ahernahern.bsky.social
Teaching writing and reading to kids who can already read and write
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Easily cut English Lit & Lang to one each. That gets rid of 2
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I’m using chatgpt to write this response
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I wholeheartedly agree: literature is for something, at least it used to be. It’s a point that’s difficult to make, difficult to get across, and you don’t really get a hearing from a world less inclined to bother and far more wary of being stretched / changed / challenged
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“I was becoming unmoored from myself and the narrow orbit of my own concerns. The boundaries of my moral imagination were being stretched, gently but insistently, by voices far wiser and more complex than my own and I became a better person for it. “
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“In the age of infinite content and algorithmic suggestion, reading has become less an encounter with otherness than a sort of hyper-consumption of sameness where we feed on the familiar until the foreign becomes unpalatable.“ beautiful
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Exam boards, curricula - don’t track levels of ‘hardness’ / levels of literacy
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I wonder - in the UK - what we’re doing about it. I’ve taught D at GCSE (Great Exp) - but it was too ‘hard’ for most readers of 15/16. But then Lord of F not much easier/ J & Hyde probs harder
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Like how utilitarianism and meritocracy are actually deeply harmful / problematic things despite being theoretically obvious good things.
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There’s the underlying assumption that we’re somehow making better people - when, of course, we’re not. Unless we’re willing to concede that some people, or versions of people, are better than others.
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I have no idea what one would look like. Feel like. So I don’t think there is one. And I doubt whether a ‘solution’ is desirable even. Almost that permanently putting it off is saving education. As the vague, fuzzy, incoherent thing it is.
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I think you identify the problem - nature & magnitude - but the potential solutions don’t deal with it adequately. I’m not sure what will tbh
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Excellent diagnosis, but I’m unconvinced (and I feel you’re not either) by the prescription.
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Wicked in the sense… we’re blinded by what we know? What we don’t know we know?
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They are stuck in their language of learning and will not accept a new one
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A lot of teachers who are sceptical of everything - including CogSci - lean heavily on their classroom experience of trying things and seeing what difference it makes, if any, over years and years.
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The problem is the interface between the science - the data - and our experience of it - the teaching / learning - that’s where the science stops and the philosophy begins
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I’ve always been interested in Pound
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Intriguing.
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Not yet. It was just recommended to me recently. It was the talk of my last DoE trip
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Welcome to the madness
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You’d appreciate Wittgenstein’s Nephew. Quite typical of TB novel. If not the best. Not sure what is tbh. Maybe Correction. Concrete. Loser. Oh my god. It’s all deeply nuts
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I never did get Murakami. Nor forgive him his fetishes. Do you know Thomas Bernhard? 70s & 80s. Modern author I’ve been blown away by
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Yes, early CMC. Road too. Toni M a good example of what I mean - of what fiction should do. Read 3 modern books recently with staff book group and just wondered - what is fiction for? If anything?
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But shouldn’t we/they still be making Madame bovaries and zola series? And Tolstoy & Chekhov stories? And Dubliners and Gatsby? Middlemarches?
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Something like Anna K seeks to change / better us as art can/should do. But reading modern stuff - too often it’s a game and no more
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I just feel - with little or no evidence - that fiction, of late, has given up being ‘good’ / ‘moral’ / ‘literary’ / art - and has only sought to be engaging / a diversion / a puzzle / a pose
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Also - I’m not enjoying my second read of W&P as much as my first. Also - prefer the peace bits by far
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Feynman’s “I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner… is close to fiction itself in many ways.
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Great read. So erudite as usual. But. But. But… if fiction can’t make its own argument, no other argument will gain traction (nor should it?)
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Love this : as Frank Furedi describes ‘serious eading’ as an immersive, reflective engagement with texts which allows individuals to reimagine our circumstances, test out our personalities and ideas, and continually develop our sense of who we are
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Tacktless
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I’ll check it out over the next few days. A new era of blogging? I guess there’s people to follow?
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Reading & Writing. Such joy! Shame so many kids lose it for so long, that joy. Many forever.
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I’m just a groupie David
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Agreed - such an important bit of thinking. Be great if it could be spread more widely. Your training on this really impacted my ‘management’
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Went to @didau.bsky.social training in this. If only all management could do so & reflect on own part in systems / outcomes. Would love a book / case studies