While I have definitely seen many instances of reporters coming with a preconceived narrative, and then just wanting quotes that further that narrative, I could barely get through reading this article. The author seems to want to dump on competing narratives for why kids seem to have trouble with long form reading, but then brings all her own biases and essentially lays them out as fact with 0 evidence. Take early on in the article:
> She, in turn, ascribes these instructional choices to the oppressive presence of standardized testing and the Common Core. And cell phones, always cell phones.
The evidence that cell phones are hugely detrimental to the development of young people is pretty overwhelming these days, and no amount of old, out-of-context quotes taken from earlier "technological panics" will change that. I think the works and research of Jonathan Haidt do an excellent job digging into the effects of cell phones on kids.
And don't even get me started on the "Kids don't want to read the old classics because they're dense and hard to read, they're just challenging the white male patriarchy!" Spare me...
> Passing references to Moby Dick, Crime and Punishment, and even my unit about The Odyssey
>Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone, Ibi Zoboi’s American Street, and David Bowles’s The Prince and the Coyote, are all complex, challenging, and substantial texts
Yes, some literature is better than other literature. Some literature should be taught in schools. The fact that this teacher defends giving simpler less sophisticated works because it speaks to the children more (how is a power struggle in a palace speaking to the children more?). Difficult language is not an excuse to not read a book, this is literally lowering expectations. I am not saying those books are bad, but they are all written at a middle school level, and should not be taught in high school. Being unable to read Moby Dick or Les Miserables is an issue.
> The additional layer of linguistic distance between them and Shakespeare is comparable to my own struggles through Chaucer in the original Middle English
I guess I don't talk to enough high school kids but is this really actually true? There has been ~200 years of linguistic evolution between when this teacher went to school and now? English has changed as significantly as it did between
"Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote"
and
"But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun."
Wasn't the theory that recorded media would decrease the rate of core linguistic evolution? There has always been slang, but I would call this a total false equivalence.
I don't know about kids, but my sample size one is that as short-form dopamine-hit content has exploded in the last 10-15 years, and especially the last 5, my ability to read books has collapsed.
>Gen Z and Gen Alpha don’t cow to authority for authority’s sake. They simply won’t do things they don’t want to do, and I actually kinda love that.
This, in response to a story about Gen Z and Gen Alpha at elite universities. Why are they attending the elites, then, if not to become part of the power apparatus?
hn_throwaway_99 ·74 days ago
> She, in turn, ascribes these instructional choices to the oppressive presence of standardized testing and the Common Core. And cell phones, always cell phones.
The evidence that cell phones are hugely detrimental to the development of young people is pretty overwhelming these days, and no amount of old, out-of-context quotes taken from earlier "technological panics" will change that. I think the works and research of Jonathan Haidt do an excellent job digging into the effects of cell phones on kids.
And don't even get me started on the "Kids don't want to read the old classics because they're dense and hard to read, they're just challenging the white male patriarchy!" Spare me...
Show replies
ecshafer ·74 days ago
>Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone, Ibi Zoboi’s American Street, and David Bowles’s The Prince and the Coyote, are all complex, challenging, and substantial texts
Yes, some literature is better than other literature. Some literature should be taught in schools. The fact that this teacher defends giving simpler less sophisticated works because it speaks to the children more (how is a power struggle in a palace speaking to the children more?). Difficult language is not an excuse to not read a book, this is literally lowering expectations. I am not saying those books are bad, but they are all written at a middle school level, and should not be taught in high school. Being unable to read Moby Dick or Les Miserables is an issue.
Show replies
ctoth ·74 days ago
I guess I don't talk to enough high school kids but is this really actually true? There has been ~200 years of linguistic evolution between when this teacher went to school and now? English has changed as significantly as it did between
"Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote"
and
"But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun."
Wasn't the theory that recorded media would decrease the rate of core linguistic evolution? There has always been slang, but I would call this a total false equivalence.
Show replies
Workaccount2 ·74 days ago
Show replies
drawkward ·74 days ago
>Gen Z and Gen Alpha don’t cow to authority for authority’s sake. They simply won’t do things they don’t want to do, and I actually kinda love that.
This, in response to a story about Gen Z and Gen Alpha at elite universities. Why are they attending the elites, then, if not to become part of the power apparatus?
Show replies