8 ms·

Most high school students, including top students, are in classes where the teacher teaches towards a test (state exam, AP test). Because the actual test follow

Most high school students, including top students, are in classes where the teacher teaches towards a test (state exam, AP test). Because the actual test follows a format you can game, so does the class. Students therefore learn to write in a format that specific teacher likes and with the right amount of fancy words. If that gets them an A, that’s all they care about. Same with books - the focus was on what we need to know from this book to pass the test. In college it can be difficult to transition to professors that expect you to actually be able to express yourself eloquently and with creativity. Most students aren’t reading old or difficult books for fun (if any at all). It’s not surprising their level is poor.

applecrazy 9y ago
As a high school student at a relatively high-performing school, I see this all the time. Many people even skip reading the book entirely and write an essay based solely on online summaries of the book. It’s quite disappointing, as the literature we read actually holds some cultural value. For example, To Kill a Mockingbird highlights racial tensions in the 60s and Animal Farm highlights the dangers of an authoritarian society. I also could get into studying a subject for the sole purpose of passing a test and then forgetting the content after (meaning the topic held no significance to the student). This is a huge problem in high schools all around the US. Edit: fix mobile formatting
- mdemare 9y ago
  To Kill A Mockingbird is set in the 1930s.
  - applecrazy 9y ago
    I stand corrected. And yes, I did read the book :) Just forgot the time period.
- zdragnar 9y ago
  I learned far more about writing in my experience in debate than I did in any of my classes. Learning to research a topic and write a logical argument about it is far more rewarding, and does more to develop skill, than does being assigned a book to read and writing a summary. Writing about a single source is too easy to game, especially the classics- there's simply too much already written about them, especially when the assignment is more a summary than a thesis.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Supposed "study guides" existed back when I was in school but you had to get to a store and buy one. Today, I guess I assume that any student who doesn't want to read some book can just get whatever information they need about it, including analysis, with a few keystrokes.
- walshemj 9y ago
  Yes I was surprised when I did Classical studies (classics in translation) that when Thucydides was one of the set texts that I was the only one in the class that read the entire thing - plus read several other related texts. I also read several other classical plays and not just the two that where set.
- burfog 9y ago
  Maybe you should read Animal Farm again. It's not so much about an authoritarian society. It's about communism, which is theoretically non-authoritarian yet never works out that way.
  - fjsolwmv 9y ago
    You would benefit from reread it, or at least the SparkNotes
    - Izkata 9y ago
      He's right though, it was about how easily-corruptible/controllable communism is by a couple of bad actors. If you think it was just about an authoritarian society, I suggest looking back at the beginning, before the pigs started changing the rules.
- BlahBoy3 9y ago
  > It’s quite disappointing, as the literature we read actually holds some cultural value. For me, the biggest problem is that most instructors never really mentioned this. Instead, we ended up having 50 minute discussions about why the wallpaper was yellow, or how brave and sophisticated the protagonist was for drowning herself (I hated "The Awakening.") My experience is my own, but the majority of my classmates didn't care about the reading for this very reason (and this was also at a high-performing school). If high school English literature is still being taught anything like the way it was taught to me, it should be no surprise that American students avoid the subject like the plague.
  - skookumchuck 9y ago
    In high school I read a book or two a week, but I avoided english lit classes like the plague.
- skookumchuck 9y ago
  > essay based solely on online summaries of the book. The solution is to assign books that do not have online summaries, which would be about 99% of books. Plenty to choose from!
  - upvotinglurker 9y ago
    Is that true for English language books in the age of Amazon, Goodreads, etc.?
chibg10 9y ago
I agree with the first paragraph, but my experience with college professors wasn't that much different from teachers high school. School rewards playing to grading system, and grade inflation means that professors don't expect anywhere near the level writing of their peers from their students.
al2o3cr 9y ago
One ultimate result of this was truly bizarre: students who couldn't write a narrative, but instead produced 5-paragraph persuasive essays. I encountered this scoring high-stakes state tests years back; the 10th-grade students were prompted explicitly with "tell me a story about XYZ." (more verbiage omitted, but the question was clear about the requested mode). About 10% of students would write a clearly on-topic response starting from "here are 3 things about XYZ". The state specified that those responses were to be scored "Off Mode", an invalid score which meant that the students would fail the test (and potentially fail to graduate). The truly mindblowing part is that younger students will write you a narrative for ANYTHING given half a chance. (Think of a little kid telling you a story - "and then this happened, and then this, and then this...") These high-schoolers had literally had that instinct drummed out of them through essay-writing practice. :(

