Outraged

[queenoftheskies]

That our education system (at least here in southern California) doesn't consider writing important enough to teach kids how to do it.

The only way they get any instruction in composition around here is their SENIOR YEAR in high school...IF they've taken AP Literature as a Junior.

Isn't that OUTRAGEOUS???

They're just now starting to teach the middle schoolers a LITTLE grammar, not even anything serious.

And, my freshmen in high school son has HONORS English and most of it is vocabulary building. Now, I'm all for vocabulary building, but where's the grammar and composition, for god's sake???

If you're wondering what set me off (or even if you're not), last night, I finished my word count on my novel quite early, made my posts, had a bath and got ready for bed somewhere around 8:30, I think. Could have been a little earlier.

I was thrilled with the prospect of sleeping EARLY!!!

Until I discovered that my 14 year-old had a paper due in Health and, OMG, the teacher had given them NO instruction at all. Another teacher had given them research, sources, and a speech outline due...OVERNIGHT.

My oldest son stayed up to help with the speech outline. I stayed up to help INSTRUCT him on proper writing. I took his original paper, marked it up, explained why, how to restructure, how to research, what types of information he needed, and WHY the hell he needed to write it correctly in the first place. (Since the teachers don't care.)

I told him there could be variations and to proofread after he finished and rewrite anything he didn't like or wanted to rephrase.

I couldn't do a lot in the two hours I worked with him, but at least I taught him how to get started next time.

And in conclustion, it looks like, if I want my son to know grammar and composition, I'll have to teach him myself.

Comments

[tryslora]

Our school (in NY) just started a new reading program this year that follows all the NY regulations including all the newest stuff. This means that in second grade my daughter is learning what a subject and predicate are, and her third grade best friend is starting into more complicated grammar. They have spelling, reading comprehension (with some really tough questions -- my Chickie and I are going over a lot while she's learning HOW they ask questions). They are learning to write full and complicate sentences, and do a lot of writing throughout the year. My daughter also happens to like writing on her own (she has said she wants to be an artist and a writer when she grows up and her dad and I are like "GO FOR IT") and listens when I critique her grammar and composition.

Reading your post I'm suddenly thankful for the stringent NY regulations and hopeful that maybe when they're teaching for the test, they're starting to also teach the good stuff like how the writing works (not just vocabulary). *fingers crossed*

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

A good friend of mine, veteran public school teacher for years, is thinking of taking the financial hit for retiring early because she's so sick of the idiocy being forced on the teachers. Her journalism program shitcanned (after she won several national awards), and writing and analysis stripped from the curriculum, which is now all about grinding out drill sheets so the kids will look better on the SATs in spring. You know, "No child left behind." She says there is no time to actually fit the grammar concept into the language, or to get kids to think, or write a paragraph--they have to move on at the state-mandated pace, like it or lump it, and grind out thousand of boring worksheets all geared toward better scores on a test that doesn't prepare anyone for anything--but will look good in Washington. She wants to quit, she is so dispirited.

[redkudu.livejournal.com]

Around 1990, Whole Language Learning took root as the Newest Educational Fad. The theory behind it (very loosely) is that students would learn all they needed to know about how to write from reading proper writing. It was good for global learners, but no good for analytical learners. Yet it was accepted and enforced throughout education, and still is. We're very strongly discouraged from teaching grammar at my school. Another recent educational fad is student engagement -- if they're not being entertained, they're not being engaged, and thus they're not learning. So, memorization of words, definitions, and grammar rules are out, because they're booooring and routine.

And when it all comes down to it, who is blamed for the failure of students on the state-mandated tests? The teachers. Tie my hands and punish me for not weaving, why doncha. I actually try not to think about it too much (because it makes me furious), and too many parents haven't got a clue, or are too busy fighting teachers about their kids' grades (not their kids' skills) that the one bond that could really change education -- the parent/teacher bond -- is destroyed by distraction. If you actually read the "No Child Left Behind Act" the wording itself creates an adversarial wedge between parents and teachers. (I'm about to post a rant on that in my blog, actually.) There are, of course, many, many articles addressing this. But...they're all in teacher magazines, and that's a little like preaching to the choir.

