I don’t know how many times I’ve read pieces bemoaning what young people are coming to these days. I read them thirty years ago, twenty, ten. Now people are worried that modern American 18 to 20 year olds know Madonna but not Kate Smith. I can’t say that worries me; popular culture is of the present. Madonna’s alive; the worthy and formidable Kate passed on some years ago.
There are matters of modern education that do bother me, though. For instance, textbooks tend to be uniform, with much sameness about what is available. They also tend to be produced by professors, who are, at least in the humanities, mostly politically liberal and politically correct—meaning incorrect. The quest to avoid offending people of birth other than white male leads to some exotic distortions.
And grade inflation is real. High schools award grades that misrepresent student achievement. Recent high school graduates moving to college are often startled to find that the A is no longer automatic, though colleges participate in the grade inflation trend, too. I’ve discovered that I am not immune. For many years my grades on a four point scale averaged across whole classes a slightly inflated 2.25. Last year I re-checked and found 2.8. Did everybody really get that much better? Are my enthusiasms getting away with me?
Yet the doomsayers don’t seem to be describing the students I actually face. Mostly, students I see come to first year writing courses well prepared. They know sentence structure and punctuation and the conventions of school essay form. They are reasonably fluent writers. Many already have considerable experience with writing in several modes and genres. My read is that high schools must be doing a pretty good job, at least in my areas of specialization. It might be that my 2.8 is reasonable when compared to the work of my students of twenty-five years ago.
If I were to have a suggestion about education as I see it, I would ask that it include a little more fierceness in the pursuit of truth. That political preferences not quite so overtly alter the presentation of fact; that literature be read in its own context to whatever extent possible. I think we would all be better off if we were a little more willing to offend and be offended while confronting the world and our places and purposes in it. Comfort isn’t always a good thing.
The very best way I know to develop and hold the independence of mind it takes to confront the world issue by issue is to read widely. Exposure to multiple perspectives makes it less likely that one perspective can take over. I read Newsweek and National Review, Time and the Weekly Standard. I read Playboy and Reader’s Digest. I read female authors, black authors, Indian authors, and I continue to read white male authors. I read children’s books, young adult novels, canonical literature, textbooks, and scholarly journals.
The activity of reading keeps the mind supple, if done with a willing mind. Enforced reading, such as of school assignments, has some benefit, but voluntary reading, with one book leading to another and also another is the road to intellectual, personal freedom. This means reading for idea as well as information. It means reading to notice layers of particularity and of abstraction. It means reading for the joy of it, while being intensely alive.
There are matters of modern education that do bother me, though. For instance, textbooks tend to be uniform, with much sameness about what is available. They also tend to be produced by professors, who are, at least in the humanities, mostly politically liberal and politically correct—meaning incorrect. The quest to avoid offending people of birth other than white male leads to some exotic distortions.
And grade inflation is real. High schools award grades that misrepresent student achievement. Recent high school graduates moving to college are often startled to find that the A is no longer automatic, though colleges participate in the grade inflation trend, too. I’ve discovered that I am not immune. For many years my grades on a four point scale averaged across whole classes a slightly inflated 2.25. Last year I re-checked and found 2.8. Did everybody really get that much better? Are my enthusiasms getting away with me?
Yet the doomsayers don’t seem to be describing the students I actually face. Mostly, students I see come to first year writing courses well prepared. They know sentence structure and punctuation and the conventions of school essay form. They are reasonably fluent writers. Many already have considerable experience with writing in several modes and genres. My read is that high schools must be doing a pretty good job, at least in my areas of specialization. It might be that my 2.8 is reasonable when compared to the work of my students of twenty-five years ago.
If I were to have a suggestion about education as I see it, I would ask that it include a little more fierceness in the pursuit of truth. That political preferences not quite so overtly alter the presentation of fact; that literature be read in its own context to whatever extent possible. I think we would all be better off if we were a little more willing to offend and be offended while confronting the world and our places and purposes in it. Comfort isn’t always a good thing.
The very best way I know to develop and hold the independence of mind it takes to confront the world issue by issue is to read widely. Exposure to multiple perspectives makes it less likely that one perspective can take over. I read Newsweek and National Review, Time and the Weekly Standard. I read Playboy and Reader’s Digest. I read female authors, black authors, Indian authors, and I continue to read white male authors. I read children’s books, young adult novels, canonical literature, textbooks, and scholarly journals.
The activity of reading keeps the mind supple, if done with a willing mind. Enforced reading, such as of school assignments, has some benefit, but voluntary reading, with one book leading to another and also another is the road to intellectual, personal freedom. This means reading for idea as well as information. It means reading to notice layers of particularity and of abstraction. It means reading for the joy of it, while being intensely alive.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home