Books Are Still Relevant
One teen's story
by Sue Greenwald, M.D
“The Free Press” is a publication on Substack that I enjoy following because they often make me think. They cover a lot of interesting topics and have many outstanding contributors. In my mind it is written by New York liberals who try their level best to be unbiased, and mostly succeed. We don’t have to agree on everything, but we do need the conversations.
“The Free Press” had a national essay contest for teens. It will surprise no one who is familiar with home-schooled teens that the winner is a home-schooled teen.
The publication does not allow cross posting, but I wanted to share the story of Ruby LaRocca in her own words, so I am giving you this link to read it for yourself.
As a fellow bibliophile who would not have survived adolescence without books, this author relates to Ruby.
Ruby voluntarily left her public high school as a Sophomore. She described at as a place without boundaries or books.
“For many students, books are irrelevant. They “take too long to read.” Even teachers have argued for the benefits of shorter, digital resources. Last April, the National Council of Teachers of English declared it was time “to decenter book reading and essay writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education.”
But what is an English education without reading and learning to write about books?
Many of our English teachers instead encouraged extemporaneous discussions of our feelings and socioeconomic status, viewings of dance videos, and endless TED Talks. So five days into my sophomore year, I convinced my mother to homeschool me.”
Language Arts Without Books
Nebraska schools are moving to Language Arts without books. In the last 2 to 3 years, Nebraska taxpayers have unwittingly spent millions of dollars on a Bill Gates-promoted, ESU recommended curriculum called Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA). See this article for details:
EdReports, Common Core Curriculum Via Gates Foundation
CKLA uses excerpts from books as language lessons. A good portion is intended to be read to the students, further eroding their opportunities for literacy. Parents have found these excerpts sometimes derive from books that parents have reason not to approve. Parents and teachers have found the material to be age-inappropriate and therefore not interesting to students. See this article for details:
Most of us would agree that it is easier and more fun to learn reading and Language Arts from books, so why is there such a push to use expensive online curricula that only produces excerpts? Will these Language Arts Apps be able to foster a love for reading and learning the way that books do? That is doubtful. Even teachers get bored with the canned lessons that leave them no time to improvise or embellish the material.
Here is the one advantage of the Apps- money. The Ed Tech companies suck up taxpayer dollars to kickback to leftist causes, not the least of which are the teacher’s unions. The unions ensure the election of Democrats who will promote the leftist causes, not the least of which is the capture of the colleges and universities by leftist administrators. These colleges will then produce new teachers who think they need Ed Tech in order to teach. It is a perfect circle of ideological grift.
Nebraska parents have noticed that videos are replacing books in English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum, even if they don’t know the reason. One parent pointed out the fact that students require more hours of ELA to graduate than any other subject. “If they aren’t going to read in ELA, why don’t we have them spend more hours with math and science instead?” she asked.
If you have time to peruse the National Council of Teachers of English Position Statements, it’s clear that there is a push to convince educators to focus more on digital content since that is what the students are most exposed to.
The NCTE position statement espouses critical theory in their very first paragraph, so immediately their credibility is in question.
“Educators value the use of teaching and learning practices that help to identify and disrupt the inequalities of contemporary life, including structural racism, sexism, consumerism, and economic injustice. Critical pedagogies help learners see themselves as empowered change agents, able to imagine and build a better, more just world.”
The next part about teaching students to be media savvy would be less cringy if conservatives weren’t already painfully aware that “debunking mis-information” in our current climate means “canceling, de-platforming and de-banking those who challenge the narrative.”
“Young people encounter many types of media texts and use many different literacy practices throughout a given day. Everyone in our society now needs the ability to assess the widely varying quality of the information, entertainment, and persuasion that surrounds them, to evaluate the veracity and validity of claims, and to debunk misinformation when necessary. The broadening of the communication landscape opens greater opportunities for student voice and agency as they move from users and consumers to participators and creators. Through media education, students begin to deepen sociopolitical consciousness as they recognize how power relationships structure the narratives that surround us (Buckingham & Sefton-Green, 1993).”
3 bullet points of recommended instructional stategies are listed by the NCTE
Involving students as co-creators of the curriculum by acknowledging their unique lived experience, pleasures, and preferences in the selection of texts and learning activities (Dalton, 2020);
Layering the reading of popular culture texts, multimodal texts, and classic literature together to showcase issues of representation in relation to the full scope of human creativity and imagination (Hall, 2016);
Modeling how to use multiperspectival reasoning and critical evaluation strategies with digital texts and technologies (Hicks, 2021).
While the NCTE isn’t wrong about the media onslaught affecting young people, many students like Ruby would benefit from the study of great works as the antidote to the madness, rather than “de-centralizing books” as an admission of surrender.
Culture Without Boundaries
When Ruby LaRocca says that “teachers…encourage discussions of our feelings and socioeconomic status,” she is, no doubt, referring to Social Emotional Learning.
Child development specialists understand that children thrive when they are given clear boundaries. Adolescents are expected to challenge those boundaries as they mature. What happens to adolescents when there are no boundaries? Welcome to the world of Social Emotional Learning.
“Transformative” Social Emotional Learning, in all of our schools since 2020, aims to transform the culture from one valuing Judeo-Christian teachings and meritocracy into one promoting the secular religion of Marxism, transhumanism and victimology. Examining your feelings to the point of narcissim and determining your “intersectionality” (victim profile) is the new normal.
SEL is yet another version of Ed Tech, paid for by our tax dollars, much of it from the billions of dollars of ‘Covid Relief’ or Esser funds. School districts were forced to take the SEL along with the money.
Transformative SEL as defined by Wikipedia: (If this sounds like the implementation of critical race theory, there is a good reason for that. It is.)
Transformative SEL aims to guide students to "critically examine root causes of inequity, and to develop collaborative solutions that lead to personal, community, and societal well-being."
For readers wishing to get into the weeds regarding this topic: SEL vs. Christianity and this How and When Critical Race Theory Infected Social Emotional Learning & Culturally Responsive Teaching
Since this is Ruby LaRocca’s story, it is appropriate to close with her thoughts:
“Students and teachers are more exhausted and fragile than they used to be. But reducing homework or gutting it of substance, taking away structure and accountability, and creating boundless space for “student voices” feels more patronizing than supportive. The taut cable of high expectations has been slackened, and the result is the current mood: listlessness.”
Well said, Ruby.