Your kids are lucky. Their mom knows writing, and has seen there's a problem and can help outside the classroom. The problem is inside the classroom where teachers' hands are tied.

[dragovianknight.livejournal.com]

You're interesting. I'm friending you. ::stalks::

(No, really, I'm harmless. queenoftheskies will vouch for me.)

[redkudu.livejournal.com]

You're interesting.

I have my moments.

I'm friending you.

Back atcha.

[arkiewriter.livejournal.com]

Similar things happen here. Grammar was not emphasized even when I was still in school (I graduated in 1994), as the schools were more paranoid about their standardized test scores than anything else, and those don't cover grammar very well. I coasted along until I moved to a school that offered AP courses my junior year, and I got my first C ever in English the first six-week grading period. To this day, I rank Mrs. Eggburn as one of the best teachers I had the privilege of knowing. She ran us through the wringer on grammar, style, and analysis, but made sure we knew WHAT we did wrong. My senior year teacher served us with an automatic 25% point deduction an any paper with more than two grammar/spelling mistakes. To earn any of those points back, you had to analyze your own paper and find the mistakes. That got you 5 points per mistake back. She's one of the good ones too. But they had a lot more freedom because they were AP courses. Mrs. Mathews (the senior teacher) said that she wasn't allowed to grade that harshly even in her advanced classes, and that the regular classes (which she didn't teach) were even more restricted on how much of the class time they settled upon grammar. And that was a school that DID seem to still care a bit.

It's such a fad now to make sure every child succeeds as far as those stupid bubble tests say, and writing simply doesn't fit into the equation. I wonder how many kids will end up in college and end up failing Freshman Comp because they can't write a paper to save their life, yet had SAT/ACT scores off the scale?

We get dirty looks for correcting the boys' grammar in public... Sad, sad world. I'm glad we homeschool, or no telling what they'd be picking up schoolwise by now. Their little galpal certainly can't write coherently.

[aethereal-girl.livejournal.com]

My senior year teacher served us with an automatic 25% point deduction an any paper with more than two grammar/spelling mistakes. To earn any of those points back, you had to analyze your own paper and find the mistakes. That got you 5 points per mistake back.

I see . . . a serious flaw with this approach.

It seems like the best thing to do would be to put in a number of deliberate mistakes while writing the paper. Then, even if you couldn't find any mistakes you may have accidentally made, you could get your points back by correcting the mistakes you introduced.

[arkiewriter.livejournal.com]

Not usually a technique used by AP level students. We were taking the class because we wanted to, not because we had to. I'm sure there were students who abused it, but her theory was that if we didn't know grammar by senior year, nothing she did was going to counteract it. Especially since she knew very well that none of us had made it to her class without surviving Mrs. Eggburn first. ;-)

To be honest, I never had the deduction made, so I don't know how she handled any suspicious behavior from students who tried to take advantage.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

My daughter and son went through the Montessori system of teaching. The Montessori schools had the highest rankings for any schools in the Cincinnati Public School System on the California Achievement Tests, which were what the Cincinnati school system used for evaluation before the mandated tests that were part of the idiotic "No Child Left Behind" program, for which I don't have adequate words to describe without resorting to profanity. Since then, the Montessori system has been partially dismantled because the teachers must now "teach to the test" for the State of Ohio. Guess what -- as a result, the scores for the school have been dropping ever since, and Montessori-taught teachers have been leaving in droves.

I'm glad my daughter's graduated and that this is my son's final year of high school. If that weren't the case, we'd be searching for some other alternative, because the current educational system is broken. The teachers will get the blame, but it's not the teachers: it's the bureaucracy that wraps them in iron chains and the lack of funding that robs the kids of resources and underpays the teachers.

Want to have good schools? Make teaching a profession that someone can actually make a decent living wage with, and take the money we're currently throwing at the defense budget and put it instead toward education.

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Amen.

A dissenting voice

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Someone has to say this:

Current research suggests that teaching children grammar improves foreign language acquisition but doesn't actually do much for their composition in English. Many, many children, learn the rules and then utterly fail to apply it to their own work. The main correlation for good grammar is reading a lot of well written and grammatically challenging material.

No-one ever taught me grammar, and I spend a lot of time correcting the grammar of submissions to Foundation.

