What High School English Class Fails to Teach

Death to high school English - Education - Salon.com

Kim Brooks, in Salon, bemoans the state of her Freshman comp students' writing abilities and lays the blame at the high school English teacher's classroom door.

My father, who ran Temple's comp program not so long ago and taught lots of lower-level classes until retiring...well, this week, I guess...has said many many of the same things about the writing skills his students lack.

How do we get students to do things that are hard--like writing--if we can't demonstrate that doing something hard thing--like teaching writing--is worth the effort?

Writing About Teaching Writing

Despite growing up in academia and being an English major and all of that, it never really occurred to me to ask the question "Why do we teach literature?".

What constitutes education--much less it's social goals, availability or necessity for economic participation--has changed radically in the last century. I still think there's some value in examining previous pedagogical visions. What do we expect people whom we have educated to know?

Education is expensive. Not just in direct outlay of cash, but also in less tangible ways. Given our expectations for achievement, are we investing the right types and amounts of particular resources in the correct places to achieve what we hope to?

What is the cost of having school be compulsory for all children. How does the fact that they HAVE to be there effect how they act in school?

What is so important about reading and writing?

How can we rethink processes and methods based on what we really want to achieve?

What does it look like to act on what we know works?

These are a few of the questions I hope to address in this blog.