We need to double down on turn youths into "readers" (of anything) and literature. I have always said that beginning readers should read anything interesting to them: Bride magazine, Car and Driver, comic books, whatever. Then we need to expose them to literature to show them what can be found out there with a little work.
It is clear, more and more, that "kids don't read" is getting closer and closer to being true. The mere fact that they prefer videos over text is an indicator of that. I would love to give kids a snatch of, say, the Lord of the Rings and then give them a videoclip from the movies covering the same amount of material and have them compare them. With the text we are free to use our imaginations. In the film we are limited to the filmmaker's imagination. (The book makes it clear that neither Sam nor Frodo would betray one another, but the film has just that in it, for example.)
What a fascinating look at why teachers teach - or at least why they SHOULD teach. As a math teacher one of the most difficult parts of my job was how little control I had over what material I could cover. The high school math curriculum is way, way overdue for a major overhaul. We teach pretty much the same topics as I studied in the 60's!
We need to double down on turn youths into "readers" (of anything) and literature. I have always said that beginning readers should read anything interesting to them: Bride magazine, Car and Driver, comic books, whatever. Then we need to expose them to literature to show them what can be found out there with a little work.
It is clear, more and more, that "kids don't read" is getting closer and closer to being true. The mere fact that they prefer videos over text is an indicator of that. I would love to give kids a snatch of, say, the Lord of the Rings and then give them a videoclip from the movies covering the same amount of material and have them compare them. With the text we are free to use our imaginations. In the film we are limited to the filmmaker's imagination. (The book makes it clear that neither Sam nor Frodo would betray one another, but the film has just that in it, for example.)
What a fascinating look at why teachers teach - or at least why they SHOULD teach. As a math teacher one of the most difficult parts of my job was how little control I had over what material I could cover. The high school math curriculum is way, way overdue for a major overhaul. We teach pretty much the same topics as I studied in the 60's!