the student in the secondary setting, and I am definitely a product of the crammed facts rather than thinking in school. In response to some of the comments on my previous post, I have been in school (as a student) for the last 17 years of my life. At least the last 8 of those years my “required reading” has been so significant that when I have any extra time, sitting and reading is not what I do; I’m the type that needs to get up and do something! I will say, I’ve tried to do book studies outside of school requirements, but that becomes too scheduled and also turns me off. I do occasionally read news articles, blogs, road signs, and my Bible; but for the most part if I’m not doing school work, I’m probably not reading.
My sister, 5 years younger than me, has an even worse case of fact knowledge, evident by her striking lack of common sense. She, like me, is doing well in her advanced math courses (in her junior year of high school she’s taking AP calculus) and is very intelligent in school; but neither one of us enjoyed language arts or English classes. This is not the product of a poor home situation, as we come from a two parent home, where both parents are working, and we do not have to worry about where the next meal is coming from. Both of us were taught to read at a very young age, and we grew up with many books in the house and would read at least one a day (at bedtime). What happened?! Why do I hate to read, and she can barely think beyond the explicit instructions? Gallagher refers to Jane Healy’s Endangered Minds: Why Children Can’t Think – And What We Can Do About It. Healy points out that students today are not allowed to sit and think. They are rammed through a curriculum to see how fast we can move them along. This is exactly what has happened, we had the proper foundation, but we have had so much forced reading that the pleasure in reading is gone along with the ability to think for ourselves. We have become like Pavlov’s dogs… they became so accustomed to hearing a bell before they were fed steak that they would salivate at the sound of the bell. In the same way, we have become so accustomed to having to read non pleasurable texts for school, that we dislike the idea of reading at all. If my sister and I are this bad off coming from a background that included reading, I can't imagine how turned away from school students who are coming through without such a background must be. It would be almost impossible to continue in education if reading was not just something the student didn’t enjoy, but something the student couldn’t do.
I appreciate the fact that Gallagher admits he is an English teacher, and does not claim all of his methods would work across the contents. Because of this, I can respect his statement: We are not simply content-area teachers, we are all literacy teachers as well, and as such, it is a moral imperative that we provide a setting in which tons of reading occurs (p.58). In response to my lack of literacy in education and this call from Gallagher, I have begun to rethink the use of literature in the science classroom. I really like his idea of article of the week. This could be instrumental in finding ways science is a part of everyday life, or developing the students’ ability to read and comprehend scientific articles. I think it is important with assignments like this, for the teacher to stay deeply involved in the assignment. The moment it becomes another thing to get done, the reading comes across as busy work and begins to contribute to the readicide rather than developing a more literate student.
Your call for teachers to be engaged in reading and to make the reading process valuable is a good one, I think. If (yes, I said "if") a teacher is going to assign reading, she should be engaged in the assignment herself. In particular, classes that have sustained silent reading while the teacher grades papers have a teacher that misses the point of the assignment and misses the opportunity to model good habits. You and Jake both commented on the article-of-the-week idea, and it makes me wonder if I can find a way to make something like that authentic in my classes too.
ReplyDeleteMeredith, I really like how you relate this week’s chapter to your own life. It is sad that students in our schools today turning away from reading in their free time. There is so much to experience when you read a book. It is the only time when you can really enter into someone head and understand how they feel or think, and it gives you a chance to experience events that otherwise you may never have the opportunity to participate or understand. When you where talking about your little sister and her apathy toward reading I couldn't help but to think about my own little brother who is also currently in school. One thing that I did to help my brother understand the joy of reading was to give him some of my own favorite books that I read at his age, "A Catcher in the Rye," and "A Separate Peace", both of which he has since read and told me how much he liked them. This is perhaps a technique you could use to ensure that your sister does not have the same experiences you had in school when it pertains to reading for pleasure.
ReplyDeleteJennifer, I completely agree with your points about SSR and modeling good behavior for our students. When I was in my first placement the students were given opportunities for SSR, and the host teacher and myself both read as well. We did not take the time to grade or do other busy work while they were reading. By them seeing us engaged in reading, it helped them become active participants as well.
ReplyDelete"My sister, 5 years younger than me, has an even worse case of fact knowledge, evident by her striking lack of common sense." I am not even counting this as a response but it made LAAUUGGHH!!
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