Sex in the Classroom Part V: Conclusion and Examples

I will now illustrate this truth by presenting examples, briefly describing ineffective and effective approaches for teaching kids to read a popular high school novel, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles. Here's how a typical blunt instrument attempts to involve students. Please notice its lack of force:

After Finny and Gene jump from the tree, Leper reacts to the events. The author says Leper chooses a side in a "dispute" that he foresees. What is that "dispute"?

What on earth does a kid learn from this? He learns to get together with friends and find the answer on the Internet, that's what he learns. Google it. Do you get any answers? Of course you do. This is a blunt device, obtuse, to tell you the truth. What kid is going to read the book when he can find the answer in about two seconds on his computer screen?

If you want kids to become good readers, you need to force them to approach such a question in the appropriate manner. Make them read and put narrative details together first. Then you give them this question. Let's take a look at such an instrument. Here's a series of questions from my close reading study guide of A Separate Peace, Chapter 1:

16.  Gene claims to have been through a prolonged period of “convalescence,” a period of recovery from illness or injury. Speculate as to the nature of the affliction from which Gene has had to recover.

17.  The New England elms are called “those most _________, bankerish of trees.”

18.  Speculate as to how Gene feels about the trees. Is he comforted by them, or is he intimidated by them?

19.  Speculate as to whether Gene himself is inclined more toward being a Republican or a Democrat, or, if you prefer, a “liberal” as opposed to a “conservative.”

20.  What is “The Cage” at Devon?

21.  Gene crosses the playing fields. He plans to look at something there. What is it?

22.  Of what people does the tree remind Gene?

23.  Why is Gene glad to have seen the tree?

24.  The story will be about violence. What three things do not endure by violence?

25.  The story is mostly a flashback. It begins with the “sarcastic summer.”  What is the year?

26.  With what year is “Upper-Middler” comparable, grade 9, 10, 11, or 12?

27.  Who were “draft-bait”?

28.  What is Finny’s height and weight?

29.  Who is next to jump from the tree after Finny?

30.  Before this person jumps, Finny seems to read his mind. What does Finny say to suggest that is the case?

31.  Why is it extraordinary for Upper-Middlers to jump from the tree?

32.  According to Gene, for what reason does Leper (Elwin Lepellier) claim Gene’s jump was better than Finny’s?

Google them. Go ahead; make my day. Google until your eyeballs fall out. You'll read so much junk looking for the answers that you'll throw your computer out the window. Then you'll be forced to sit down with the book and answer all these questions in about 15 minutes or less.

For 15 minutes, your students will be doing close reading, with their minds entirely unstuck from sex.

It will be a forced reading of exactly six pages, specifically (in the edition I'm using), from the bottom of page 3 to the bottom of page 9. It doesn't take too much time before your kids begin to realize that they now have a new choice: They can read through twenty or thirty or forty Google hits and spend an hour or more on the Internet, or they can sit down and read six pages out of the book.

Yes! Now you're starting to understand! It's easier for them to actually do the work they're supposed to do than it is to cheat. But read the warning labels first, folks. We're not here to kill skills. With overuse of any instrument, whether it's blunt or sharp, you can kill them off. So keep the periods of required close reading short, to start. Force them into it once or twice a week, and only during class. Encourage them to close read outside of class, but don't require it.

And it's OK for them to get together inside and outside of class to help each other; in fact, if you encourage them to do so, they will begin to share the actual reading skills they're developing. They won't be able to use the Internet to cheat. They will have to show each other what they have read in order to discern meaning! So a little collaboration is all right.

Please, give my methods a try. Yes, I know they're not perfection, but if you want to teach your kids to read for themselves, you'll need to use them or something very much like them. Go ahead.

This is not the whole story. Please download and read my free product at TeachersPayTeachers.com:

Reading Fearfully Close (Are Gene and Finny Gay?) Common Core Essentials

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Reading-Fearfully-Close-Are-Gene-and-Finny-Gay-Common-Core-Essentials

Here's another free one that discusses writing, in case you're interested in dealing with that weakness in our educational system:

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Dealing-with-Writing-Common-Core-Skills

Best of luck. May Force be with you.

Sex in the Classroom Part IV: Arguments Summarized

To review the argument before you then: Sex is a delightful, involuntary physical reaction wired into the nervous system. It provides climactic emotional explosions in the pleasure centers of the brain. Humans have a natural urge for sex.

Reading is not a natural urge. No teacher of reading is going to overcome biological needs and appetites developing in the bodies and brains of adolescents by attempting to make reading look sexy. Reading is not sexy.

Reading is a disciplined intellectual skill requiring mental focus. It either becomes a permanent habit of mind, or a weakness. The majority of people, even so-called "educated," "literate" people, permanently remain weak readers, all because sex intruded at a critical moment in life. Some of them hold highly responsible positions in fields such as law, business, government, and yes, even education. They commonly admit weaknesses in both reading and writing, mistaking them as "talents" they were deprived of at birth, rather than skills they failed to practice while they were preoccupied by sex.

Poor, poor bewildered people!

That period in life vitally important for development of the physical body is also a crucial moment for development of the intellect, and children fortunate enough to be raised in a free country tend to become obsessed with their natural urges, and thus, tend also to learn very poorly how to read. Generally speaking, the more freedom kids have, the less effectively they will read, all because of sex.

Yes, it's that simple!

What is to be done? How do you pry the adolescent loose from sex long enough to teach him or her how to read? Reading can't stimulate the adolescent brain as sex stimulates the brain, body, mind, and soul. It doesn't always "open up a person's life to new and wonderful possibilities." Stop telling kids that stuff!

Instead, answer a simple dilemma with a simple solution: Resort to force.

Yes, I'm a conservative in most essential ways. I believe in force. But I don't believe in brute force. I don't believe in putting a book in front of a kid and whipping him until he cries. I have serious problems with those who do. So although I admonish educators to avoid taking a liberal view of "force," I also plead with them not to behave as iron-willed conservatives. Don't punish your kids into using their minds, because if you get too harsh about it, they'll shut down.

A firmly grounded conservative then, but just barely conservative, and by no means pessimistic, I am mistaken by many of my conservative friends as a liberal. It's understandable because, in fact, I cozy up to liberals pretty often. I even admire them at times, and particularly at those times, I yearn to be like them, but I'm not. I don't have enough faith in the goodness of humanity to embrace idealism and true optimism.

It may sound strange for you to hear me say it, but I know exactly where I stand. I'm a gut-level conservative stuck near the borderland of uncertainty, but not in it. I'm very certain about the uncertainties I carry with me, if that makes any sense. Searching through history and literature, I find others who were similarly comforted by this perspective on life. Shakespeare, I believe, was one baffled by life, but he was very content being so. Another was Benjamin Franklin.

Further elucidation upon my philosophical tenets can be set aside for the moment. If you desire to find out more, you can look through my other writings. For now, however, my purpose is to point out the advantages of embracing uncertainty long enough to comprehend reality, at least this one time.

As Franklin put it when he admonished the colonial representatives to "doubt a little of [their] own infallibility" and maybe even admire the moderates on the other side of a very vague dividing line, the time comes when we must embrace an idea that seems antithetical to our life principles in order to advance as a society. He was appealing for unanimous confirmation of the newly written Constitution of the United States, a document they all found wanting in some way or another. But they compromised, allowing themselves to see for a brief moment as Franklin did. They all signed, and the greatest nation in the world was born.

