this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2024
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Fuck AI
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Mate I've taught more than a thousand students and the level of engagement on reading ... Anything ... Is depressingly low.
I asked my students to read a chapter of a book over a term. We would read a section every week and Monday would be a reading group where we would discuss what we read and then present our groups findings. Each section was 10 to 20 pages. About 10% of the student body would read anything.
It made me sad
For many people, reading is boring. And people have different attention spans and different types of brains.
Some people have internal monologues and some don't.
Some people instantly conjure up rich visuals when given info, some don't.
I suspect many readers who like reading tend to easily create visuals in their minds. I can visualize things but it's not always automatic or detailed and so reading seems like an artform based on older less fun technology.
A lot of times kids are bored and annoyed with all the other subjects going on too. They have to memorize facts that could be easily googled, they have to take tests in different subjects. School was mostly excruciating when I did it and whenever I could i zoned out to give my brain a break from paying attention to boring things.
We should let students take more classes they want. Let science types do more science, let less intellectual kids learn to repair AC units, and let people who love to read be in classes with others like them.
If in my school I had done much harder science classes and more computer classes and less history and literature and other things that i mostly endured to get a good grade, i would have been happier. Also AP and Honors classes mess things up because if you are smart then not taking AP or Honors lowers your GPA and messes up your ability to just choose what you want
And sometimes it's the role of education to expose students to things they benefit from but wouldn't necessarily seek out on their own. Reading comprehension and use of language is a vital skill to function as an adult in society, and to acquire that you need to read, a lot. Short texts, long texts, different styles, poetry, prose, etc. There's really no way around it.
Dont you know kids though? Boring is death.
/s