From: werme@alliant.com (Ric Werme)
Subject: Re: Science fiction, literature, politics, schools
Organization: Alliant Computer Systems Corp.
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 15:01:59 GMT

In article <LEE.92Aug11140857@meercat.wang.com> lee@wang.com (Lee Story) writes:
>[I sent the following as email to Ric Werme <werme@alliant.com> in
>response to his post in misc.education, but Gordon Fitch's comments on
>SF in the "Hate Speech..." thread of t.p.theory made me decide to post
>the parts of my reply concerning literature and science fiction.
>Besides, Ric specifically ASKED for flames!]

Hmm.  Haven't seen your mail yet.  Got other people's mail, just not yours.
Maybe the flame filter kicked in.  :-)

>You [Ric Werme] write:
>   Reading and writing skills are vital, but english teachers seem to have
>   an English literature background.
>
>""""""BUT""""""??????????????
>
>   That's fine if you're interested in English literature,

Agreed, but let me reiterate that my article was based on my
experiences over the years.  At the time I had no idea that
an opening on the board would appear or that I might want to
fill it.  If I had, I would have written something very different.
To date, no has taken me up on my request for other viewpoints.

>""""""?!@#$?$#@?!""""""""
>
>If you're presuming to become one of those in power in the craft of
>education, and take responsibility for the transmission of our
>heritage to children and adolescents, I believe you should think long
>and hard about the reasons why you're not "interested" in literature,

a) I am interested in literature and wish I had more time for reading.
   When I do have time, my SF deficit level is so high that I never make
   to some of the American/English/etc stuff I do want to catch up on.
b) One of the reasons for posting my article here was to provide fodder
   for long and hard thinking.

>and why _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ is your favorite novel, and

That's easy - I was in "hacker larval stage" when I first read it, and Heinlein
features a sentient computer that could never quite get the knack of cracking
a joke.

>what it means (especially for the quality of instruction in that
>literature) that you apparently couldn't bear to read and report on a
>poet other than Robert Frost or a pop lyricist.

I went from diagramming sentences in sixth grade in public school to reading
essays and reviewing them in 7th at a private school.  I looked over the first
thing I turned and figured it might be worth a B or C, but it got an F.
Clearly I was not prepared.  In 8th grade the emphasis was on poetry.  We
were assigned Gray's _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_ around the same time
one of my mother's teaching assistants (for Kindergarden) was assigned it
in her college English class.  Combine that with being nearly the youngest
person in the class, and the scars lasted a long time.  Fortunately, I got
A's in algebra.

As for Paul Simon, at least give me credit for getting some of the better
English students to think about something they generally ignored.

>  Have you read
>_Bleak_House_?  _A Portrait of the Artist_? _Women_in_Love_?
>_Absalom,_Absalom_? _The Sun Also Rises_? ....?  I doubt it.

No*4 & I forget. (I've read Hemingway, Dickens, Cather, Virgil, etc!  Wish I
had more time to.)

>Seriously, I feel sick when I see posts on the Usenet education groups
>noting the great demand for technical and science teachers, and
>claiming a glut of people qualified to teach languages and history.
>Your experience (as a smart student turned away from literature into
>the byways of SF and popular song

That's the second time you said pop song.  Try folk song and classical.
There wasn't much pop music I liked then and less rock & roll.

> ) seems more and more common, and
>suggests that the quality of instruction in the humanities is
>HORRENDOUS (well, instruction isn't needed that much---"motivation"
>and "transmitted enthusiasm" might be better).

I agree.  English teachers with only a strong background in Eng Lit are
ill-prepared to motivate students with strong math/science aptitudes.
Personally, I think there's a shortage of people who teach languages and
history *well*.

>Could your problem be because you enjoy quantifiable competitions, and
>the humanities aren't as _directly_ competitive (at least at the
>schoolboy level)?

No.  I dislike most competitive sports, but have bicycled from California to
Montana (via Canada).  I'm a reasonably decent skiier.  My brother is the
competitive one.  The main reason I did well on SATs was that I retained the
subject matter better than students who learn enough to pass the next test
and forget it immediately thereafter (heck, the physics SAT was easier than
most of our physics tests in class).  I don't know if my retention is an
aptitude or a result of different learning habits.

  That may be a defect (IMO) in our whole culture!
>The humanities do have the virtue that one can proceed at
>one's own pace.  For example, assigned _A Tale of Two Cities_, the
>student can perfectly well read ALL of Dickens' works.