So, grounded on facts, and yet sheltered in comfortable uncertainty, let us doubt a little of our own infallibility now and admit the reality that students must be forced to read.

I'm not asking for a signature; I'm only asking you to recognize that we have very few ways of delivering this skill: We can compel them to practice by observing and applying frequent embarrassing or even emotionally painful reminders to keep them on task; we can give kids drugs to kill off those other urges inside them (with the physical urges reduced, reading and other intellectual pursuits might seem more of a pleasure), or we can use a sharply focused educational tool, as described in Part III, to pry our way past kids' sexual obsessions and provide a path to the brain. We need to stab it in there like a tire iron and pry it loose - but ever so gently!

Sex in the Classroom Part III: Distracting Them Long Enough to Teach Them

The natural track of an adolescent's mind is through the valley of the shadow of sex. It's not "death," and it's not "evil." Oh, it may be wise to train young people to deny their nature and to put other things ahead of it, but that is an argument for moralists, theologians, and philosophers.

I'm an educator. This is not about "rightness" or "wrongness" of adolescent sexual preoccupations. It's about reality and finding a way around or through it. Our duty is to teach sex-minded students to read. We must do so without drugging them or intimidating them or making them feel guilty, and we must also refrain from deflating them. That is, we can't deny these kids the right to think about things they must think about, like sex. They're designed by nature to be preoccupied for a period of time in their lives, and we aren't going to change it much.

Before I reveal and describe an educational tool capable of compelling obsessed adolescents to develop their reading skills, it is extremely important that I make this point clear: We must be careful how we use it. A tool that can exert the amount of force necessary to dislodge the adolescent brain from its sexual preoccupations is incredibly powerful. We must not torture them with this thing by using it too often. Their reading skills have been neglected far too long. Intruding past the sex only for brief moments, we must open a channel to their brains just enough to gain access. We must force them to practice for a limited amount of time and then let them go. Excessive use of this instrument at this stage will kill the skill, not foster it. Be careful! Force your way past nature into their minds gradually, and don't intrude for long periods of time.

So, now let's have a look at this educational instrument.

I call it a close reading study guide, but it might as well be called a "cognition scalpel." I'm refraining from using that moniker publicly at this time. Perhaps someday it will not prompt the obvious questions and misunderstandings it would now, and I will feel better about using it then. This scalpel does not cut brain tissue, but it most certainly forces the mind open. One might say, "cuts it open," but of course, again, that suggests some level of violence, and, although it is a pretty good metaphor, this instrument is by no means violent.

It forces its way into the cognitive processes by requiring students to read and interact at a high level of alertness. It doesn't cut brain tissue; it finely slices the mental operations of reading, decoding, deciphering, and discerning. As it probes literature, it probes the mental activities of the students' minds. It does not compel them to reflect on five or ten or twenty or one hundred pages of reading they supposedly "have done." It does not demand lengthy written or oral explanations from them; it demands READING. It does not require the writing of "mini-essays" while they proceed through a work of literature. In fact, it even refrains from requiring complete sentences in answer to questions.

The tool is very, very sharp. Be careful with it!

The tool forces students to pay attention to what they're reading RIGHT NOW! It opens their eyes to details. It requires them to answer probing questions, but formulating and recording an answer requires only seconds, and the operation does not disrupt the train of thought an author is building in his narrative.

You need to preserve that aspect of the instrument. Don't go tinkering with it by requiring occasional sentences and/or paragraphs in answer to the questions. If you're going to use a question as an essay topic, do so, but don't force kids to write essays while they're engaged in a close reading session. During every one of those, most of a student's time should be spent READING.

Nearly every answer will be a word, a number, a "yes," or "no," or a brief phrase. Half the time, the answers will focus upon rather simple details of the narrative. Students will constantly be asked to speculate, but in many of those cases, a wide range of responses will be allowed. The only wrong answer for any speculative question is one that is entirely off topic. When combined and reviewed, all the details and speculation will naturally flow to logical junctures of reflection and interpretation of developments.

But because this tool is very, very sharp, even at those junctures, answers will be brief, and the story will continue to move along quite fast. Again, the emphasis is on the READING, even when the work requires students to analyze, interpret, reflect, and speculate.

At this point, if you are reading closely, you have already developed an internal dialogue with me, the author you're currently reading. Within that conversation, some conservatives among you are saying, "Get that liberal lunatic out of here!" On the other hand, if you are a liberal, you may be saying, "Stay away from my kids with those sharp instruments of yours. You're not going to torture my kids, you fanatic conservative!"

Relax. We won't be performing any wild experiments, we will not hurt anyone, and we won't be waterboarding anybody. The kids might even develop a taste for this. (Reading is an acquired taste, you know.)

Our job is to prepare our students. These kids routinely take many high stakes standardized tests that presume their reading skills to be at a higher level than we demand of them. How long are we going to wait before we expose them to reality? I say, they're overdue for something like this, even if you insist upon calling it "lunatic," or "torture."

You might be one of those who say you'd rather pique your students' interest and get them to respond to an inborn curiosity; show them the delights of reading, and they will naturally gravitate toward it. Teach them to appreciate the work of a great author, and you will create an appetite within them for more, and they will be drawn to reading closely.

More liberal nonsense, and at the very least, poppycock! People have urges that are far more natural and more powerful at twelve to twenty-five years of age than reading. Your so-called "natural" intellectual appetites are going to fail both them and you.

True liberals think like that, however, and education is a-clutter with too-far-left liberals. They've got an idealistic path to success all mapped out in their brains: Do this, and that is what will happen, and we all will live happily ever after.

True conservatives are even worse. They developed "No Child Left Behind." That's a whole story in itself. I've registered my distaste for it sufficiently elsewhere, however. We have other fish to fry here.

Sex in the Classroom Part II: The Common Core, Adolescence, and Skills

Is it any wonder we see a trend of kids' reading and comprehension skills staying pretty high in elementary grades and dropping off right around the time of puberty? It's because of all the sex! Their minds are being hijacked by it!

Prowling the rows between desks in our middle school classrooms, we wade past flirtatious girls studied in the art of pop culture fashion, dressed in clothing that just barely conceals their fast-growing "charms," as the Romantic poets used to call them, and responding to these provocations, the less mature boys, who "show off" and strut around at every opportunity like a bunch of little roosters.

Our kids' minds are elsewhere! On sex! Is it not obvious? Who or what can disrupt their attention long enough to make them read? No one? Nothing?

Easy to give up, isn't it?

Seldom do we actually impose upon them challenging reading assignments (poor dears, struggling with all those hormones). We spare them out of pity. It's too often true. In fact, I have heard from students themselves, that the only time they ever read is when they "follow along with [audio] recordings," of the plays or stories or poems assigned.

So I ask them, what goes on during the rest of class time? And this is what they tell me: "Oh, we get vocabulary lists and stuff like that, and speeches, and art projects, and next week we're dressing up like the Canterbury travelers. And we get extra credit for it, too!"

They get immersed in experiential and declarative knowledge with so-called "enrichment activities," but they don't learn how to read because THEY DON'T READ!

We teach kids not to read. Vocabulary lists give them opportunities not to read. So do exercises in editing practice and grammar. Their class time gets filled with anything but reading. Reading gets relegated to situations other than class time, like when they have to take the ACT, for heaven's sake!

