finally, somebody else says it, too...

[acroyear]

Reading Across the Board:

In order not to leave your child behind, we have to leave your child behind in social studies, science and foreign languages.

I'll [...] focus my attention on something more subtle and pervasively destructive about our education system: the idea that reading is a subject, rather than a skill. This misguided notion leads educators to pull students out of social studies and into a class called reading. Reading shouldn't be a class (at least not past third or fourth grade). It's what you do in your classes.

Good social studies teachers help kids understand what they're reading. That involves helping them find the main idea, identify the support points and understand the background context. These are all critical reading and thinking skills.

I would add to that the loss of science classes and skills being detrimental to mathematics, and by extension, to reading skills.

The "word problem" is the finest expression of reading comprehension, and science is the ultimate word problem, the word problem whose subject is reality itself.  Reading the words, understanding what they're saying to be able to translate them into a mathematical problem, then solving the problem.

Along the way, we could do better with teaching at a younger age other real-life skills that involve extensive reading, comprehension, translation into mathematics, and finally application: doing one's taxes.

Of course, I also firmly believe (and have written before) that we should do better to teach propaganda recognition and baloney detection sooner and more thoroughly.  Even I have been caught at giving the "strawman" before, often when writing more from emotion than analysis (thanks, Rob).

He goes on:

[...] we make our teachers get a degree in a subject called education. Which is funny because they don't end up teaching education to our children. They teach them literature, history, science, math. Our system creates a lot of teachers who are passionate about school but not about the subjects they teach. This isn't just a bias, it's mandated by most states.

Take me, for example. I am a professional writer, I have a master's degree in English and I taught writing at the college level for seven years. But no public school in my state would hire me as an English teacher, because I don't have a degree in education. Instead, they're hiring English teachers who spent a lot of time learning to break essays down into grids and identify topic sentences and then teach writing as if it happened that way.

No wonder so many students write so poorly.

Granted, there's more to education than simply knowing the subject.  Being able to write a test that is fair and comprehensive is important, as it being able to judge homework quantities, having the time and inclination to grade it all, being able to single out students doing poorly without embarrassing them (unless their poor work is intentional), maintaining classroom discipline (is self-defense a requirement now?), and of course, having a good lawyer around when you get hit by the bias or harrasment lawsuit in today's "I'm the victim, feed me" culture.

Ok, there was a little sarcasm in that last paragraph.  :)

Comments

[fiona64.livejournal.com]

Along the way, we could do better with teaching at a younger age other real-life skills that involve extensive reading, comprehension, translation into mathematics, and finally application: doing one's taxes.

My high school required two semesters of "Personal Finance," which included learning how to balance a checkbook and do a tax return.

That said ... I was astonished to learn that basic math instruction no longer includes such information has how to make change of a dollar. For many kids, the practical application of *any* subject makes it come to life. If you know that there are 10 dimes in a dollar, isn't that multiplication?

But I digress. Your essay points up many of the problems I have with education today, to say nothing of explaining why the latest batch of college texts are written at the 11th grade level. By the time one is out of elementary school, one should know how to read for comprehension, use the dictionary to look up unknown words -- and know why those skills are important.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

better still: if you know that every time you see "$1.00" on a price tag, you really owe "$1.05" and have to know that ahead of time, isn't that knowing percentages and having to do a bit of the dreaded "division"?

meanwhile, 11th grade american lit classes still have kids reading the poem "Richard Cory" and then wonder why they haven't been able to reduce the teen suicide rate any...

[fiona64.livejournal.com]

meanwhile, 11th grade american lit classes still have kids reading the poem "Richard Cory" and then wonder why they haven't been able to reduce the teen suicide rate any...

But ... they're just teaching "reading," not comprehension. @@

I think what this country needs is educational reform ... and not in the "no school left standing/teach to the test" direction.