What Do AP Classes Teach You?

I began doing some research on the topic of AP after reading a column by a Hillcrest High School student in the Dallas Morning News.  Rebecca is 17 years old and lives a miserable life by her own account.  She gets up at 6:00 each morning, has a full round of school and extracurricular stuff until 9:30 at night, and then begins her “small mountain of homework.”  Why is she running herself into the ground?  She thinks a student needs five, six, or even seven AP classes every year in order to have a good enough resume for college. 

But the problem isn’t just lack of sleep.  She doesn’t feel she’s learned anything in the last three years. As Rebecca says, “AP classes are notorious for cramming information rather than conceptualizing it. . . . On paper, I have learned a lot in the past three years, but most of the concepts are too abstract and inapplicable in the real world.”  

In the same day’s paper another student, Matt,  a senior at FlowerMound High School, wrote about a real-world educational experience—a school trip to Germany where he visited the Dachau concentration camp.  He wrote, “Being confronted by the buildings, standing and smelling and seeing and feeling the claustrophobia of the shower” gave him a connection to the 

human aspect of the sweep of history. . . . Before Dachau, the Holocaust, as I had learned it within the four walls of a classroom, was a part of World War II, one aspect of a brutal regime that could have destroyed democracy, a textbook example of genocide, and so on.  I learned the facts of the Holocaust without ever learning its soul.  

This made me wonder if trips or other personal experiences are necessary for students to connect to the facts they learn in school, that would otherwise be lifeless and boring, something to memorize and forget.  I have been to Dachau and it does confront you as Matt says, but  so did reading the Diary of Anne Frank, maybe even more.  Taking the time to read a personal account like that in a history class would be a great thing.  I wonder if the rigorous pace of the AP curriculum would allow for it.  I’m sure many of you took AP classes—do you think they prepared you for understanding the world or just understanding the test? 

SMU student politician shows lack of repect for opponents

 When SMU student Charles McCaslin delivered an inebriated toast at a convention after- party, he referred to his opponents as “nerds and “fags.”  He was talking about fellow members of the College Republicans who were in a race for the leadership of National College Republicans.   He prefaced this remark with some incoherent story about having gotten “hammered” with another College Republican  at a girl’s apartment and  “hooking up” with her.  

 Should we give this Hunt Scholar and otherwise responsible young man a pass?  He is young, he was drunk . 

. . . No, I don’t think so.  I think the incident, caught on a YouTube video by a supporter of the opponents, reveals a culture of incivility lurking beneath the surface, a culture where heterosexual males still think gay jokes and bragging about sexual conquests is funny and macho.  Drinking does not make a person homophobic; drinking merely releases a person from the restraints that would otherwise keep these prejudices buried.  

McCaslin has had to apologize to everybody—the College Republicans, his fellow SMU students in a letter to the Daily Campus, and most likely to his parents and the Hunt family.  We should accept his apology.  If it is sincere, he will examine his attitudes towards women, gays, and whoever he meant by “nerds”—those people who will be getting the $100,000 starting salaries in computer technology? And he will speak up and be a crusader against incivility in politics.

The Case against Literature

Reading the literacy essays again, I decided that in high school English, literature just

plays too big a role.  Even in classes here, which are supposed to be about writing, I see too much literature of the fiction variety.   One faculty member’s syllabus  had five, six, and even seven short stories assigned for a single class.  That much literature crowds the students’ writing out of the class.

Most high school and college students are not going to be English majors. But they are going to need to be effective communicators, and most literary assignments don’t provoke genuine communication. Does this thesis convince you that the author is burning to tell you that

“Amitai Etzioni’s use of the terms Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft can be applied to William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Miss Emily” and the town of Jefferson, Mississippi that Faulkner portrays.”

OK—it doesn’t have to be this bad, but it usually is. 

To prepare for the real world, students also need practice reading a variety of texts, not just fiction.  Why did most students last fall refer to Zeitoun as a ‘novel”?  It’s non-fiction, a perfectly good genre.  In fact, most of the reading for college and life is non-fiction, so students need more of that.  They need to analyze rhetorical strategies and evaluate the reasoning in arguments.  Funny, but some students in the literacy paper told me they learned more about how to write in History or Philosophy than they did in English. 

Yet literature exposes students to great ideas and—if you read it attentively—lessons in how to craft a sentence.  And as P.M. Forni says, it can instill empathy through imagination. Literature makes us human. We need literature, but not so much. 

Is College Challenging Enough?

A new book suggests that colleges don't challenge students enough.  The authors of   Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses followed 2,300 students through their first two years at 24 private and public universities and tested their thinking and writing improvement.  The test showed that  45% of the students “demonstrated no significant gains in critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and written communications during the first two years of college.” 


For a lot of people, the first two years of college are a waste of time and money.   Almost half the tuition  goes towards what?  What are students doing if they aren't learning to think, analyze, and write? One thing is sure--they aren't studying as much as in the past.


Another study suggests that students are not having to study as hard as their parents' generation did.  Two University of California professors looked at how much time today's students spend studying outside of class now as compared to past years.   They found that since 1961, study time has declined by 10 hours per week.  (Tuition is not to blame; the study found the same decline in students with jobs and those without.)  The U. of CA. professors blame the decline on falling standards.  Students just don't have to work as much to get decent grades.  


 Academically Adrift reports how the average student spends time per week: 
Labs and class                                   9%
Studying                                              7%
Working/volunteering                   9%
Sleeping                                             24%
Socializing/recreation                  51%

Students spend less time studying than they spend in class?  I thought the ratio was supposed to be three hours studying per each class hour.  Is that a myth?