Except that school curricula generaly don't do that, and our new high
school has dropped the advanced placement grouping.  So far you haven't
given me any information I could pass on to students.  (Other than read
lots, but I thought that was obvious.)

>   Science fiction should be a sizable part of the curriculum because
>   it helps prepare people for our changing world.
>
>Horseshit!  I like science fiction, but it's a fairly small part of a
>couple of literary genres (novel, short story).

On the ratio of about 1 assignment per high school education?  When I
said sizable, I didn't mean 50%.  Fairly small might be about right.

>   History was another bane, and I think much of my trouble with it was the

>I'm more sympathetic to you here.  Note that your last (excellent!) project
>suggestion is "political" history, too.  I think MOST of the trouble is
>in the extraordinarily shallow and boosterish textbooks.  Throw them
>out!  Get your district to use something like Treveylan or the Durants
>for European and English history, and maybe Morrison (difficult!) for
>the American survey!

elg@elgamy.sccsi.com (Eric Lee Green) posted something about his teaching
education trying to get teachers to make learning as non-challenging and
fun as possible.  Personally, I've always found challenges fun and many
non-challenges boring.  USA Today for current affairs?  Chaucer in Modern
English?  Sends a shiver right down your spine!

There was a radio lecture series 20 years ago on WWII history.  It was
on the Pittsburgh NPR station I usually had on in my office.  I forget
who did it, he was well known at the time, but I could not ignore his
voice and it was too interesting to let me turn it off.  I generally
had to abandon work and listen to him.  Too bad he didn't teach at my
high school!  Heck - coulda replaced the teacher with a tape player!

>   The one course I should have taken but didn't was typing.
>
>Typing should be well-practiced in GRADE SCHOOL today.  I'd suggest
>that it be covered in the 6th to 8th grades, not in high school.

Is it?  I never chased that one down.  Keep in mind my target audience
was students going into the new high school.  Most 6th to 8th graders
don't read that newspaper.

>   Consider taking some extra courses and maybe skipping a grade. 
>   Educators and Mensans are split as to the benefits of grade skipping. 
>   Problems include insufficient emotional maturity and athletic abilities. 
>   I don't have a solution for the former, and class scheduling often makes
>   it hard for a student to attend a gym class with his age group. [...]
>
>One more problem with an evident solution: teach to achievement of
>proficiency, not to grade-level.  ELIMINATE grade levels.  Provide
>plenty of alternative, extracurricular opportunities for
>socialization.  Graduate a student based on the recommendations of
>teachers in each subject-matter area.  Even over-all graduation seems
>dubious; "has met high school proficiency level in [history,
>literature, algebra, rhetoric, Latin]" seems preferable.  (This
>probably won't set well with anyone in power, from the other school
>board members to President Bush, but if you don't suggest improvements
>they'll never happen.)

Some of that is being done in the new school.  While I originally got
involved in all this due to the alleged evils of ungrouped education,
I know some people who went to one room schoolhouses and did okay.

There is a conflict here that I've have collected little data to help
resolve.  elg sent me several pointers to stuff to read, any you might
suggest would be helpful.

>To conclude:  It appears that the "two cultures" hypothesis is alive
>and well, much to the detriment of our civilization.  You are clearly
>on the science/technology/quantitative side.

>  If you drive down to
>the Andover Bookstore (which I love despite its failings), you can see
>the other side:  tens of thousands of novels, good poetry and drama ...

I don't make it to Andover often, but there's a new Barnes & Noble in
Nashua that is pretty good, while it does have SF and technical stuff,
they're a "fairly small" portion of the store.  Big children's
section.  Get 'em hooked early!

>In my opinion, no student should leave school without an appreciation
>of both sides, and the background to enjoy and explore everything from
>Noetherian rings to the rings of Dante's Inferno!

I agree.  I struggled mightily to keep my article as short as possible
because shorter submissions are better received by the editors at the
newspaper.  (They enforce their warnings about editing letters > 350
words.  My submission was 1200.)  One of my decisions was to stick with
what I knew best, hoping it would annoy someone like you to write a
similar piece.  So far, none has appeared.

I think our interests are not that far apart, its just that we've been
emphasizing our own cultures.  I wrote my article in hopes that it will
get students to learn more and think better.  On that, it's clear we
agree.
>--
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>        Lee Story (lee@wang.com) Wang Laboratories, Inc.
>            (this email address disappears 14 August;
> I may be reborn as lee@bostech.com or something similar in September)
>------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hope this makes it to you in time.  Good luck whereever
-- 
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