Death to it.
This is what happens when you have teachers with degrees in “Education,” instead of actual fields that require thought, logic and knowledge.
12 thoughts on “High-School English Class”
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Death to it.
This is what happens when you have teachers with degrees in “Education,” instead of actual fields that require thought, logic and knowledge.
Comments are closed.
That’s not how I was taught in English class. From fifth grade on, we were drilled every year on the craft of the essay, and we had to write at least one (usually more) per class. True, we also studied literature — the different genres, the techniques, etc. But I can’t recall any of my teachers caring the slightest about my “feelings” about a “text” (they called them “stories” or “essays” or “chapters” then) I had just read — I was, rather, suppose to figure out what the author had intended to say, defend my conclusion based on logic and evidence where warranted, and so on. Incidentally, I went to public school in South Florida, which was supposedly one of the worst states for school performance in the 70s, and graduated in 1980 with a 3.24 average. (Good but not great — they averaged in my lousy grades in Phys. Ed. and my lukewarm performance in those math and science classes I had to take, darn it.)
1980, by the way, was the year the Department of Education took over. Missed it by that much.
Do kids even diagram sentences anymore?
In private schools and homeschools, yes. Not sure about the rest, but since they are derelict on every other topic…
Rand, what is all of this blaming people with Education degrees? What is your point, that people majoring in English and teaching in public schools are dunderheads? Did you even read the article?
Given the ‘tude of people in the STEM fields towards the “soft sciences”, perhaps some explanation of why we study English in school is in order.
Harvard Lampoon some years ago published The Big Book of College Life, and one of the humor essays in that collection was “Why we need Expos (Expository Writing — apparently a core course at Harvard and one all of the students hate).” In comic book form, our hero Bill expresses dismay at having to write two essays in one week (I have no idea of the workload in that course — it made for a funny humor piece to say two essays in one week) when Bill is visited by Henrik Ibsen who in a kind of riff on Its A Wonderful Life shows what life would be like “without Expos.” Our hero has no use for Expos because he wants to be a baseball player, and Ibsen shows Billy a baseball manager who cannot make out a roster and “why doesn’t that umpire call that player out? — It is because he cannot form a sentence with a subject and a verb, Billy.”
OK, the Lampoon article is a knock on required courses and the lame reasons told to students as to why they must take them. On the other hand, there is a grain of truth in it.
We study English because we need to communicate, either in spoken or written form. As scientists and engineers we need to communicate because otherwise our work product is of no use to anybody. In the College of Engineering, our lab classes require detailed reports, and we remind students that as engineers, their work product is not to turn in a problem set to their manager or client but to turn in a report.
We study English and learn spelling, grammar (yeah, it took me a while to learn how to spell grammar) because we don’t want to be speaking in 50 different local dialects with variations in spelling (think French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanche, etc).
This teacher was essentially saying that she was burned out from teaching English for too long but didn’t have an opportunity to switch to another career because her own strengths were in that field and she did not study much math and science. Rand, if you want to give a snarky “boo hoo” and play that imaginary small fiddle between your thumb and index finger (It was an English teacher who told that joke when students offered excuses on a late or missing assignment), be my guest. That’s right, be in judgement of someone who doesn’t conform your expectations for a serious career path.
As to English Literature, yeah, a lot of the reading list is lame and what is the point. But the two effective ways to learn English is to 1) read a lot of stuff written in English, 2) do a lot of writing in English. And not only do you learn English by reading books by dead white males, you learn a lot about our culture (besides what you get from movies and TV programs).
As to English Composition, the point of the article is that the teaching of writing is much more labor intensive than English Literature where the emphasis is on doing a lot of reading. The point of the article is that part of why students are not keeping up in these classes is the ‘tude exhibited around here that if it is not STEM it is a waste of the education dollar, both in terms of student’s interest and effort in English class as well as paying for enough English teachers.
Rand, you are probably thinking that having to read 150 short essays for each class assignment is no big deal and that this teacher is getting health insurance and a pension and should just shut up and do the work she was paid to do. This is your blog and your bandwidth, and I have already expressed my gratitude that you share this bandwidth to allow criticism and contrary opinions.
The point of this teacher, however, was that English is on a downward spiral, not just because people like you want to keep increasing her workload or decrease her pay, but that the students, the parents, and the STEM weenies don’t seem to much care about what takes place in English class.
Paul, I was not criticizing that particular teacher in any way.
sentences garbled beyond recognition by delete, copy and paste.
I do think this is a big problem with the ability to do quick editing. Certainly, it’s a common mistake I commit when I write in comments sections, along with other atrocities to Grammar.
My Dad has an Ed.D. – Educational Doctorate. He got it for fun after he retired. He’s also a really good teacher, because there are bad and good ways to teach, and he knows which are which. There is some value to this degree.
But the topics he teaches best are the ones he knows like the back of his hand, like how to handle a boat in accordance with U.S. Coast Guard procedure, or debug a mainframe. He can’t teach me anything about law, or space policy.
A fantastic mathmatician with any talent for teaching can be taught to teach rather quickly, and be great. A person with a degree in education cannot easily be made into a mathmatician. Teaching should really be something like a certificate (no more than one-year to earn), and that’s it. None of this Masters Degree required for this or that business.
One reason the teacher is burned out (or nearly so) is because the teachers in the previous grades hadn’t been doing their jobs. There was mention a few years ago about teachers in some grade schools not teaching long division because it dampens the little darlings’ creativity. I expect grammar gets ignored for similar reasons.
My daughter was taught to diagram sentences in private school. It’s not clear to me that it made any difference in her ability to construct a sentence.
The purpose of elementary school (once known as “grammar school”) is to teach grammar: vocabulary, syntax, punctuation, usage. If a given elementary school fails to fulfill this purpose, it is useless, and its students have no business going on to higher grades of education.
A secondary school student with no grasp of grammar is illiterate. There is no point in introducing him to literature. To do so is like enrolling a student who cannot perform basic arithmetic and expecting him to do well in calculus.
The teaching of language and literature to the young is not only important; it is damned near all-important. Mankind, after all, survived hundred of thousands of years without technology — but without culture there can exist no “mankind”, no society, only the atomized and truncated individual. Our ancestors told stories and sang songs to one another before there was fire, and it is by story and song — not by fire, tools, and techniques — that culture, that our humanity, is made.
N.B.: Colleges and universities in Texas do not offer undergraduate degrees in education. Here, one majors in a subject (or in a “subject of subjects”, e.g., “interdisciplinary studies with focus in English”) and then seeks separate technical certification as a licensed professional educator.
Nonsense: the purpose of elementary school is to warehouse the kids while mommy and daddy go to work/shop/watch Oprah, and to teach them to respect gays, lesbians, and transgendered people. The purpose of secondary school is to shove in all the math and grammar that was ignored in elementary school while the kiddies were learning how to put a condom on a banana. Another purpose of secondary school is to determine each child’s proper dosage of Ritalin et al. Finally, the purpose of secondary school is to prepare a child to be able to go to college. The purpose of college? Hooking up with as many different people as possible and figuring out your binge-drinking threshold. As for learning to reed an rite Egnlish, thatz wat ur iPhones 4 d00d.
This is what happens when you have teachers with degrees in “Education,” instead of actual fields that require thought, logic and knowledge.
Having both would be even better.
Really? It’s not clear that schools are taught any better now than before education degrees were required. It does work kind of like a guild, and limits the number of people who can be teachers. I don’t see that as a good thing.