We rationalize about it. We insist that we can't have them struggling in our classrooms with language they don't understand. Are they better off waiting to encounter the language later, during a high stakes test? Are we doing them a favor making sure they don't experience the pain now? Is it easier on them and us to play a recording of someone else reading aloud, making sure they have their books open while the machine is running? Then we can tell their parents and our colleagues how scrupulous we have been about having them all "read along!" There! What a lovely scenario we can produce! But of course, it's also a good idea to wade through the sex occasionally and make them put away their cell phones behind those open books, isn't it?

To some extent at least, I can understand your situation, and I commiserate. It's not even practical to make kids read every play or poem or story or novel assigned. What with all their other class work, the math, the science, and the social studies, it's overwhelming! We haven't even begun to consider football practice and part time jobs.

Surprise! I agree with you!

Yes, I know you use quality study guides that probe the meaning of a story and require higher level thinking skills, but how many literary experts have already plowed that ground? Hundreds? Thousands? And how many hits do you get after typing those questions into a Google search engine?

Are students becoming skilled readers, able to draw inferences of their own from a text, or are we just handing them declarative knowledge about Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Huck Finn? What on earth are they going to do when they get a passage from Othello on the ACT? They certainly won't have recordings to listen to or videos to watch; they won't get any credit for showing up for their ACT dressed like Desdemona or Iago! They'll need to read and interpret for themselves when they get there. Are we giving them sufficient practice to face that reality?

No! We are not! In class, we teach our kids how NOT to read and MAYBE still get by in life! Shame on us! And the sorts of instructional tools we commonly use in conjunction with literary studies are very blunt instruments. Our kids are used to being beaten with them, and they've found ways to avoid them or numb themselves to the pain. Time for something new, don't you think? It's time that we TEACH, and FORCE THEM TO EXERCISE, true reading skills.

Sex in the Classroom Part I: Cheaters Doing Research

When I was in high school long ago, we students were given "worksheets" (not "study guides"), and we were told by our teachers to do them independently, and most of us, honest as we were (also lacking a computer connected to the Internet, and, let's face it, perhaps lacking initiative required to cheat effectively), simply read the books and did our work.

But those study guides were, and still are, blunt instruments. They didn't serve us well. They didn't foster the skill of close reading, and they still don't. Their intent is good, and the questions in them are legitimate. They are necessary and useful, but used to excess, they kill reading skills instead of building them. The questions disrupt the flow of narrative. You can't read Humpty-Dumpty and keep track of it while doing one of those!

So did close reading die in me? Of course it did. I never learned how to read well from my high school English teachers. Oh, they helped me appreciate literature, yes. But not one of them helped me to encounter it and appreciate it for myself. It was a college instructor who helped me by demonstrating it every day and forcing me to encounter language in an entirely different, more natural manner. He did lectures on the great works, just like all the other profs, but he had a special ability to refer to critical details and developments by formulating questions instead of declarative statements. He would force us to read and then ask us what we thought. We'd kick it around a while, and then he'd show us the author's intent. He'd show us by combining our answers to previous questions (and his) with the current, critical interpretive issues in question, and we'd all see where the author was "really going."

(Yes, you can use my study guides to do that too. That's where they come from, from that Professor. Go ahead!)

Our kids today don't read; they cheat. In school, their primary interest is one another. Their minds and bodies are so full of sexual energy (let's be frank about it - that's exactly what it is) that they can't concentrate. Walk into any classroom of students, grades 6 through 12, and you'll find yourself wading in sex! That's what's on their minds, not learning! They'll find out where authors are "really going" all right; they'll find out by searching the Internet later at home.

We have a generation of teachers today who are great at fooling themselves. Too many of them have chosen to believe that all of their students will follow instructions, do their work, and turn it in, exactly as they themselves did in the past. If kids do cheat, well, "They're cheating themselves. They'll just have to live with it, and I tell them so!"

That used to be known as a "copout." Still a pretty damn good term to apply, I think. Teachers who offer that little statement have chosen not to care. They do not teach essential reading and interpretive skills.

I dare you to have a frank discussion with your class. You'll discover that most of them don't read anymore. Their ability to find answers to your probing questions without doing the work of reading the literature can only be exceeded by the greatest criminal minds of history. The Internet not only provides what they need to cut and paste; it has also taught them the art of conspiracy in the form of networking and collaboration. At the very least, their ability to divvy up work, "research" answers, and report back to one another about their findings is astounding.

We're mostly teaching kids to be great cheaters, or, if you prefer a euphemism, great "researchers" as they exercise the fine art of cutting corners.

I've always been a skeptical old bastard, and I'm conservative, not too extremely conservative, just a little conservative, but deeply so, and mistrustful, way down inside my soul. I have to be shown, in a court of law, that kids aren't cheating. Until that moment, I simply assume that they are doing so.

Yeah, it's a pretty nasty attitude, I know. Here's how I lost the vestiges of my trust:

When I began teaching AP kids back around 2000, I reasoned, they must want to learn! There can't be too many cheaters in a roomful of AP kids! They want to do this! So I followed the lead of former AP teachers and did what they told me. I copied their styles and substance. I assigned a popular novel, 1984, by George Orwell, as a summer reading project. The bulk of my students' summer work was reading that novel and writing interpretive essays in response to my (very traditional) questions about it. During that summer, I traveled to Michigan and met in a session designed to "train" high school teachers in the art of delivering Advanced Placement English Composition. I received confirmation that my method of using questions provided by past veteran AP teachers was nothing short of exemplary.

On the first day of school in the fall, I got many suspiciously similar written responses from the kids. Being a skeptical old bastard, I began Googling quotes from their work. I came up with a rough estimate on the percentage of plagiarized essays. I confirmed at least some plagiarism in about 70% of the work handed in. I suspected far more. Later, I followed up by giving my students reading quizzes and forcing them to do close reading study guides. The results there indicated that almost none of them had actually read the novel.

We're teaching our high school students, even our AP kids, how to escape reading!

I'm convinced a significant portion of our students purchase essays regularly, and being a skeptical old bastard, I believe some sophisticated computer programmers have designed robots that plagiarize and sell such essays by accessing obscure sources on the Internet.

I'm not absolutely sure how the robots work, but here is the impression I'm getting: The individual hired to provide an essay finds one on the Internet that fits the bill exactly. (That is not as hard as you might think.) Then his robot (which, for purposes of narrative, we will call "Gigolo" here) searches for all essays about the topic containing some of the key words and the substance of a given passage, say, fifteen words out of this particular essay, that fits the exact needs of the client. When it finds a source, it conducts a Google search to see where it leads. If it leads back to the same document, that exact phrase is not used, but if it leads nowhere specifically, the exact phrase is incorporated into the product for the client, and what do you end up with? You end up with a plagiarized essay paraphrased.

The key part of clever plagiarism, however, is finding obscure sources. Have you ever Googled a suspicious phrase from a student essay and ended up with three or four hits? Then you go to one of these websites, and you discover that it requires certain credentials to become eligible to use it. Perhaps it is a collection of graduate papers at The Ohio State University, or all of the language arts doctoral theses at Stanford. But you ain't gettin' in there! Entry to those websites is privileged! Yes, sir. And guess who has privileges? That's right; a certain computer robot named Gigolo. Gigolo has privileged rights to enter many, many, many collections of papers at colleges and universities all over this country.

So when you conduct a Google search, you find obscure references to the sources, but you don't find the sources or the plagiarized passages themselves. And when Turnitin.com gets a hold of the essay, it confirms plagiarism, but it can only track it to other plagiarized papers from high schools in Knoxville, Tennessee; Dallas, Texas; Las Vegas, Nevada; Norman, Oklahoma; Schenectady, New York; Eugene, Oregon; and dozens of other places around the country.

