"As the word suggests, canon is a holy word, and there are many teachers and parents who think that there is a particular set of texts so culturally important thta every student needs to know them. This becomes the job of schools. I think, though, that we need to ask what our purposes are as teachers: to teach texts, or to develop readers who can and will want to engage with and know texts in personally powerful ways throughout their lives." -Wilhelm
I've been thinking a lot lately with the current teaching philosophy dogma that seems to be taking over the pedagogical community, and it sort of bothers me. The main focus of all teaching nowadays seems to be solely the education and entertainment of the students who aren't excelling and the main goal is to make sure all the students are motivated and educated so that we can all live in a better, more educated society. Sounds great. But I worry about the students that don't really get talked about anymore(or at least not to my knowledge), the incredibly bright that don't need to be motivated. Teachers like Wilhelm claim that it's better to be teaching everybody the same things and that even the brightest learn from the activities he teachers, but I really wonder if the majority of lessons taught by him and teachers like him are really the best for that level of student, or if we should be designing lessons that specifically target the group that will benefit from it the most.
The reason I put that quote at the top is this:"to teach texts, or to develop readers who can and will want to engage with and know texts in personally powerful ways throughout their lives."
If you have motivated, intelligent readers, why not teach the text? Why not teach canon if you have some students who will benefit immensely from it? I'm not saying that these students are being overlooked entirely, but it definitely seems that the new teaching strategies talked about by Wilhelm would have been the kinds of things that would have bored me to death in middle school.
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2 comments:
I think you bring up a really good point. Wilhelm focuses on the lesser abled readers, but what about those other readers?
Thinking back on my earlier schooling I was a student who loved to read, but was often held back by what the entire class needed to be taught. I don't think I benefited from it, some activities may have been fun, or helped me further understand a text, but as a whole I think I would have benefited from specialized attention.
If specialized classes and attention can be paid to lesser abilitied students, what can't the opposite be true?
This is a really interesting point. A focus is put on the struggling class of students because lets face it, they make up the majority of secondary school students today. When we talk about designing instruction to meet the needs of students with the "highest" intellectual capacities, I think this leads to the idea that these students may be able to benifit more from say an optional AP class. A class particularly designed to implement a heavier work load and/or more difficult concepts better suits their intrinsic motivational needs. Whereas those who are labled "low-achieving" students may be negatively affected by associating strictly with their educational equals, I don't think the same can be said for "higher-achieving" ones.
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