While we have an undervaluing of the educational degree, we also have lower requirements for awarding it, further degrading the system and its rewards. If a high school graduate can not read with comprehension past a sixth grade level, they can not be expected to perfect this skill in the newly accelerated curricula, yet they will be officially granted the sanction of governing educational bodies. Passed again to the next higher level, without actually achieving the intellectual growth their diplomas represent.
Possibly the first five years in education should be spent in nothing but reading, art and music. These are the foundations for all critical and creative thought. Science, math, social studies and all other traditional school subjects are all dependent on reading and skills in accessing abstract reasoning, therefore these subjects can wait until reading is not an issue or impediment to their study. Only when we have produced a fifth grade of excellent readers who honor their creative thought and impulses can we expect our universities to produce higher thinking graduates.
Totally agree! I know some people that have graduated and can read but do not understand what they are reading. This can either be because the teachers did't want to deal with them so they just passed them along for someone else or that the child never got the push they needed from home. I know it is better than it use to be in the past, but it still happens.
ReplyDeleteunfortunately, we're way behind most other nations in the basics. Maybe only a few people, statistically, ever really produce creative work that moves us ahead - but EVERYONE should be given the tools to try.
DeleteI wholeheartedly agree, and perhaps would even suggest it remains a major focus after the first five years. Personally, I think texting is ruining the written word. I'm one of those people that gets an involuntary twitch every time I see blatant grammatical errors, so when I receive a message like "lol i lkei ur funy pics!!1!", my brain seizes up. I can excuse (readable) texts, but when I see, say, correspondence from a CEO of a company that looks like a twelve-year-old wrote it (really happened), my faith in humanity dies a little.
ReplyDeleteI agree that texting is destroying our traditional written communication, but hopefully it's only re-inventing it. I've recently been on "Tumblr" where I have seen some amazingly creative thought flying. The purpose of writing is to communicate, and every channel has its own language. Business and professional communications intended to reflect authority should certainly never contain grammatical error or slang. We're just experiencing a renaissance of language as art - of course, not all art is good.
DeleteSure reading really opens doors to understanding alot of study if delivered properly and just going to school to learn other subjects is not enough if one can not and translate art or understand music, how do they subjects they are learning.
ReplyDeleteThe inability to read well holds back students who would learn so much more about philosophy, science and political arts, as well as theoretical fiction, as these genres of writing have so much more complicated vocabulary. Higher levels of creative thinking need to be inspired by others who have achieved it, and this requires strong, focussed reading skills.
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