Well, that's my theory, anyway.

But when a student protests that the plagiarism pointed out by Turnitin.com is only coincidental, and that these dozens of identical passages found in other essays mean nothing, what do you do?

Well, here's what I do: I tell my kids that they can have up to 15% on their Turnitin.com plagiarism scores, and I won't penalize them. (I know that's inviting sucker punches from them, but I don't care. I'll take a few blows to get education done.) Then I show the 0% "Similarity Scores" Turnitin.com offers for (perhaps only "the few") students in my class who I'm convinced actually did their own work. And I give all my students one extra credit point for each point they score below 15%, up to 15 points. Next, I invite the students with unacceptable scores to go through their essays and reword those passages that they've plagiarized, giving them a little additional exercise in reiteration, a skill they badly need. (When I confirm expert sources, I require extra citations also.) I tell them to re-submit their essays as many times as they want, until they get their scores back down to 15% or below.

Next time they write, they're a whole lot more careful about "cutting corners."

And when they read, well, I can't control what they do outside of class, but I sure as heck can control what they do with their class time! In class, I FORCE MY STUDENTS TO READ.

Were All the Great Writers Liberals?

No, they weren't all liberals. Many of the great writers were quite conservative, in fact.

Writers usually express political and philosophical leanings. Shakespeare is the only exception I have found. Somehow, he maintained philosophical integrity but resisted the temptation to take a side in politics. Instead, he lambasted all forms of "ambition" for leadership, whether liberal, conservative, or any other. In Shakespeare's mind, it seems, any desire to assume a leadership role is the seed of corruption. I can find no exceptions to this rule in his work.

Most other writers intentionally create situations designed to reinforce their political, as well as their philosophical views. Dickens, who ranks as England's second or third most renowned author, was an outspoken liberal, famous for demonizing the corruption of wealth. A 20th Century American author, Steinbeck, did pretty much the same during the Great Depression, when capitalism became a scapegoat for all the nation's woes. Harper Lee eviscerated the racial prejudices of a highly conservative Southern town.

Authors "stack the deck," of course. They create situations in which all the worst caricatures of their targeted villains blossom. To Lee's credit, she at least admits being one of the many villains who took a long time to grow out of her ignorance.

Two examples of superb conservative authors are William Golding and John Knowles.

In Lord of the Flies, Golding exposes human frailties and makes a case for the importance of rules in preventing chaos:

When a planeload of schoolboys (most of them prepubescent) crash-lands on an island, all adults perish, and a large number of the students survive. Thus begins a profoundly interesting experiment and a probing inquiry into human nature. The liberals among them intend to establish a utopian society and have "fun" until the day they're rescued. Ralph demonstrates natural leadership qualities and immediately becomes the "Chief." But he carries all the weaknesses of an overconfident liberal. The supreme idealist among them, he is much too generous with his trust and fails to confront the ominous signs of rage growing in his "Chief" adversary, Jack. Pulling blinders over his own eyes at the height of his power, he wastes several opportunities while Piggy, who suffers from near literal blindness himself but clearly perceives the danger, attempts to alert him and set him on the path to asserting power. As liberals often do, Ralph realizes much too late that Piggy was his "one true friend." The liberals neglect their duty to establish and enforce order, and a primitive, brutal, tribal menace, "fear itself," murders the one boy among them who is courageous enough to face the truth, plunging all of them into a spiral of self-destruction.

Knowles' A Separate Peace is about schoolboys too; they're a bit older. It takes place at an aristocratic prep school during World War II:

A friendship goes stale after an "accident" in a tree. Eventually, a new friendship grows between them. This one is more fragile, and although they set facts relating to the "incident" aside for a time, they build their new friendship on a genuine trust, which both boys endeavor to nurture very carefully. Just when it appears that they will be all right, their "do-gooder liberal" friends, who can't help delving into the mystery of what really happened in the tree, blow it all to pieces. They lay waste to a delicate love. Yes, the story is complicated by overtones of homophobia. No, Gene and Finny are not gay. One of the two friends, the liberal, perceives the cause of the accident to be merely a "blind impulse." The conservative holds himself to a higher standard and probes more deeply into it. He defines it as "ignorance in the human heart."

In both of these literary masterpieces, fear is not something to be slighted. "There's nothing to fear but fear itself," said FDR, the liberal President. But fear, ladies and gentlemen, fear is not nothing. Fear is irrational and impulsive. "Fear itself," as any good conservative will tell you, must be faced up to and must be dealt with.

I always tried to balance the teaching of conservative and liberal writers during the course of a school year. I'd teach To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies, one in the fall and the other in the spring. I'd also make a point to inform my students of their liberal or conservative bias, and I'd prove it by locating passages in those books that clearly identified the authors' sympathies and philosophical perspectives.

If you need more, you can look up my study guides on those books at TeachersPayTeachers.com. (Just click the link to my store.) You can get a lot of information by reading the preview downloads, which cost nothing.

Another resource you should check out is my new graphic organizer, which attempts to categorize some of the great authors with regard to their political tendencies as well as their degree of optimism and pessimism about the world. That item is designed to address this very question. In fact, the question is in the title. Once again, the free preview offers a large share of the substance of it:

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Were-the-Great-Authors-All-Liberals-A-Graphic-Organizer-Tells-the-Story-7-Pages

Are You Gay, Wohlsi?

No.

(I've been getting some interesting inquiries. I decided to create a few short posts to address them.)

Was Shakespeare Gay?

 

I really have no idea. He had a wife and children, and I believe he spent a lot of time away from home while working in the Globe theater. It is possible that he had relationships of various sorts, but I don't think an authoritative resource can confirm or deny any of these speculations.

Was Tennessee Williams Gay?

As a matter of fact, he was. He also happened to be a magnificent playwright.

Was Julius Caesar Gay?

It's impossible to say. I don't have any evidence on that one.

Was John Knowles Gay?

Was Knowles gay? I can't say for certain. I am aware that some sources say so, but I do not know this for a fact. His friend, Gore Vidal, was gay. However, I'm not sure that either one "came out of the closet" when the two of them were in prep school. Did they have a relationship? I have no idea. Gore Vidal was depicted as Brinker (the boy with a large rump) in the novel, A Separate Peace. In that novel, none of the boys, not even Brinker, was depicted as gay.

Teaching Julius? Something Free If You Want It

 

I have nothing profound to share just now, but I see that I'm getting increased traffic here and at my TPT store (for which I'm deeply grateful, thank you), so I thought I'd better pay a visit. I finished up with my Julius Caesar close reading study guide a couple weeks ago and posted it:

(http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Julius-Caesar-Study-Guide-625-Questions-57-Pages-with-Answer-Key)

I've added something that I've never included before, a preview of the product, consisting of an entire lesson, immediately downloadable, and FREE. It's a close reading of the assassination scene from Act III, Scene 1, and it comes complete with answer key and instructions.

If you're interested, you should probably have kids read through the scene first. That always gives them a chance to close-read independently. They need that opportunity, and you can encourage them to develop good habits formulating their own questions when you assign the reading. (Don't forget to download "Reading Fearfully Close," another of my free products, to find out more about this process.)

After kids have given it a first reading, you can hand out the questions and teach the reading of the scene according to instructions provided. Be ready; your students will object, especially if they've never had a teacher expect as much from them. So "stay the course." As you help individuals find information, make them read and do the work themselves.

