6 ms·

Is it an aversion to assigning homework? I remember teachers assigning “read chapters 4-6 by Thursday” and then giving a quiz to make sure people read and reme

Is it an aversion to assigning homework? I remember teachers assigning “read chapters 4-6 by Thursday” and then giving a quiz to make sure people read and remembered the details.

eudamoniac 10mo ago
It's an aversion to giving bad grades to the inevitable bulk of students who just won't read it.
- serf 10mo ago
  something still changed; i've been in classes where the bulk of the students got bad grades and that never stopped the instructor from handing them out. if we use grades as a yardstick for elementary progress and efficacy then you'd think it would be a bigger deal if a single cog in the system decided to systematically add inaccuracy to the measure simply because a failing student irks them.
  - eudamoniac 10mo ago
    You have the principal actors reversed. Teachers would generally love to fail more students. It is the administration that prevents or disincentivizes it. Grades are a yardstick merely for which district gets more prestige and funding. There is absolutely no incentive for anyone with authority to fail bad students. Reprimands or terminations result from a teacher giving consistently below average grades.
- watwut 10mo ago
  There is no real way for teacher to check whether I read the book or not. People who read books regularly fail trivia tests and people who did not read them can quick read "about the book" analysis off web and call it a day. And crutially, my inclination to finish assigned book and my willingness to read books in general are unrelated. A kid that reads a lot wont neceasary enjoy and finish assigned books - I know I skipped quite a lot of them.
  - eudamoniac 10mo ago
    If your premise is that there is no way to test knowledge, then I can see how you might not want to assign books to be read, but I think there are ways to test knowledge and that reading a book should result in knowledge of the book.
mattkrause 10mo ago
Those quizzes are part of the problem. It was so dispiriting to read, even enjoy, the assignment and then get dinged because you couldn’t remember whether the protagonist put on an otherwise irrelevant blue sweater or red jacket.
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
  > get dinged because you couldn’t remember whether the protagonist put on an otherwise irrelevant blue sweater or red jacket This sounds like a bad quiz, unless the story was set in e.g. the American revolution.
- lelanthran 10mo ago
  > It was so dispiriting to read, even enjoy, the assignment and then get dinged because you couldn’t remember whether the protagonist put on an otherwise irrelevant blue sweater or red jacket. Maybe things have really changed a lot since I was in school, but that was certainly not the type of questions that were asked of set works. The questions were asked such that, the more the student got into the book, the higher the mark they were able to get. Easy questions (everyone gets this correct if they read the book): Did his friends and family consider $protagonist to be miserly or generous. Hard questions (only those slightly interested got these correct): Examine the tone of the conversation between $A and $B in $chapter, first from the PoV of $A and then from the PoV of $B. List the differences, if any, in the tone that $A intended his instructions to be received and the tone that $B actually understood it as. Very hard questions (for those who got +90% on their English grades): In the story arc for $A it can be claimed that the author intended to mirror the arc for Cordelia from King Lear. Make an argument for or against this claim. That last one is the real deal; answerable only by students who like to read and have read a lot - it involves having read similar characters from similar stories, then knowing about the role of Cordelia, and at least a basic analysis of her character/integrity, maybe having read more works by this same author (they'll know if the mirroring is accidental or intentional), etc. We were never asked "what color shirt did $A wear to the outing" types of questions (unless, of course, that was integral to the plot - $A was a double-agent, and a red shirt meant one thing to his handler while a blue shirt meant something else). Did I like the set works? Mostly not, but I had enough fiction under my belt in my final two years of high-school that I could sail through the very difficult questions, pulling in analogies and character arcs, tone, etc from a multitude of Shakespeare plays, social issue fictional books ("Cry, The Beloved Country", "To Kill a Man's Pride", "To Kill a Mockingbird", etc), thrillers (Frederick Forsythe, et al), SciFi (Frederick Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick), Horror-ish (Stephen Kind, Dean R Koontz) and more. With my teenager now, second-final year of high-school, I keep repeating the mantra of "To get high English marks, you need to demonstrate critical thinking, not usage of fancy words", but alas, he never reads anything that can be considered a book, so his marks never get anywhere near the 90% grade that I regularly averaged :-( The only books he's ever read are those he's been forced to read in school.
idontwantthis 10mo ago
It’s the assigned district curriculum. They have a text book with excerpts.
qball 10mo ago
No, it's an aversion to having (and enforcing) basic standards.

