I am concerned about the future of literacy and the shrinking curriculum of our public schools.
I began teaching remedial courses at a community college. Most students lacked basic skills. Some operated on the third grade level. The failure rate for the five-course sequence designed to ready students for English 101 was high.
That school’s solution was to simplify the courses, lowering ENG 101’s curriculum to what had been taught in the last remedial class. I felt this was unfair to the students. They weren’t getting an education and they were being lied to.
When I moved on to four-year schools, I found few students below the seventh grade level. However, the seventh grade level was the mode. As I needed to know where to begin teaching them, I composed an anonymous survey to complete in class on the first day.
I asked them to define plot, character and theme, then to explain which is most like the topic of a research paper and how. Most knew what a theme is. Character was often confused with moral standing. Plot was sometimes confused with setting. Very few responded to which of these elements resembles the topic of a research paper.
I would have accepted any well supported response, but received only single word answers or blanks. I also asked them to identify basic journalistic terms — news story, feature story and editorial — and repeated which element was most like papers they would be asked to write and how.
All knew what a news story is. However, with the exception of the five political science majors who also worked on the school newspaper, no one knew what a feature story is. The five budding political scientists were joined by two other students — the nephew of a state representative and a young woman aiming for a legal career — in knowing what an editorial is.
Out of 340 students, spread over two years, only those seven could define an editorial. Could these young adults distinguish between fact from opinion?
Before anyone says that today being literate and reading literature is unnecessary, let’s discuss what literature does. It increases vocabulary. It teaches cause and effect. It often presents social criticism. It stimulates the imagination, which is necessary to solve problems. It can encourage empathy. It might reflect real historical events. It offers lessons in how to behave. As the reader considers these things, the reader develops critical thinking skills.
It surprised me that the question, what English courses did you take, was sometimes answered with English I, II, III and IV. My high school’s program was the traditional Introduction to Literature, followed by American, English and World Literature in successive years. Did their program present an overall plan? Was their reading connected to a time and place? Could they put what they read into context?
I asked how many wrote research papers in high school. Not all did. My high school first assigned the first of many research papers in freshman English. The teacher told us to select an author to write about, then demonstrated how to construct a bibliographic entry. The papers were reports rather than topical papers. What was important was learning how to answer questions through research.
More to the point, it was fun. We talked to each other about why we chose the authors we did. It doesn’t seem that students who can not list three books they read in high school had fun reading.
We discussed the surveys during the second class, then I introduced them to the nonfiction book that they were to have read during the summer. I thought the book, which discussed a family’s struggle with illness, immigration, education and more was fascinating. They thought it was confusing and disorganized. “Every chapter of this novel is about something else,” they offered.
I explained that the book was not a novel and what a novel is. Then, I suggested they reread it and, as they read, to think about questions that arose in their minds. What problems did the family face? How did they solve them? Did they solve them? Their mostly blank faces stared back at me. They did not know how to ask questions.
I feel this reflects part of the crisis we are facing in education. We are graduating people from high school with insufficient vocabularies who can not differentiate between fact and fiction, who are unable to question what they read, then answer those questions.
Can we rely on them to solve the problems of the 21st century?
A native of Michigan, Susan Wozniak belongs to three alumni associations with at least one other woman named Susan Wozniak in each. She can be reached at columnists@gazettenet.com.