Yes, I know the language is hard, but they must have this experience. We're not teaching them much when we let them read modern translations or listen to sound tapes or watch videos. Your kids will be grateful that you made them practice when they take a college entrance exam or other standardized test containing passages from Elizabethan literature.

Writing the Julius Caesar study guide was grueling! I'm constantly reminded why these teaching tools do not exist. They're incredibly difficult to produce. But Common Core Standards make it very clear: Their time has come.

If you care to create such a guide, have at it! I used to select a scene from a play or a chapter from a book and write a close reading guide for it. Then I'd write an initial reading quiz, and last, I'd assemble the test, based on the close reading. I was always buried in paperwork as a consequence. I hope these study guides help you crawl out from under yours.

If you're interested in the progress of this program and are not yet one of my TPT followers, I invite you to sign up. That will help you keep track of what's happening.

I'm going to work now on those quizzes and tests for Julius Caesar. I should have them up and running in a week or so, if all goes well.

What do you think I should do next? I'm thinking maybe Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round, but Not Very Fast

 

Like a bus going down the road in second gear with its throttle wide open, our old, old educational system works desperately to creep along at about half speed, and instead of finding a higher gear, we just burn out motors running at red line RPM's.

We're obliged to drive on the shoulder of the road; the educational systems of other countries use modern transmissions (which ours isn't), or transmissions that aren't broken (which ours is). Their kids zoom past us at 80, 90, 100 miles an hour, while we just plug along.

Oh, we have some awfully good teachers! We've got high performance teachers that run on jet fuel! We just need a better transmission, a better system. But instead, we get by on the cheap and exhort our teachers to do still more and run faster.

Sometimes people wonder: Why don't those teachers work harder? Why don't those kids do their homework? Add another math class! More requirements for graduation! That's the stuff! Add more days to the school year! Yes, and longer days! Send them to school on Saturdays! The solution is, more hours in school! That's the ticket! Whip 'em into shape, by God! Work more! Work faster! Race that engine!

So we do. And although we poke along, we are proud of the fact that we teach all the kids. Every one of them has an equal right to the same "free" public education. So we do our best to make sure the kids stay on the bus and exercise their only choice. In the good old USA, they have no other.

But my, oh my, doesn't this old jalopy move slowly?

Speed limits on the interstate highway are understandable, but the speed limit we impose upon education by equipping it with an inferior system is ridiculous. Practically everybody is beating us, Europe, the Far East, even Canada!

Instead of putting the highly motivated kids who have advanced aptitudes, collegiate interests, and solid learning skills into the fast lanes and the kids with other ambitions (and yes, the slower kids too - but they're not all slow) on entirely different roads to good vocations, valuable and essential technical jobs, and certification through on the job training, we just crowd 'em all into one big, cumbersome, cheap rattle-trap of a vehicle and hold the pedal to the metal.

We make that motor scream! Hear her screaming? We parse, parse, parse all the time! This old contraption may not have a higher gear, but it's got lower ones, so when we feel we have to, we can jam 'er down one more and make education crawl! Teacher enrichment programs show us all how to do it: Grind the subject matter smaller and make every last one of these kids swallow it! Shove it down their throats as fast as you can! If it doesn't fit, grind it some more! Grind it to dust, by God! Water it down a little if you have to. Turn it into mush. Make them all study the tiny steps on the way to our devastation - er - destination!

Some kids already got it. Doesn't matter! Stuff them like geese with this mush! A little extra mush can't hurt. Education foie gras! We'll teach all of them. Everyone will get the mush!

Some want to skip ahead. No! Not so fast! Learn the steps! Drill! Drill! When they get too persnippity about it, we simply activate "student participation." Oh wait! Look! There's one now! - Hey, kid! Wait a minute! Hey! Get back here! Stay on the bus! Listen! Do the little steps! Yeah, I know you got 'em. Do 'em again anyway, over and over. You just want to move on - stubborn, huh? Well then, get over there in that group. Help those other kids with the mush. Make sure they all get it. Then we'll move on. - Why are you so passive?

What? You're exhausted?

What's wrong with these kids, anyway? Never mind! Drill 'em with details!

The ol' bus is slowin' down. We're not going to get all of them all the way "there," I know. But what matters is, we teach all the kids! Yes, sir! And no one is allowed to go too, too, too far ahead.

Hey! Get back here! Who are you to go running ahead? Get back on pace with the rest of us, on the bus! We got something else for you to learn!

It's hard to control the little rascals sometimes, isn't it? But we must keep them in school; keep them on pace! - Hey you! Where do you think you're going? Thinking of dropping out? What then? You're going to need your diploma. Not learning much? Doesn't matter! Get through, get out, get your diploma. Stay with the program, kid. This is the only vehicle we've got! Let's see ... how many days of school have you missed already?

If we could give them better, we would. But we're already grinding this stuff to pabulum for the slow kids. And sure, it would be nice if we had rocket sleds for the faster ones so we could give them all the knowledge they want, but that would be favoritism, elitism. We don't do that here in the USA.

So kids, just put up with it. Doesn't matter whether you possess high performance minds and souls equipped with talent and all essential skills accumulated from elementary school through middle school, doesn't matter whether you could move twice as fast on foot as the speed this system rolls along. There'll be no favoritism here. We don't treat you like you're somebody special. And if you can't keep up because you need a whole different environment to learn to the best of your potential - well, that would just be a different kind of "special," wouldn't it? And we certainly don't want to treat you like a second-class citizen, do we? No! We don't do things any other way. Stay on the bus.

Teachers, what's that you say? No, don't even bother telling me - no, no! It makes no difference that you've got kids whose genius lies in other areas of life (such as talent for cutting and fitting materials together, or an eye for blending colors, or manual dexterity beyond belief). It is immaterial that those kids don't like our system, or that some academic skills will always remain unattainable for them. We don't have time, and we can't afford to consider honoring their abilities and helping them develop their talents any farther. Put the realities out of your mind and keep them in that big bus and teach all of them calculus and physics and Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare!

So on we travel, all locked up together on the way to College Prepville.

But surprise, kids! We never really go there. We only go as far as the outskirts, a well-known suburb known as Mediocrity, USA.

Here we are.

Oh, I know some of you will go the rest of the way on your own, but this is as far as we will actually take you.

Before you get off the bus, let me tell you why we never let kids move ahead until they finish their senior year: You must get good scores. You need to pursue that 4.0 GPA, the ticket to a free ride on the next bus! Money! College! And you must learn to guess right on your standardized tests. We teach you how to get the good scores, if you cooperate. And if you cooperate, you make us look good. The scores are everything. That's the name of the game, kids.

What's that? Does a 4.0 signify that you're ready for college? Well no, a 4.0 doesn't, not automatically.

What a 4.0 signifies is, some very few of you are indeed brilliant, have indeed accumulated the requisite knowledge and skills in spite of our slow pace, and have even had time, perhaps, owing to your gifted intelligence and motivation, to sneak off frequently for some enrichment activities. I'd like to say goodbye to those kids first, and thanks, for  - where'd they go? Oh! They already left - went ahead, I see. Well, great! But no need to concern ourselves with them - or the dropouts, I guess. We did the best we could to keep them with the program. They're on their own now. Their choice!