Is it an aversion to assigning homework? I remember teachers assigning “read chapters 4-6 by Thursday” and then giving a quiz to make sure people read and remembered the details.

eudamoniac 10mo ago

It's an aversion to giving bad grades to the inevitable bulk of students who just won't read it.

serf 10mo ago
something still changed; i've been in classes where the bulk of the students got bad grades and that never stopped the instructor from handing them out. if we use grades as a yardstick for elementary progress and efficacy then you'd think it would be a bigger deal if a single cog in the system decided to systematically add inaccuracy to the measure simply because a failing student irks them.
- eudamoniac 10mo ago
  You have the principal actors reversed. Teachers would generally love to fail more students. It is the administration that prevents or disincentivizes it. Grades are a yardstick merely for which district gets more prestige and funding. There is absolutely no incentive for anyone with authority to fail bad students. Reprimands or terminations result from a teacher giving consistently below average grades.
watwut 10mo ago
There is no real way for teacher to check whether I read the book or not. People who read books regularly fail trivia tests and people who did not read them can quick read "about the book" analysis off web and call it a day. And crutially, my inclination to finish assigned book and my willingness to read books in general are unrelated. A kid that reads a lot wont neceasary enjoy and finish assigned books - I know I skipped quite a lot of them.
- eudamoniac 10mo ago
  If your premise is that there is no way to test knowledge, then I can see how you might not want to assign books to be read, but I think there are ways to test knowledge and that reading a book should result in knowledge of the book.

mattkrause 10mo ago

Those quizzes are part of the problem. It was so dispiriting to read, even enjoy, the assignment and then get dinged because you couldn’t remember whether the protagonist put on an otherwise irrelevant blue sweater or red jacket.

JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
> get dinged because you couldn’t remember whether the protagonist put on an otherwise irrelevant blue sweater or red jacket This sounds like a bad quiz, unless the story was set in e.g. the American revolution.
lelanthran 10mo ago
> It was so dispiriting to read, even enjoy, the assignment and then get dinged because you couldn’t remember whether the protagonist put on an otherwise irrelevant blue sweater or red jacket. Maybe things have really changed a lot since I was in school, but that was certainly not the type of questions that were asked of set works. The questions were asked such that, the more the student got into the book, the higher the mark they were able to get. Easy questions (everyone gets this correct if they read the book): Did his friends and family consider $protagonist to be miserly or generous. Hard questions (only those slightly interested got these correct): Examine the tone of the conversation between $A and $B in $chapter, first from the PoV of $A and then from the PoV of $B. List the differences, if any, in the tone that $A intended his instructions to be received and the tone that $B actually understood it as. Very hard questions (for those who got +90% on their English grades): In the story arc for $A it can be claimed that the author intended to mirror the arc for Cordelia from King Lear. Make an argument for or against this claim. That last one is the real deal; answerable only by students who like to read and have read a lot - it involves having read similar characters from similar stories, then knowing about the role of Cordelia, and at least a basic analysis of her character/integrity, maybe having read more works by this same author (they'll know if the mirroring is accidental or intentional), etc. We were never asked "what color shirt did $A wear to the outing" types of questions (unless, of course, that was integral to the plot - $A was a double-agent, and a red shirt meant one thing to his handler while a blue shirt meant something else). Did I like the set works? Mostly not, but I had enough fiction under my belt in my final two years of high-school that I could sail through the very difficult questions, pulling in analogies and character arcs, tone, etc from a multitude of Shakespeare plays, social issue fictional books ("Cry, The Beloved Country", "To Kill a Man's Pride", "To Kill a Mockingbird", etc), thrillers (Frederick Forsythe, et al), SciFi (Frederick Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick), Horror-ish (Stephen Kind, Dean R Koontz) and more. With my teenager now, second-final year of high-school, I keep repeating the mantra of "To get high English marks, you need to demonstrate critical thinking, not usage of fancy words", but alas, he never reads anything that can be considered a book, so his marks never get anywhere near the 90% grade that I regularly averaged :-( The only books he's ever read are those he's been forced to read in school.

idontwantthis 10mo ago

It’s the assigned district curriculum. They have a text book with excerpts.

qball 10mo ago

No, it's an aversion to having (and enforcing) basic standards.