Have you *asked* your child's teacher how much notice was given for the assignment? I query because I spend a lot of time dealing with irate parents whose child has lied about what they were asked to do/how much assistance they were given/whether they actually turned up to help sessions. Have you asked the teacher what advice s/he thought she had given (some students let "instructions" waft through their ears as far as I can tell. Every time I ask for an essay in, I tell them to write their names on the work--they've been doing this for a decade, and *still* I get papers with no identifying marks.). Sorry to bring this up, I'm sure your child is a good kid, but as far as I can tell, lying over homework isn't "bad-kid" behaviour, it's "oh my god, my mom's going to kill me" behaviour.

Re: A dissenting voice

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

The essay was actually in a Health class. I thought I had mentioned that, but perhaps I did not. My mistake.

It's not the teacher's job there to teach him how to write an essay. I was not ranting against her, nor any teachers. I was speaking to the fact that the state of California (and many other states) do not consider these skill important enough to be taught to students.

As for the teacher that assigned the speech research, resources, and outline to be done overnight. This is just her second year teaching, I believe. This year, she's in over her head because she agreed to take the Academic Decathlon team over from a veteran teacher. I feel for her, but she's very angry and taking her anger out on the students.

How do I know this? Two ways. First is that my oldest son is the assistant coach on the Academic Decathlon team. He's an employee of the school. They pay him to do this. He can attest to the instructions she gave and has plans to discuss the fact with her that the freshmen students don't know HOW to even do this yet, so it's a little overwhelming for them.

Second is that I know both last year's Academic Decathlon coach, who is catching some of the flack for this year's difficulties and I also know the new teacher's mentor, who told me he's trying to support her and help her through this rough time.

It's not a condemnation. It's an effort to help my freshman son through this.

I am a very supportive parent...to the schools, to the teachers, to my children. Or at least I try to be. I try to be open minded. And, I am the first to question whether or not my child is telling me the truth about the assignment. I actually call teachers and ask if I have a doubt. Or the counselor. Believe me, it's a really quick way to make sure you always get the truth. :)

Re: A dissenting voice

[fjm.livejournal.com]

All sounds good, although I feel correcting grammar is for every subject :-)

[spaceoperadiva.livejournal.com]

Yet another example of why we homeschool. We're incredibly lucky that we can.

[dragovianknight.livejournal.com]

Remember when I had to teach Number One Son that a new speaker gets a new paragraph, because they hadn't bothered to teach him that before assigning him short stories to write?

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

I do.

Isn't it pathetic?

[dragovianknight.livejournal.com]

Pisses me off.

Even if I wanted kids, I wouldn't have them, because I'd wind up being arrested for cussing out a principal or something. :P

I had more real English/grammar education under my belt by 6th grade than your kids graduated with...and your kids are "advanced". Only they shouldn't be; that level should be what's expected of students!

ARGH!

You've heard my various rants on education before, though, so no need to repeat them for the zillionth time.

[dragovianknight.livejournal.com]

Of course, I had The Dreaded Mrs. Walton in high school, so I'd been put through 20 page term papers long before I ever hit college. Heh. Oh, she was a tough old bat, but she could teach.

She wouldn't be allowed to teach, today. Such a pity. Every student should have a Mrs. Walton.

I never learned my writing in school.........

[dracschick.livejournal.com]

i just 'picked it up' as I went along. Sadly, none of the English teachers that I know/knew is a writer.

[vincam.livejournal.com]

IMHO, better to not teach it at all than to try to teach it and get it wrong. That's what happens in the schools my kids attended. They'd come to me for help, I'd look at their corrected papers and the instruction from the teachers, and groan. Then I'd tell them, "Okay, do it the way they say and get the grade, but THIS is how it's really done." And, being a product of the CA educational system, I'm mostly self-taught. I make my living writing fiction, and in the past have been a journalist and wrote advertising copy. I am not amused by what passes for education here and in CA, and has for at least forty years.

Or even further. My aunt was a schoolteacher, and was my mother's fourth grade teacher. The aunt flunked my mother, and Mom never really got over it, thinking she had failed because she was stupid. Many decades later, she asked me what the term "Scotch Irish" meant, and said her sister had told her it referred to people who lived on the border between Scotland and Ireland.

Good swimmers, those Scotch Irish.