But others of you perfect 4.0 students who are still here: A lot of you just went after the GPA itself, didn't you? Oh, I see you smiling, there. You know just what I mean, don't you, young lady? Well, you're in Mediocrity. You took some of the easier courses available. And let's face it: You cut a few corners, isn't that so? Got someone else to do your paper for you, didn't you? Oh, another smile from one of our esteemed lads. Well, young fellow, you might have a little ways to go, but you stayed with the program for the most part and never actually got caught cheating. You'll be ready for college - probably, sort of - maybe. You have to walk the rest of the way yourself; you might have to take a remedial class or two when you get there. But you'll be OK because you stayed with the program, pretty much. And you made us look good - well, most of the time you did. Thanks. Get out of the bus now.

And some of you, you rascals! Some of you took the harder courses, didn't you? Well, you know what that did to you: You got a 3.7, or a 3.5. And you could have had a better GPA, but you hopped off the bus and ran way, way ahead of us much too often! For shame!

We appreciate that you scored well on standardized tests and made us look good, most of the time, when you cared to. Thanks. But you could have done better. When you were supposed to be doing homework on one thing, you were following your fervent interest in another subject. We never taught you to do that. You ran far out in front, often forgoing our scheduled deliveries of knowledge and gorging yourselves instead on math concepts we don't teach, reading all you could find on nuclear physics, pursuing your interest in Faulkner by consuming almost everything he wrote, or getting much too involved in drama or athletics, and not attending to your foreign language class! There's not enough time for all that, children! You must understand, our system does not promote your pursuit of passionate interests; that makes it too hard to stay connected with what's happening! But you'll be fine. Go away now.

Others of you hung around most of the time but didn't get everything we parsed. You're a big group! You did well enough, high two's and low three's on your GPA, fair to middling. And yes, yes, now that you've graduated, you'll get to where you want to be, won't you? And most of you are truly ready for college, aren't you? But too many of you never took your standardized tests seriously. That's awfully selfish of you, to come to school to learn and prepare for your future, and not strive a little harder at the minutia to make us look better. You could have, you know; you've got the talent.

Oh, what a frustration you were to our system! You just had to go out ahead after your interests, just like those others. Then when it came time to try hard on your tests, you showed us absolutely no appreciation. Your standardized scores are all over the place. ACT's were good, but on a lot of the other tests you filled in the dots to make pictures of cartoon characters! Were you trying to send us a message? We do not appreciate kids like you on this bus! - But heck, you'll be all right. You can walk the rest of the way to college. Get out of the bus. Go away now.

And the rest of you - a large group again, as always - who earned a 2.0 or less. OK, here are the facts: Kids, you're in Mediocrity, and it's your fault we never got further, yours and the teachers' who just didn't push you hard enough. You were our greatest burden. You always are.

Students like you make us look really bad. You bring us down, not just by drawing cartoon characters on your standardized bubble sheets, either! You get into the habit of shutting down all the time! You sit there in class, but you only learn enough to pass from one year to the next! Oh, you strive hard all right! You strive hard to find bottom in every class you take, and then you just make sure you float along a little ways above it! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!

But I hope you see that we tried to teach even you, especially you! Why do you think we kept this thing in second gear all the time and fed you so much mush? It was for you guys!

Oh, and by the way, stay out of college! You're not ready! Go back where you belong.

Remember when you had the urge to make that turn in ninth grade and follow the road to the life you want? Yes, you were right, that's the road for you. But that's not a choice for you while you're in a USA public school.

Hey, kids, we had to get you ready for college. Why?

Well, mostly because it's the only vehicle we've got.

But we can offer you other reasons: We do not condone elitism here. We do not treat any of you as "special." Besides, maybe you'll change your mind about college someday and decide to go, so we had to get you ready. But despite all that, you're not really ready for college.

Oh, don't cry now! Some of you tried hard sometimes, thanks. Some of you did your best, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Enough! Hey, let's face it, you never were cut out for college, and yes, just like you thought back in eighth grade, the learning of calculus and the practicing of the intricacies of writing scholarly term papers won't do you too much good.

So it's wash out time. Get out of here. That's right. Everybody out. No shoving, please.

And remember! Don't go to college, OK? A college will just wonder where you came from. And when they find out, we'll look bad.

Go back and find a nice tech program. Hey, I remember you; you like carpentry, right? Great. Good luck now. Go away.

Oh, and you pay for the rest of your education yourself, understand? This United States of America public ed. bus doesn't go there, not for you or anyone else.

OK! Back to middle school! Bus is empty! Load up the next group! All aboard!

"Useful" to New Teachers - Yes!

Back at my store at TeachersPayTeachers.com, an educator who has purchased one of my products has left a comment, pronouncing it, "... very useful ... for a teacher teaching this novel for the first time."

This comment (perhaps combined with the influence of too much coffee this morning) has given me cause for euphoria! From the very start I've been creating products for distinct purposes, chief among them, to help the new teacher. I've been waiting for a positive remark from a new teacher. Now I've got one!

I remember being a new teacher! It's tough! I hope this teacher, who has commented on my quizzes, will now consider using my close reading study guides as well. I hope all of you language arts teachers consider them. Information on their use is contained in my free download entitled, "Study Guides: Reading Fearfully Close."

I'm not  certain that new teachers have taken the leap yet to close reading study guides. Most of the very kind and wonderful customers who have commented on the use of them sound like veteran teachers. See for yourself at my store. Just click on the link over there and have a look; and by the way, if you think my work is valuable, please help spread the word.

OK. Now I've got to get ready for summer school.

Shakespearean Star Ships and Free Throws

I'm about to compose another metaphorical salad. To return to two of my old favorites, 1) language is a vehicle, and 2) good teaching is actually coaching. I'm also a fan of Star Trek, so I shall use it as one more ingredient of today's composition.

It is almost time to bring it all together, but let us first examine more closely each of the main ingredients:

I played sports and coached for thirty-five years. It took retirement for me to fully perceive how coaching and teaching are connected.

It makes little sense to merely "appreciate" a Chevy. We drive it. We shouldn't be teaching "appreciation" of Shakespearean plays either. We should be teaching students to read them.

But a Shakespearean work isn't a Chevy. It's among the most advanced language vehicles known to humankind, and the only means by which it is possible to personally explore the universe of Shakespeare. It is the starship Enterprise, designed to take a student where none has gone before. Your crew are Spock and Crusher and Data and Scotty and Ohura and Checkov, and all of your students.

You are the Captain, Pike, Kirk, or, as I prefer, Jean-Luc Picard. It is his syntax, his rhythm, and his persona I have assumed and shall continue to express for the duration of this composition. Hear now his deep and resonant voice: "Engage!"

Once under way, I tell kids that it's my responsibility to get them into the captain's chair of a Shakespearean starship and train them to fly. I reassure students that they won't injure themselves by crashing or disintegrating in the atmosphere, or even falling into a black hole if they start reading Shakespeare, but I warn them that, if they don't try, they won't learn those skills they will need to take an ACT or SAT intelligently. In my class, I make them read it, and at regular intervals, I make them fly solo.

Too many teachers do something else. They cover "the bases" (and other things), by trying to give kids declarative knowledge about the great classics, hoping that, if they run into any of those authors in a standardized test, they can perhaps fumble through and get some right answers.

Your students' reading skills don't improve if you present them with videos and sound recordings instead of making them read. Yes, you can show them what Hamlet is "all about," but when they encounter a passage from Shakespeare's As You Like It on the ACT, you won't be available. They must learn how to discover for themselves "what it's all about," and you must force them to the task.

