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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   27877 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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If you eliminate mandatory English classes, the only people who will take them as electives will be those who will benefit the least from them. All those who hate reading, writing, and grammar will avoid them for four years, then suddenly find themselves unable to graduate when they fail the basic reading and writing tests their senior year. And no, the kids aren’t going to do their required history reading, so that’s not going to help. They’ll also use ChatGPT to write their papers (this is already happening), so their writing skills will atrophy as well.

To be clear, I do want mandatory English until kids are literate and can write an understandable five paragraph essay. Not just a single standardized test on graduation. But the English classes that come after literacy is achieved, where you analyze Shakespeare to talk about how peasants ignoring their king leads to natural disasters, should be entirely optional.

And no, the kids aren’t going to do their required history reading, so that’s not going to help. They’ll also use ChatGPT to write their papers (this is already happening), so their writing skills will atrophy as well.

Understand the concern, but I'm unclear as to why this is a problem for reading and writing about World War I and not for reading and writing about, say, The Scarlet Letter.

Would the students not wish to skip the reading and use ChatGPT to write the papers regardless of the subject matter?

Oh, they will, but at least they’ll be forced to deal with English grammar and reading comprehension in their English classes (through lectures, quizzes, in-class assignments, etc.)—hopefully enough so that some of it will stick.

I think you can teach grammar and reading comprehension about historical subject matter that's real instead of fiction. The benefit of fiction is that it's entertaining and kids will pay attention to it more, but you lose that benefit with stuff like Shakespeare that the slow kids won't pay attention to either

I’m not convinced, mostly based on my own school experience. I attended parochial elementary schools and a public high school. I can still remember the shock I felt when, in my freshman Honors English class, we started going over adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, direct and indirect objects, etc. In Honors English. It turns out that this information—which we learned in first and second grade—was largely new for many of the public schools kids. I have no idea what the regular English students were learning.

Now, you could argue that grammar isn’t all that important, but if it is, I don’t see how you’re going to teach it in history class. Or take metaphors and figurative language. I’ve seen college students struggle and fail to understand Swift’s Modest Proposal and Lewis’s Screwtape Letters. Unless you integrate your English literature and history classes (as OracleOutlook suggested), a good chunk of these students will never understand what is basically just written sarcasm.

Now, you could argue that grammar isn’t all that important, but if it is, I don’t see how you’re going to teach it in history class. Or take metaphors and figurative language.

If they're still at that level, they aren't really ready for Shakespeare either. I am talking about replacing Shakespeare and To Kill a Mockingbird with history. Below that, fiction is fine.

Now, you could argue that grammar isn’t all that important, but if it is, I don’t see how you’re going to teach it in history class.

I just want to make sure I understand: you are claiming that you don't understand how one could teach grammar in a history class?

You could teach grammar using any written sentences. You could teach grammar using the comment you just made!

Or take metaphors and figurative language.

Perhaps it would be helpful to use a made-up sentence or short dialogue for the purposes of educating a student about metaphors and figurative language. I guess that technically counts as fiction. But do they really need to read a Shakespeare play or Swift or Lewis? I'll be honest, it seems to me that you really want students to read classic literature and are perhaps reaching for whatever justification is handy. Am I way off?

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