Interesting conversation with public school 10th grader......

[G5052]

Yes, the inequities in U.S. education are disturbing.  I grew up in a school system that was superb for the "upper average and up" student, not as good for below that.  Friends with learning difficulties were really not handled well, but they felt like the system was overall better than those around it.  Just 30 miles away, over half of the students who started at high school, didn't finish within five years if they were even enrolled that long.  At my high school the graduation rate was around 95%.

 

I'm not a fan of some of the details of Common Core, but I can certainly see how it "might" equalize things.  Equalize good or bad, we'll see.

 

 

[MysteryJen]

I was mulling this topic over this afternoon. Laura, how does the public (I mean state run) vs. private school play out in the UK?  Here in my state, there are around 4 times as many public school students as private school students. I would guess in other states there might be more private school students. 

 

It would seem that if private schools had more students, the public schools would deal with fewer students and would have more money. 

[Nscribe]

What I worry about, I suppose, is low expectations.  If everyone is taught the same material, then there is some expectation that they can achieve it.  If people are told that this is the material for their district, their school, their social group, it sounds caring and individual, but perhaps it puts more barriers in the way.  Is it better to have an equal standard, which may encourage aspiration, but leaves some unable to achieve it?  Or is it better to have differential goals?

 

L

This is an issue the common core is suppose to try to address.  A common set of standards, while allowing the in classroom teachers to determine how to reach them.  I found it interesting in a very detailed three hours presentation recently they noted the standards are not aimed to try to address the top 1-5% in academic performance.  Instead they assume there will be a path of excelleration available to meet those needs.  Whether any of the goals will be met is a wholly different matter, but it was interesting to hear those who were part of writing them explain in greater detail the why of what they designed.  It really will be the first time a kid could move from one district or state to another and at least for 45 of the states encounter content standards that might be close to what they left.   

[MysteryJen]

True, the schools look the same on paper. But with the override option and donations/fundraising, the educations don't just look unequal. I believe they are unequal.

 

And I didn't used to think this.  Prior to this year, my kids swam on a city-owned team by my house and I spent hours and hours at the rec center and became a sort of informal tutor to lots of kids who were waiting for parents to pick them up, or for parents to finish working, etc.  The district seemed to do their best, I became accustomed to the "no textbooks," "no money," etc. Then we changed teams and now we spend a huge amount of time in the affluent district.  The differences are staggering. Mind-boggling even. I started to look at the money issue... and now I think I am becoming a radical. 

[AuntPol]

My daughter is Honors English for Freshman year. It's not very rigorous at all. Everything they did in the first 9 weeks, I could have fit into two weeks and most of it does not relate to common core or any standards.

 

Writing

-freewriting on various topics.

-Characterization writing assignment

 

Reading

-A few myths, some Poe short stories, two other short stories

-Discussion of literary terms

-Difference between poetry and song lyrics

 

Grammar, mechanics

-none

 

One vocab quiz

One pop quiz on a short story reading (one question to determine who read it and who did not)

One major test on literary terms.

 

 

Now I know I should be upset and want more rigor but it's been an easy A for her. We basically did the typical Freshman English last year -Odyssey, To Kill a Mockingbird, Romeo and Juliet, Fahrenheit 451, The Hobbit, etc. She did WWS and has won writing contests. She did MCT. She actually passed the English I EOC but there are no English Electives for her to take instead (small school). However, what the teacher lacks in rigor, he makes up for in making the class interesting. She is excited about the class and is actually moving past the regurgitating for the test to actually understanding the concepts. She is "getting" it instead of "spitting" it if that makes since.

 

On the otherhand, her Honors World History teacher is amazing and they actually do more writing in that class. She is working them from multiple choice/short answer tests to essay tests. She builds upon new skills each unit-actively teaching how to find answers that are spread out over several paragraphs, how to paraphrase, how to cite, how to use quotes, how to write a bibliography in MLA format. They have to write a research paper on an artifact w/ each step due in intervals. She just did an annotated bibliography and then next month her outline is due. This weekend, she has to compare segments of Art of War to segments of Bhagavad Gita. I feel she is getting more of the composition here whereas the English teacher is big on "Creativity" -he has them do things like create their own mythological figure, create a lesson plan to teach a Poe Short story and then implement it, and mostly work on conquering fear of writing via freewrites.

[Laura Corin]

FWIW, Calvin writes an English essay every week this year, as well as having a couple of longer assignments over the year and a 4,000 word extended essay.  They don't study that many texts, but they do it pretty in depth.

 

L

[ElizaG]

I've always wondered at "English" class, why does it last so long? I had English from 6th-12th grade. It was ridiculous, at what point do you have the grammar that you need?

(...)

Also, I gather that the girl is in "English" not "Literature" (Aren't they distinct classes?)

 

I'm not sure about other countries, but in the US and Canada, high school "English class" was invented in the 19th century as an alternative to classical education.   So it wasn't that educators thought that students needed all this time to master a given set of material.   (They were expected to have a solid knowledge of grammar by the end of the 8th grade, for instance.)   It was more that they were using the study of the language and literature as a vehicle for developing the student's overall intellectual skills and habits.   As strange as this might sound now, English was envisioned as pretty much the whole "trivium" part of the liberal arts course -- which was expected to take several years, and was traditionally followed at the ages that are now associated with junior high, high school, and very early college/university. 

 

This also gets at the reasons for the amount of variation in the curriculum.

 

With the classics, different school systems had developed their own teaching traditions over the centuries, and they could vary quite substantially from one place to another.  There were differences in the amount of literature read and translated ("wide" vs. "deep" study), whether or not the languages were spoken in class, the proportion of time spent on Latin and Greek composition, the amount of class discussion, the moral or philosophical emphasis, and so on.   But within a given system, these patterns were usually pretty consistent. 

 

With English, because there was no tradition to draw from, teachers in the first few generations just kind of made it up as they went along.  Their methods might be based on their own experiences with the study of English or classics (since most of the original English teachers were classicists), or on the latest ideas from psychology or educational theory, or just on their personal philosophy of education.  As a result, there have always been considerable differences in the way it's been taught within a school system, and even within a school. 

 

There have been numerous attempts at tidying this up by creating national committees and state standards, but they don't seem to have had much success.    My sense is that these sorts of efforts are more likely to be helpful when they're done in the context of a local community, as a shared writing-down of the teachers' existing pedagogical traditions, rather than as a framework created by outsiders.  Of course, this assumes that the teachers are reasonably competent to start with.   But if they aren't, I don't think all of these top-down pushes for uniformity are going to solve the problem.   :o

[Elisabet1]

I'm training a new employee at work.  During our training time I asked her some questions about herself.... general conversation to get to know her better.

 

She is a 10th grader at a prestigious local public high school. I asked her what she was studying in English class.  She said, "This nine-weeks we are doing debate. It's hard."

 

I said, "What about literature, grammar, writing?"

 

She said, "We did literature the first nine weeks and grammar and writing will be in the spring semester."

 

"What did you do in literature?"

 

"We read some short stories in the textbook. But some were long stories not short."  (I'm not aware of a literature genre known as Long Stories. :) )

 

I asked, "How were you graded?"

 

"Vocab tests on words from the story."

 

"Did you write anything?"

 

"We had to write one paper on one story."

 

So, it seems that in nine weeks time "some" literature was read, presumably discussed in class, some vocab tests were given, and one paper was written.  I'll be interested in further conversations. :)  I'm always interested in how much or how little is actually covered in classrooms. :)

At least she is doing debate.

 

One of my children took AP English Composition through the public school and all she did was take practice AP tests, the entire year. Such a waste. We will not be going that route again.