Yes, I did say that. You must "force" them to do what they don't want to do. I'm comfortable using force. I don't teach Shakespeare; I coach reading of Shakespeare. I do not hot-wire his starships by skipping over the reading and showing videos; I coach kids and force them to take the controls and perform, just as an athletic coach teaches fundamentals and forces players to perform. Then, after they've had a chance to fly, I show how others engage the same vehicle, by means of sound and video recordings.

Kids very much want to perform in sports, of course, so motivation in athletics is obviously easier. They volunteer for the sport; they yearn to perform. The whole point is to go where they've never gone before, to get out on the court or the field and find out for themselves "what it's all about."

You don't teach kids to be athletes. You don't even coach them to be athletes. They either are athletes or they are not. But many of those who "come out for" a sport aren't the best athletes, and you need to do what you can with what you've got.

As a coach, you train their bodies to do what athletes do. They imitate athletic movements, and they either become comfortable moving in those ways, or they don't. If they train hard and stay in the sport long enough, they get their opportunities to perform. And kids who love sports, whether they're athletes or not, stay and learn to perform. Most will never go on to perform in college or in the pros because they don't possess rare athletic gifts, but they will have opportunities to do what they love, and they will learn all those "intangibles" you hear about (they are intangibles, yes, but they are also very real): determination, courage, concentration, persistence, patience, etc., etc.

It took me a long time to realize that you can't teach kids to be intelligent readers and writers. But you can coach them and foster the growth of "intangibles."

American schools generally require all kids to "go out for" college preparatory language arts. Some of those kids don't have the gifts, and they shouldn't be compelled to join an endeavor in which they lack abilities and skills.

This is where they need to be given a choice. They have other gifts, and they should be allowed to pursue development of them and prepare for something besides college. Our inferior system, however, fails them, not at the end of a term, but there at the beginning, before they even get started.

The fact that all students are forced to "go out for" Shakespeare right now is ridiculous, but we're stuck with it. The United States Educational System is not the United Federation of Planets, and your crew does not matriculate from a space academy. It is what it is, and you've quite a diverse crew to work with as a result.

But you can't change that reality, and it's no excuse for you or anyone else to quit coaching. You must do your best to coach them all. And you need to remember, when you're reading Hamlet in front of a classroom, you're not just coaching; you're a pro - you get paid for this. You're the best the system can find. Take pride in it; read it beautifully - But force them to read also.

You're coaching free throws, showing them how it's done. You describe what you're doing, and then you do it.

They mispronounce one of those strange Elizabethan contractions, such as, "cat i' th' adage," and you correct them. You show them what it means and you say it, and they say it, and then you show them the "follow through."

With free throws, it's "all in the wrist."

With a Shakespearean star ship, it's all at the ends of his lines of blank verse. That's where they need to "follow through" without halting the meaning; otherwise, it doesn't work right. You ask them to try, and sometimes, they still stumble over the line, but you praise them for incremental improvements.

And the result may be horrendous. The ball misses the iron by a foot or so, but you say, "Nice effort," and they try again.

They learn to love Hamlet, or they don't. Nevertheless, you force them. They're members of the crew now, and your responsibility is to force them to practice the fundamentals of operating a Shakespearean star ship. If they stay with it, they do their best to imitate actors, and they become better readers, but best of all, they learn those same intangibles: determination, courage, concentration, persistence, patience, etc., etc.

Coaching has it over on teaching every time. In athletics, you rehearse body positions, postures, and movements. You drill, drill, drill. Then you perform.

In the language arts classroom, their reading of Shakespeare is a performance. You don't read it all for them! You don't just show videos and have them listen to recordings!

Your crew aren't in your room to observe performances. They are there to learn to perform. You need them to rehearse mental approaches to learning. You must always remember, you're coaching them to encounter Shakespeare. Shakespeare is not the enemy. He is not Borg. Shakespeare is a magnificent cognitive universe, and his plays are the vehicles that provide a means to explore it.

You can't go out on the field and play defensive end for a kid who's having trouble. You show him what's wrong. You demonstrate in practice. You force him to imitate your postures, body positions, and movements. Then you correct him when he resorts to old habits and makes mistakes. During an actual scrimmage, you take a time out occasionally and remind him, but you can't do it for him.

Young people have to read it themselves.

My study guides take them through cognitive reading habits. They force reflection. They focus attention. They position the mind and impose movement. They drill, drill, drill.

I command my students to develop their own proper habits of constant questioning by forcing them at regular intervals to fly solo and explore a sector of the Shakespearean universe. I order them to formulate their own internal dialogue with one of his star ships and, "Engage!"

(Yes, sometimes I literally impose this entire metaphor on a class.)

Upon their return, I evaluate their performance with quizzes. (They always get reading quizzes from me for their first reading of an assigned segment of a play.) Perhaps their skills are not yet what they should be. No matter. There must be no deviations. They must read. We play for keeps. They need practice games, but we keep score. My assessment of their performance is as fair and as just as Vulcan logic.

As a football coach, you take teams through two-a-day fall practices filled with the utter misery of training and drills. You show them what they have to do and force them to do it right. Some stubborn athletes despise you for the misery. They prefer to sit on the bench than listen to you. But when they see others having success, they come around. Soon, some of the most incorrigible develop into the most courageous, the most persistent, and the most devoted.

Yes, that is what happens in sports. Believe it.

Some athletes quit. They are assimilated into the Borg, the nameless, unconscious crowd. They watch from the stands. Perhaps they are yet conscious enough to admire how their former crewmates execute their plans, but they admire from the sidelines. It's a shame.

Some of your language arts students will sit on the bench and refuse to perform, and some will quit, right in your classroom. They will become Borg among your crew. That's not your fault! The system doesn't let them "go out for" something else and develop their other talents. Right now, they all must "go out for" Shakespeare, and you have to deal with it.

So, do all you can do to win them back. Coach them and encourage them. Parse the task. Cut down the amount of work so they can concentrate on one or two concerns at a time; see them during tutoring time and give them more coaching. But never allow your students to escape their responsibility to perform.

Athletes deliver their gratitude at the end of a season. They're exceedingly grateful that you believed in them and insisted that they perform, long before they even believed in themselves.

It will take approximately ten years before your students will thank you. It will take that long for them to encounter authentic reading tasks in real life, and your training will come back to them, and when they have to, they will line up.

They will! They'll focus and position their minds. Even some of those bench-dwellers will take unfamiliar controls of vast vehicles into their minds and execute well-rehearsed cognitive movements that you had the termerity to force them to learn. They will persevere as never before. They will probe strange new language structures and execute perfect follow-throughs. They will perform, and then, they will perform better, and they will at last go where they've never gone before.

And suddenly, they will understand it is because of you.

And one day, back on earth, you'll be having a refreshing, well-deserved adult beverage in the local pub, and one of your former crew will happen upon you and say, "Thank you, Captain. You truly taught me. I didn't appreciate you then, and I'm sorry. But thank you."

And you will know that you were not just their teacher; you were their coach. You believed in them, and you forced them to go - Well, you know.

You are their captain! Engage!

Why Are We Doing This? It's Boring!! WAAA!! WAAA!!

My students used to ask that question all the time. They don't anymore. Now, I just distribute the following on a back-to-back printed sheet on the first day of the term and explain it. Afterward, anytime kids ask, I remind them of it. You may download it FREE at my TeachersPayTeachers store if it's of use to you:

 

Why Are We Doing This?

1.“Why do we need four years of English?”

       State education departments across the country place extremely heavy emphasis on the study of “English.” In most high schools, every student must have four full years of English studies in order to graduate.

