If you were drowning in shark infested waters, would you take assistance from the first boat to come along?
Logically, most of us have, or would, answer in the affirmative. We would climb aboard and be grateful for the help! In contrast, some people, albeit a smaller number, might pause for a moment and decline the ride to safety because they did not like the style or color of the boat! Silly, right?
Now, picture the writing skills of our high school students, and their futures, as the endangered swimmer in a world of sharks!
Should we as educators, academics, and technical communicators plan a rescue with the first boat that we can launch, or should we wait until we can find one with brighter colors and more impressive graphics?
The writing skills of most high school seniors entering college are insufficient and lacking, this is a problem that must be corrected forthwith. Each poorly prepared graduate is shark food. A stern triage protocol must be implemented. Triage requires loss, casualties, and tough decisions; not everyone makes it. Therefore, I find it absurd to waste time with literature, romanticism, or Shakespeare, if the child has not yet mastered general grammar or composition.
Before everyone begins to plan my tongue-lashing or buys sharper pins for the voodoo doll that is eerily similar to my likeness, I will concede that it is easier to play a Monday morning quarterback than it is to design a new writing curriculum. As such, I will at least make an attempt to comprise some meaningful ideas and input; however, I reserve the right to storm off with my laptop at any time!
1. We must introduce meaningful stimuli to the subjects. It was argued in class that the pursuit of knowledge should be their guide. While my appreciation and love for learning fosters my agreement with such an position, the triage-based answer is to save as many children as possible from the sharks. If the dream of fancy cars or piles of money is motivating, let’s go with it!
2. We should divide high school into college-like semesters, which would allow for more variation in program selection, classmate groupings, and triage. By switching courses more frequently, the better students would be identified and could be grouped together in future courses, which would raise the level of competition and production in those courses. Those unwilling to increase their efforts would not advance. The sentiment of, “No student left behind” is touching, but impractical. The triage protocols dictate that we save the ones we can.
3. The standard school year must be lengthened to include Saturdays for some children. Those who perform well would continue to attend school Monday through Friday, while the poor writers would attend extra writing workshops every Saturday. If this extra help proved unsuccessful, non-air-conditioned summer classes could become available. The triage mindset is that medicine may not taste good, but it is sometimes necessary!
I realize that these are extreme, and perhaps militant, ideas from a teaching outsider, but correcting the problem WILL require assistance from a non-related, unbiased, and unaffected evaluator- just like triage!
R.
Dear Rich,
ReplyDeleteI found myself nodding along to your post in agreement until I hit the air conditioning paragraph...there, I must confess, you lost me...for to deprive students of air conditioning, that would surely be cruel and unusual punishment.
And there is a movement in some Canadian schools to go year-round, and even have school on Saturdays...however, there's a great deal of push back from our teachers' unions. For some reason, they don't like to give up their summers to do their jobs (educating our future leaders)...go figure, eh?
I credit my Grade 4 teacher Mrs. Valiukas for making me a better writer. She gave me extra modules, and would make me revise and revise and revise my writing until there were no errors. We need more like her, at an early age...early intervention, as it were :-)
Let me start by agreeing that more students need to fail, both in high school and in FYC (at least the FYC I’ve seen). High school is problematic for many reasons, but chief among them is that students are taught that laziness has no consequences and that being a student involves nothing more than showing up. I make it a point to inform my dual-credit students (in high school, but taking college comp/rhet classes) that it is very possible to turn in all assignments and still fail horribly. It’s astounding to them that they are to be graded on the quality of their work and not merely on their ability to turn something in. It’s really quite hard to fail high school, and sadly I think some of this mentality inevitably creeps into college courses, with things like grades for attendance and the like. So yes, by all means, let’s change that. (Not to mention that high pass rates coupled with low achievement rates supports those who push for evil standardized testing.)
ReplyDeleteThat said, I think the gist of the readings is that there isn’t a clear boat of any variety (luxurious or bare bones) waiting to take them from the sharks, and honestly I’m not sure the “get tough” approach you advocate will provide much benefit. Shaughnessy’s piece about beginning students suggests many such folks are already terrified of writing, actively hate it, and think grammar is the whole point. The big issue with the third point is that teaching grammar has been shown to have essentially no impact on writing skills (even on grammar skill, I believe). The tough-love method, I fear, would make these first two issues much worse. It might produce graduates who can write, but not so much because it effectively teaches writing, but because it drives out anyone who is one of these beginners. I’m all for weed-out courses, but these should be mid-to-upper division, I think, not a required gen-ed course.
One final thought on the Shakespeare comment. I agree that teaching many classics in high school is counterproductive; the attitude seems to that we must do it because this is what everyone must know, and if students don’t like it then tough—suck it up. (More tough love.) But the problem here, I believe, is that it just makes students hate reading. (More problems from tough love.) That said, I absolutely believe students need to read, and read a lot, and even FYC college course seem to have largely abandoned reading, especially academic-level reading (per Kitzhaber). I often teach a novel in my FYC courses because I know it is quite likely that if I don’t, many of my student will get through college without ever reading an entire book. So I’m willing to toss aside Shakespeare, but let’s not toss aside reading, and lots of it.
The comment above is mine (Steve Morrison), but I couldn't get the Google sign-in to work. It kept looping me to the sign-in screen, then the text verification, then sign-in... Sigh.
ReplyDelete