[lit-ideas] Re: Sunday waffle...

Ursula Stange wrote:

> Sadly, we can no longer take for granted that our students understand 
> the many cultural references (most obviously the Bible and Shakespeare) 
> that generations of past students were expected to have at their 
> fingertips.  I had a student once who wrote, in a final exam, a sentence 
> about Noa Zark.  (I shudder to think how this story reflects on my 
> teaching, of course.)   Perhaps they learn too much of their language 
> through their ears, and too little through their eyes.   More proof: the 
> legions who don't differentiate between 'past' and 'passed.'

**An ongoing dinner-topic conversation in our house. Our eldest, now 
completing his junior year in high school, has not studied Shakespeare 
in either of the past two years -- in honors English. In truth, it's 
difficult to ascertain the curriculum objectives from eclectic, 
unfocused reading selections chosen for his English course this year...

> 
> It's tempting as we get on in years, to imagine some distant 'golden 
> age' when students were more prepared (and men were men and women were 
> quiet?...).   

**Unfortunately impossible (yet) to keep the progressive, positive 
aspects and modify the errors.

> Perhaps a truer answer lies in who goes to college these 
> days.   If public policy encourages everyone to attend (keeps them out 
> of the job market and off the streets, after all), perhaps the lowering 
> of expectations and standards is inevitable but not really indicative of 
> worse teaching or learning. 

**A double-edged sword. However, we need to end our promise of higher 
education for all -- replacing it with a pledge to provide further 
academic instruction only to those qualified. What's wrong with a trade 
--surely not the money -- have you seen what mechanics, plumbers, and 
electricians earn??  After all, despite wanting to pitch for the NY 
Giants (yeah, they snuck out to SF in the middle of the night) -- no 
amount of training nor public financing/promises nor personal effort 
would ever enable me to pitch at any level higher than little league. We 
need to become more honest and more realistic -- lowering the standards 
has been foolish and will instead, in the long term, be destructive -- 
counter productive.

TC,

/Steve Cameron, NJ

> Ursula
> North Bay
> 
> Steven G. Cameron wrote:
> 
> 
>>we rely enormously on our cultural myths as instructional underpinnings: 
>>Tanach, Edith Hamilton, Robin Hood, etc.
>>
> 
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