2. “What do we learn in English class that we don’t learn somewhere else?”

       “English” is not limited to the narrow realm of “language arts,” as the course is sometimes known. In certain ways, “English” class is also the study of American culture and classical values.

       Modern high schools often do not list certain extremely important academic disciplines in their catalogs; and yet, mature adults very much need them. It has become the responsibility of English courses and other “humanities” courses, such as history, art, and psychology, to introduce students to these ideas. Many students never take an art or psychology class. The only opportunities they have for exposure to these concepts come in English and history.

       If these specific disciplines were offered as separate courses, they would have names such as “logic,” “philosophy,” “theology,” “composition,” “reasoning,” “ethics,” and “the humanities.” Admissions officers of colleges and vocational institutions, as well as personnel directors in business and industry today, are continually calling for more instruction and better quality instruction in all these areas.

3. “Theology! Hey! That means religion! Isn’t it against the law to teach religion and morals in schools?”

       Most religions are grounded in values and morals, and while it may be impossible to teach value-related ideas without teaching any values at all, we do the best we can to address what might be called "value consciousness." Public educational institutions must be careful not to provide religious instruction as such, but they are obligated to instruct students in value-related ideas such as sensible decision-making and responsible behavior in a democracy. Insofar as is possible, English curricula are designed with those ends and limitations in mind.

4. “So how do you do that?”

       It isn’t easy. Few Americans would agree to the indoctrination of one strict morality code upon all public school students. But nearly all Americans would agree that responsible democratic citizens must understand the concept of morality.

       Almost no one insists that every child be trained with one particular philosophy in school, but Americans do insist that educators encourage the development of philosophically sound reasoning.

       Most of the time, we approach this task by confronting students in an “English” class with choices, both hypothetical and real. For example, they consider choices and decisions made by characters in stories. They are asked to judge the characters’ decision-making processes. In writing assignments, students make real choices in selecting topics of controversy. They make a decision on the topic itself; then they decide how to argue their opinion. In all of these situations, students are asked to consider what is "right,” “wrong,” “responsible,” “irresponsible,” “selfish,” “unselfish,” “ethical,” and “unethical.”

       In much the same way the student considers and evaluates all aspects of a fictional character’s decision-making, it is the English teacher’s task to consider and judge the students’ decision-making skills. It is essential that the English teacher remain extremely cautious about judging any student’s sense of morality, but it is absolutely essential that the teacher judge the soundness, logic, and structure of the student's arguments.

       The task of English teachers is not to prove that their students’ moral code is wrong, but to help them find good reasons for living according to their morals.

      

5. "These old books are boring. Why do we have to read them?”

       They're not selected for their entertainment value. They're selected for their usefulness and appropriateness in accomplishing the goals outlined here.

       The materials studied in an English class have gone through a careful and thorough process of screening and selection. The vast majority of Americans agree that these works of literature are among those which best represent commonly accepted American values. Most of these works are also accepted by the world community. Almost all are “classical” works, presenting “classical values” (unchanging, proven values, which have withstood the test of time). As a free American, you are given the great responsibility of preserving those American ideals upon which the nation has been built. It is commonly believed that, if you have the knowledge, you will make sound decisions when you begin voting, working, and taking other roles in the operation of the country. It is also believed that, as a result of your efforts, the nation will survive, and subsequent generations of Americans will continue to enjoy the freedoms you currently enjoy.

6. “Tell me more about some of those so-called ‘classical values.’”

       A sense of responsibility for one’s actions, some measure of compassion, and the ability to understand situations from many perspectives all are served by careful analysis of characters and conflicts in great literature.

       Over the past ten to fifteen years, however, education in the United States has gone much further. We now evaluate your level of literacy by very strict standards. It's no longer good enough to just understand "what happens" in a story. You may be asked to describe the author's tone and mood. You're often required to speculate about developments that might transpire afterward from the situation described. At times, you must discern details that aren't in the text at all. You can't do that by finding a single word or phrase. Instead, you must do additional reasoning, combining many hints from the text to arrive at a conclusion. Seemingly unimportant details, for example, sometimes provide information about a character's motivations.

       You've already confronted this issue in tests where you're given a passage to read, and then you're required to respond to questions regarding that passage. You're allowed to refer back to the passage, but you're also under time limitations, and the questions are surprisingly complex.

       Occasionally, you're even tested on what isn't said. A writer's purpose may be grounded on statements of opinion rather than on fact. His or her real purpose might even be disguised, and discernable, not by what is written, but by what is left out.

       Therefore, you need to develop your skills of "close reading," during which you parse a text by subjecting it to a constant stream of observations and questions. In effect, you must learn to produce your own "study guide." Today's English curriculum is burdened with the task of showing you how to do that.

       In early grades, the topics discussed and the stories read served to build expression and thinking skills. At some point in your learning career, however, the emphasis shifts. Now, in order to take your expression and thinking skills to a higher level, you must begin using them to examine an argument's philosophical, logical, and ethical soundness.

7. “OK, so that’s the explanation for the literature. But what about the writing? Why are we taught all this writing stuff?”

       All of us are better writers than talkers. Writing gives us a chance to read over what we’re trying to say. If it isn’t quite what we want to say, we can change it. When your teacher calls your attention to the fact that you have sent a garbled message, or that you have said something you never meant, you're being required to think carefully about what you’re communicating.

       Writing is often considered an exercise in “thinking out on paper.” The written work you create is a record of your thinking. Analysis of your own writing is an examination of your own thinking. That process is almost identical to the analysis of literature.

8. But why do we have to use this kind of language when we write? This isn’t the way I talk! And I’ll never have to write this way!”

       Don't be so quick to say "never."

       We “write this way” for the sake of clarity. Clearly written expression focuses thought. Most of us would agree that it’s important to say exactly what we mean to say. The problem is, we very often say something we don’t mean. We “speak before we think.” The problem has a great deal to do with the “kind of language” we use. Careful writing forces us to think first. The habit of writing “this way” carries over to speaking. We should write and talk “this way” more often.

       Most young people do not understand the impression they create in their writing or speaking. They communicate with their friends by means of slang phrases, grunts, expletives, and sentence fragments, and they mistakenly believe themselves to be perfectly fluent. In all likelihood, the impression you create now with your writing and speaking habits is probably not quite what you think it is. Those skills could use a little work. You probably haven’t met prospective employers who are intensely interested in your ability to reason in written or spoken language. Wait until you’re out of school, though. You’ll meet them. And if you can’t use your language with some precision, eloquence, and care at that time, you’ll wish you could.

       Good thinkers don't always communicate effectively, but good communicators have to think well, and like it or not, in these times, which are so oriented toward literacy, those evaluating your thinking skills will do so through your ability to communicate your thoughts, so your future will depend on it.

       It is important to understand one of the highest forms of thinking, called “metacognition.” Simply defined, it is the ability to understand the processes going on inside your own brain. Not everyone has this ability. All people have thoughts, impressions, feelings, emotions, and sensations, but some don’t bother thinking about why they have them or what influences they provoke.

       To maintain opinions without reflecting upon their origin is unwise. Prejudices are opinions without sound bases, and prejudices can be very destructive. What stimulated your mental activity? Does a chance exist that it took shape from a false impression? (You might notice that this sort of analysis is almost the same kind required in good reading.)

       In summary: As you read and write and analyze, you become more self-aware. Good reading and writing practices will exercise metacognition skills, which will be useful at all times throughout your life. That's what you're learning, and that's why we're doing this.