It's relatively easy for a student to avoid taking demanding classes.  The authors  found that 50% of the students they followed “did not take a single course in which they wrote more than 20 pages over the course of the semester.”   The good news is that the students who had taken  reading/writing intensive courses were in the 55% that scored well on the assessment. I know students groan about having to write papers, but the benefits are measurable.

1.  

Standing up for Civility

We all witness incivility, but how often do we speak up and tell the rude person they are rude?  I’ll do it with students as part of my teacher role, where I feel obliged to protect the rights of other students.   At a reading by a famous author in  Hughes-Trigg auditorium, I told some girls in front of me that their candy wrappers and chatter were annoying people.  They turned to look disgustedly at me and then got up and walked out.  Mission accomplished.  

However, in my private life, I usually shrink from the task, wanting to avoid confrontation.   A few days ago, I ran into Central Market for some eggs and a birthday card.  Being in a hurry, I went to check out in the “Express” lane, where the limit is 15 items.   At least six people stood in line in front of me.  At one of the check-outs, a woman with a cart was holding things up.   Finally, the cashier started handing over the bagged groceries, at least four full bags. 

I wondered, was this shopper too stupid to read the sign, too self-absorbed to notice, or maybe just arrogant enough to think the rules don’t apply to her?  I wanted to walk up to her and say nicely, “The express lane is for people in a hurry, so next time, if you have more than 15 items, please don’t use it.”  But I didn’t.  Even on my second chance I didn’t, when I saw her outside the door, just two feet away.  As I walked to my car, I felt I had dodged the chance to right a wrong.   And after all, what could she have done to me?  She looked like an earth-mother type who probably had six little vegans waiting at home for their beets and broccoli. 

What is the right thing to do in these situations?  Would P.M. Forni have spoken up?  He writes about speaking up on a train in Italy to a disruptive group of high school students on a field trip.   His choice was not whether to speak, but how to speak, to show his anger or make a polite request.  Could they please tone it down so he and his wife could have a conversation, thanks.  Of course, he had more at stake than I did—my moment of irritation was over, but he was facing a long, annoying ride in a closed compartment. 

Is speaking up for civility minding other people’s business?  I inwardly applaud the folks who tell the rude that they are rude.  They enforce the rules, and a society needs rules.  The police can’t always be there to fine the person who takes a handicapped parking space but doesn’t need it, or who lets an unruly dog run off leash in the park.  I think speaking up politely is minding everybody’s business.  If we tolerate rudeness, we just perpetuate an ever more rude society.

What Are Stabilimenta?

After I accidentally erased my old blog, I needed a new name.  I thought about writing on the web and remembered back in the 1980's (pre-Web) I walked out to my backyard in Richardson and saw this huge spider web (about two feet across) in the garden, and in it a beautiful yellow and black spider.

Each morning I went out to see what my "pet" spider had managed to secure during the night and wrap up for future meals.  I got so interested in the spider and the curious pattern in the center of her web that I actually--this was before Internet--got into my car and drove to the Richardson library and checked out an actual book on spiders of Texas.  There I learned the name of the spider:  Argiope aurentia, also called the orb spinner and the writing spider.
These are called the writing spiders because they decorate the center of their webs with patterns, like the zig zag in the picture.  No one knows for sure what the purpose of the decorations is.  It was thought at first that they stabilized the web, hence the name stabilimenta (plural).  However, that theory has not panned out.  I like the fact that the purpose of the decoration is a mystery. 

Possibly stabilimenta are messages.  Did you read Charlotte's Web when you were little?  Charlotte was a spider who saved the life of a pig named Wilbur by repeatedly writing messages in her web to the farmer who was about to slaughter the pig, messages like "Terrific pig!"   The story was about empathy and friendship.

 “Why did you do all this for me?”  Wilbur asks Charlotte.  “I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.”“You have been my friend,” replied Charlotte. “That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die . . . By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.”

Kids can learn a lot from good stories, reading them with parents if they are too young to do it on their own.  This may not be the most unified blog post, but I think it fits well with the point of the other post I wrote this morning.

Facebook: A Friendly Place?

Sunday, Dec. 5:  I'm not looking for these stories just because I am focusing on civility in my 1302, but these reports about incivility just keep popping up.   Here is today's offering from the front page of the New York Times. Some of you disagreed with my post about rudeness on the Boulevard.

OK, so maybe snowball throwers go a little too wild, and football fans get a pass for being rude to the other team, but Facebook is supposed to be about friendship, so why are so many kids using it to bully each other?  Who has an excuse for the kind of behavior? Why would someone send a text message to a girl whose leg is in a brace, mocking her disability?  Why would three boys forge another boy's identity on Facebook and make it appear that he was the one doing the bullying?  Why do kids take the time to be so  mean? 

This is my own little problem solution post because if you read the article, you will see that parents are a big part of the problem.  Some do not want to get involved because when they intervene to defend their kid, they can make the problem worse.  But I'm wondering where the parents are when the kids are three, four, five, and so on.  Those are the times when parents need to teach the lessons of the Golden Rule.  And the motto about walking in someone else's shoes.

Zeitoun (remember?) asked why Americans sometimes did not live up to their best selves.  I don't think we are naturally our best selves.  Being kind is something we have to learn--from parents, from religion, and from the culture--if the culture values that.  For some reason, the culture today, including the superficial friendliness of Facebook, does not value empathy.