This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I think it’s less about the teachers and more about the kids. Somehow teachers started to think that they need to be “entertaining” to get kids to learn things, so things that work (like learning phonics, or memorizing times tables, or memorizing the dates and people in historical events) but are boring for kids don’t happen. Instead, there are a lot of silly but fun trendy ways of teaching— dramas, artwork, imagining yourself as someone in that event, etc. they don’t work, but the kids have fun and that’s what matters especially for elementary school teachers. Then the kids who don’t know the basics eventually reach a plateau and the methods that they could use to figure out what they don’t know are things they never learned to do. Whole word and guessing based on pictures doesn’t work when you’re reading a dense textbook with no pictures.
I would be interested to read a novella length exploration of the situation. There are some tasks that are themselves fine, but almost nobody is willing to do them all day every day.
It's really hard to get special education assistants, for instance. They're paid poorly to follow around a severely disabled child with poor life prospects, who can't communicate with them very well, and watch them fail at a lot of ordinary and expected tasks. Sometimes the kids get frustrated and lash out at them, and hurt them. Then they quit, often after a couple of months. It's a bad job that can't be done by those who usually do bad jobs, like working in meat processing plants. Then it becomes worse when they're understaffed, which is most of the time. There's some legal liability as well. There are adjustments that could be made at the system level, but are not, for various legal and institutional reasons.
I'm especially curious about some of the ages involved. Five, six, and seven year olds mostly still seem happy to be learning to read and write, and it's important to have strong first grade teachers in a school, especially.
My state teaches phonics and is fine with it, but are now training upper elementary and middle school teachers in phonics, to try to re-teach those who didn't get it the first time. I'm not especially optimistic. I don't think there's necessarily a learning window for reading a semi-phonetic language like English, but if someone is in sixth grade and hasn't learned phonics yet, they must certainly have baggage around it. Their language arts teacher is unlikely to suddenly help them realize what consonant clusters involving "h" are all about.
I don’t think there’s a window, but I think the limit comes with the complexity of texts that would hold the attention of a child that age. First graders are fine with very simple stories using simple words and concepts. A fourth grader wants to read more complex stuff.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link