applecrazy 9y ago

As a high school student at a relatively high-performing school, I see this all the time. Many people even skip reading the book entirely and write an essay based solely on online summaries of the book. It’s quite disappointing, as the literature we read actually holds some cultural value. For example, To Kill a Mockingbird highlights racial tensions in the 60s and Animal Farm highlights the dangers of an authoritarian society. I also could get into studying a subject for the sole purpose of passing a test and then forgetting the content after (meaning the topic held no significance to the student). This is a huge problem in high schools all around the US. Edit: fix mobile formatting

mdemare 9y ago
To Kill A Mockingbird is set in the 1930s.
- applecrazy 9y ago
  I stand corrected. And yes, I did read the book :) Just forgot the time period.
zdragnar 9y ago
I learned far more about writing in my experience in debate than I did in any of my classes. Learning to research a topic and write a logical argument about it is far more rewarding, and does more to develop skill, than does being assigned a book to read and writing a summary. Writing about a single source is too easy to game, especially the classics- there's simply too much already written about them, especially when the assignment is more a summary than a thesis.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Supposed "study guides" existed back when I was in school but you had to get to a store and buy one. Today, I guess I assume that any student who doesn't want to read some book can just get whatever information they need about it, including analysis, with a few keystrokes.
walshemj 9y ago
Yes I was surprised when I did Classical studies (classics in translation) that when Thucydides was one of the set texts that I was the only one in the class that read the entire thing - plus read several other related texts. I also read several other classical plays and not just the two that where set.
burfog 9y ago
Maybe you should read Animal Farm again. It's not so much about an authoritarian society. It's about communism, which is theoretically non-authoritarian yet never works out that way.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  You would benefit from reread it, or at least the SparkNotes
  - Izkata 9y ago
    He's right though, it was about how easily-corruptible/controllable communism is by a couple of bad actors. If you think it was just about an authoritarian society, I suggest looking back at the beginning, before the pigs started changing the rules.
BlahBoy3 9y ago
> It’s quite disappointing, as the literature we read actually holds some cultural value. For me, the biggest problem is that most instructors never really mentioned this. Instead, we ended up having 50 minute discussions about why the wallpaper was yellow, or how brave and sophisticated the protagonist was for drowning herself (I hated "The Awakening.") My experience is my own, but the majority of my classmates didn't care about the reading for this very reason (and this was also at a high-performing school). If high school English literature is still being taught anything like the way it was taught to me, it should be no surprise that American students avoid the subject like the plague.
- skookumchuck 9y ago
  In high school I read a book or two a week, but I avoided english lit classes like the plague.
skookumchuck 9y ago
> essay based solely on online summaries of the book. The solution is to assign books that do not have online summaries, which would be about 99% of books. Plenty to choose from!
- upvotinglurker 9y ago
  Is that true for English language books in the age of Amazon, Goodreads, etc.?

chibg10 9y ago

I agree with the first paragraph, but my experience with college professors wasn't that much different from teachers high school. School rewards playing to grading system, and grade inflation means that professors don't expect anywhere near the level writing of their peers from their students.

al2o3cr 9y ago

One ultimate result of this was truly bizarre: students who couldn't write a narrative, but instead produced 5-paragraph persuasive essays. I encountered this scoring high-stakes state tests years back; the 10th-grade students were prompted explicitly with "tell me a story about XYZ." (more verbiage omitted, but the question was clear about the requested mode). About 10% of students would write a clearly on-topic response starting from "here are 3 things about XYZ". The state specified that those responses were to be scored "Off Mode", an invalid score which meant that the students would fail the test (and potentially fail to graduate). The truly mindblowing part is that younger students will write you a narrative for ANYTHING given half a chance. (Think of a little kid telling you a story - "and then this happened, and then this, and then this...") These high-schoolers had literally had that instinct drummed out of them through essay-writing practice. :(