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Location: Chapel Hill, NC, formerly NoVA and Phila
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Quote:
Originally Posted by beachmouse
If you look at the state result breakdowns in most years, this is very much the case. Even though it's considered to have one of the worst public education systems in the country, Mississippi is at or near the top on the SAT scores lists. Only about 10% of students in a given MS population will take the SAT test, and it's not too hard to assume they're the high achieving, high SES population who needs the SAT in order to apply to highly selective colleges out of state.
On the bottom of the SAT list- New Jersey and its well-regarded public schools. About 70% of their students in a given population group will take the SAT. So the MS testing group is the population aiming to get into Vanderbuilt or Emory or Harvard, and the New Jersey group contains many students who are aiming for community college. Of course you're going to get lower scores when a population hasn't self-selected like that.
That's a very interesting point. Although, Mississippi isn't quite as high as near the top. According to 2011 SAT scores, Mississippi was 18th with 4% participation rate. New Jersey is 36th with 78% participation rate. It's interesting to note that the top 21 on the list all had less than 20% participate. Those ranked 22 through 51 all (except WV) had 20% or more participate, with many states having 60%-80% participating.
If you want to improve reading, let students read what they want to read. Forcing a student to read "Heart of Darkness" when they're more interested in Harry Potter isn't going to work. Also, teachers have to become creative and tie the stories they read to the personal lives of their students and or have discussions where people are forced to participate and give their thoughts on the characters and the decisions they make.
For example, we read "Catcher in the Rye" and "The Great Gatsby" and almost my entire class loved both of the books. Several of my classmates were attracted to and saw a resemblance to the main character in "Catcher in the Rye". As for "The Great Gatsby", we had discussions on the book and how certain events played out and how Gatsby went from being popular to no one giving a damn about him helped peak our interest and gave us a new found appreciation for the book.
I love King, his early work in particular. But I don't think that most of his writing is appropriate reading material for a 5th grader. I wouldn't let my 10 year old read Carrie, Pet Semetary or The Shining. Can you imagine the nightmares? Oh no.
I didn't allow my 9 year old to read The Hunger Games - not because it was far above his reading capabilities, but because I just did not feel that *he* was ready for that particular story.
And just because a 2nd grader *can* read Twilight or The Diary of Ann Frank, doesn't mean that they are necessarily ready for the subject matter within those books.
How about Phillip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy, which includes 'The Golden Compass' (which was made into a movie).
I think standards have been absurdly lowered in the last 35-40 years.
I bet 9th and 10th graders in 1960 had a better command of reading, grammar, spelling, and punctuation than many college freshman or sophomores now. The books were harder and more "real"....i.e. just straight Moby Dick, or Charles Dickens. Or Louisa May Alcott. Now it's a bunch of interpretations. Or what someone said about it. Or it's dummied down and filtered.
I think reading scores were high in the 50's and 60's because kids learned straight from the source....someone who really understood the written language. Now it's been diluted.
-Even more alarming than reading is what's happened to geography?, history? civics??? What is that. Those have been degraded by massive amounts. What kids knew 40 years ago in those subjects vs now, would be shocking.
I suspect that reading scores are a reflection of how we read these days. I think deep reading is gone - sitting down with a novel is not necessarily a pastime anymore. And for those of you who think that those who don't have the time or the patience to sit down and read a 40-page academic paper or some long-arsed marketing proposal are screwed, don't be so sure. Typically, there is a tendency for media and editors to adapt to the reader, not the other way around. Until the printing press, literacy wasn't even a big deal - most people got by just by doing things with their hands and relying on oral communication. Of course, they were denied opportunities for classical learning and subjugated to those who had greater amounts of education - and that will always be the case. But the point is, we could be shifting back to a time when the written word is somewhat de-emphasized. Technology is making it so that text can become voice and voice can become text. Will reading even be a necessary skill in 50 or 100 years? Probably so, but who knows...I never thought I'd live to see cars driving themselves.
How about Phillip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy, which includes 'The Golden Compass' (which was made into a movie).
This series has been on my own reading list for a while. From what I understand, there are some big (controversial) ideas in the books so I wanted to be familiar with the stories before my kids read them - especially while they were still in elementary school.
But now that my kids are getting older, they might very well get to those books before I do.
I think standards have been absurdly lowered in the last 35-40 years.
I bet 9th and 10th graders in 1960 had a better command of reading, grammar, spelling, and punctuation than many college freshman or sophomores now. The books were harder and more "real"....i.e. just straight Moby Dick, or Charles Dickens. Or Louisa May Alcott. Now it's a bunch of interpretations. Or what someone said about it. Or it's dummied down and filtered.
I think reading scores were high in the 50's and 60's because kids learned straight from the source....someone who really understood the written language. Now it's been diluted.
-Even more alarming than reading is what's happened to geography?, history? civics??? What is that. Those have been degraded by massive amounts. What kids knew 40 years ago in those subjects vs now, would be shocking.
Some might argue that it's better to read/assign a dummied down version of a great story that you can actually comprehend than it is to read the authentic version with little comprehension. And if you're just going to do that, you might as well skip reading the book altogether and cut to the chase - read expert analysis which might also have been dummied down to suit your level. Or better yet, watch the movie (just hope and pray that it closely follows the book - many don't).
I can see how "dummied down" has wormed it's way in....
But short cuts have been around for a long time. I was a big reader in school, but I remember relying heavily on Cliff Notes a couple of times, myself. I also remember feeling that I had really missed out on something when I did that.
Last edited by springfieldva; 09-28-2012 at 05:42 AM..
I think that some of the great books of the past are simply not relevant to kids today. For example, I cannot see kids today getting much out of The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. There are, of course, classics that should be read, but believe it or not, there are newer books that are excellent too.
I would love to see more kids read these books:
The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
A Place to Stand by Jimmy Santiago Baca
For American history
Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis
If you want to improve reading, let students read what they want to read. Forcing a student to read "Heart of Darkness" when they're more interested in Harry Potter isn't going to work.
No. No. No. No. No. A thousand times, no.
The point of education is to move beyond one's level of intellectual comfort. In reading, this means struggling to derive meaning from unfamiliar words and complex phrasing. I understand words like sagacity, nascent, abeyance, and sojourn -- although they don't typically find their way into my writing -- because my teachers required that I read books I wouldn't have picked up on my own and then supported me as I struggled to comprehend them. Even now that I'm older, I continue the practice of challenging myself to read difficult texts, writing new words and intriguing phrases, along with any flashes of insight, in the latest of many reader's journals I've kept through the years. Of course I have my guilty pleasures, but I realize that my reading abilities grow only when I stretch beyond that which is easy.
By all means, students should read The Great Gatsby and have a rousing discussion about the symbolism of the mysterious green light. They should read The Grapes of Wrath to understand the challenges faced by families displaced by the Dust Bowl. But let's not pretend that they will be equally prepared for the SAT as those who move on to Shakespeare, Shelley, and Swift. There is a world of difference between the demands placed on the reader by Of Mice and Men and Frankenstein.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nana053
I think that some of the great books of the past are simply not relevant to kids today. For example, I cannot see kids today getting much out of The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Why would The Scarlet Letter be any less relevant to a student of today than to a student of the '80s when it was routinely assigned to those of us who were college-bound? I think its theme of sexual impropriety, shame, and repentance are timeless, and it sheds light on Puritan history, at least as imagined by Hawthorne, who admittedly was writing many years after the setting of the novel.
That said, I definitely like your list!
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