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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27928 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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For highschool, I would start more drastically reworking it. First, I would basically replace English with history in the mandatory curriculum for everyone who is literate. Learning about Shakespeare and studying themes in classic novels, while not completely useless, is less useful than learning about real historical events. You gain the same “critical thinking” skills analysing what motivated the people in WWI to conflict as you do analysing what motivated the people in Hamlet to conflict, plus it actually happened, giving it substantially more value. The same english classes will be kept as optional electives, like how history is optional in higher grades now. Science will only be mandatory in grade 9, and computer science will be mandatory in grade 10.

I think I have the biggest beef with this. You want to study history without direct exposure to culture. This is a fools errand, and will only allow "experts" to further lie about the past, and demonize your ancestors and your cultural birthright. Exposure to primary sources is the strongest antidote to this.

You know it's funny, I love reading about history, and I love reading generally. I loathed history and English/literature class.

History was always boiled down to memorization of dates, a fact or two about a dozen historical figures, and also memorization of way more geography than was relevant. I had a singular history teacher in 12 years of public school who taught history as a story. I fucking loved that year of history. I don't know what the rest of them were doing. I took AP History, the only AP class I didn't pass the AP test for, and once again it was taught as memorization of trivia. The teacher would meander through irrelevant nonsense. Then she'd give a test on which nothing discussed in class was on it. I'd just read 3 straight chapters from the textbook and hope for the best. Usually got a B.

English was hit or miss. I had teachers that mostly forced us to read emotive, introspective nonsense that was boy kryptonite, and write essays parroting back their correct opinions about it. I had teachers that allowed us to read whatever we wanted, and I'd delve into Dune, HG Wells or Ray Bradberry. I actually enjoyed Shakespeare, 1984, Heart of Darkness and Brave New World which were all required reading. I even enjoyed The Iliad and The Odyssey, though it was difficult for me in middle school. I loathed the 6 months I had to spend on "diverse" authors and racism polemics. I loathed that it increasingly crept into the summer reading, growing from an option out of two dozen books I could read, to a subcategory I had to pick a book from. The autobiographical ones were the worst, because all I saw were terrible anti-social choices to do drugs, commit petty crime, and ignore their education. And then the discussion would all revolve around "systemic racism". I'd just check out completely, it made so little sense.

I don't know how typical this is. My grade school education primarily occurred in the 90's in the US. I no longer trust the education system to be capable of reform. School choice is probably the only possible means of moving towards anything better. At least then people could try different things and see what works, versus this top down enforcement of pedagogy and curriculum that is a Gordian Knot of corrupt politics.

I don't know what the rest of them were doing. I took AP History, the only AP class I didn't pass the AP test for, and once again it was taught as memorization of trivia. The teacher would meander through irrelevant nonsense.

That's wild, given the low priority the AP history tests place on dates (generally just wanting students to know the general order and timeframe of events). Absolutely setting her students up for failure.

My understanding is that at a lot of American high schools they'll hire people for the purpose of coaching then shove them into teaching history courses because those aren't part of state standardized testing.

I was lucky enough that most of our teams were such a low priority that it tended to be the other way around, with teachers getting roped into coaching something.

took AP History, the only AP class I didn't pass the AP test for, and once again it was taught as memorization of trivia

Speaking as someone who taught AP World History for many years, that is because history is often poorly taught. It can be instead taught as a set of historical questions with no correct answers (eg, comparing slave systems), but it rarely is. It doesn't help that many teachers think that the purpose of an AP history class is to prepare students for the AP test.

Given how the AP History tests are formatted, even just teaching to the test would be a significant step up from rote memorization of dates and names.

It's disappointing that I hear about so many classes not even meeting that low bar.

I rather doubt that there are actual AP classes which literally are nothing but rote memorizatiion. For one thing, a syllabus for such a class would be unlikely to pass the AP course audit.

To be clear, when I say history class, I don't mean rote memorization. I mean it would be like the English classes you liked with books like Dune, just instead of Dune it'd be Winston Churchill's biography or some other non-fiction book. Lots of primary sources would be used still.

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