May we discuss the lack of critical thinking skills in our High Schoolers??

[JohnT]

[QUOTE=Cartooniverse]
Trying to decide if it is the lack of maturity that all high school students deal with, or a true deficit on the part of our school district. It’s a fine district, best in the county, yaddah yaddah.

My daughter came to me last night with a copy of the poem, " Death, Be Not Proud" , by John Donne. ( He died in 1631 so I’m feeling pretty safe copying the text in it’s entirety here)

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell’st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

She needed to do some analysis. I was irked that she was largely clueless but then I stepped back and read the poem twice. These are complex themes here. How do we define death?

Donne is seeming to define death as an entity who wants to have control over humans and thinks it owns the moment of death. Donne ( to me ) feels that Death has some real balls in thinking this, as it is existing as a moment in time at the whim of Fate and Chance, etc.

[/QUOTE]

I’m pretty smart: a tested IQ of 131, learned to read at the age of 2, can do all sorts of math in my head.

How’d you get your last paragraph from the poem? I don’t see that at all. As a matter of fact, I don’t have the slightest idea what the hell Donne is prattling on about.

Different strokes, different folks. The inability to parse a 400 year-old poem does not define “critical thinking”.

IMHO, of course.

[Cartooniverse]

Oh, simple really.

I scored a 148.

Sorry. Where did I get that? I’ll be glad to tell you. The last two lines led me to feel that Donne saw Death as a moment and nothing more, a very serious but brief moment. We live for what, 50 years when that poem was written? Maybe? Then Death- who should not be overly proud of Its place in the scheme, because it cannot do jack shit to us while we live, and cannot touch or deny us our Eternity.

One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die

We live, we have our one short sleep(e) past, and we wake for Eternity. If we accept Donne’s framework of existence, then the last line works. Death is no more, for the power Death wants to hold over us is meaningless. Our lives will end whether or not an entity known as Death exists to bear witness to that moment.

As Donne says in earlier bits, Death has no control over our “moment” of passing. His poem robs Death of potency and makes it but a mere slip of a moment between life and Eternity.

Hope that helped.

YMMV. All Rights Reserved. E Pluribus Unum. The opinions of the poster are not necessarily the opinions of the poet or the web page kind enough to reprint his very much in public domain words.

Best if used before 6/8/08.

[MandaJo]

Simple parsing:

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull,for, thou art not so,

Death, don’t be proud of yourself, even though some people may have called you mighty and dreadful, they were wrong.

For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

The ones you think you kill don’t really die, and I won’t ever die either.

From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,

Rest and sleep are reflections of death, and they are pleasant, so death must be even more pleasant (I think this is directly from Plato, but I could be wrong)

And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.

When a good man dies, his bones get rest and his soul gets delivered to heaven.

Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,

So many things can make people die that they causes of death are more powerful than death itself–it’s an effect, not a cause.

And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell’st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,

Opium or magic can make people sleepy, and do a better job of it than death, so don’t get all arrogant about it (swelled with pride) when you are just one sort of inferior sleep, since after death comes eternal life.

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

And since there is no death at all in the afterlife, death, ironically, is “dead” there–it can’t exisit.

[Cartooniverse]

Isn’t that what I said ???

[PBear42]

Have been lurking on this thread. As regards the meaning of the poem (not the heart of the OP, of course, but not entirely irrelevent), I swear no one has made what I’m pretty sure is the most important point. Donne isn’t speaking to Death. He’s speaking to us. No need to fear death, ya’ll, cuz it ain’t got nuttin’ on us. Styling the poem as speaking to Death is merely a device.

No idea, btw, whether I could have figured out any of this in 10th grade. All I remember is that the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner went on forever, made my brain hurt and my otherwise very good English teacher was little help with that one.

[Cartooniverse]

No kidding. Any decent English teacher would have made sure they taught you that it was The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

( couldn’t’ resist, and this thread is rife with teachers. Or, is that rhyfe? )

[Eonwe]

[QUOTE=Frylock]
About bullshitting:

I decided late in high school that what learning is is just very good bullshitting.

People shouldn’t put themselves down by saying “I just bullshitted my way through the paper.” If they did well on the paper, then they learned the skill! You know how to do critical thinking (or whatever they’re calling it these days). You didn’t “fool” the teacher into thinking you knew something you didn’t–you showed you knew it, by writing the right kind of thing.

-FrL-
[/QUOTE]

Absolutely.

It was somewhere around senior year of high school and into college when I realised that I was allowed to opine on things, with my own opinion. I mean, I’d written papers defending original (to me) positions on things, but I never really got that I was in fact empowered to write intellectually about things, and that that writing had validity.

Once I understood that, it became very easy for me to write papers for English classes. I’d start with a feeling/opinion I had about the text, and then find the support within the text itself, and not worry too much about relying on secondary sources.

Not ‘bullshitting’ per se, but confidence behind one’s own position.

[Napier]

>My H.S. valued writing skills above almost all else and we wrote in every class you can imagine. With those skills came at least an attempt to teach us to dissect and analyze what we read and wrote.

>Is this a lost art?

Apparently it is. Did you realize you added an extra, incorrect space in your fourth sentence, and misspelled “its” in your fifth? I’m not trying to be harsh, here, but on the other hand might enjoy your daughter’s reaction.

I remember feeling very aware in High School, but I also have read things I wrote and recalled conversations I had then which in retrospect don’t show anything like the maturity I thought I had. Worse, my more recent retrospections fail me still.

May your daughter enjoy whatever Donne she has.

[PBear42]

[QUOTE=Cartooniverse]
No kidding. Any decent English teacher would have made sure they taught you that it was The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
[/QUOTE]
:smack: Misspelled irrelevant too. Mrs. Palmieri would not be amused.

[gigi]

[QUOTE=Eonwe]
Absolutely.

It was somewhere around senior year of high school and into college when I realised that I was allowed to opine on things, with my own opinion. I mean, I’d written papers defending original (to me) positions on things, but I never really got that I was in fact empowered to write intellectually about things, and that that writing had validity.

Once I understood that, it became very easy for me to write papers for English classes. I’d start with a feeling/opinion I had about the text, and then find the support within the text itself, and not worry too much about relying on secondary sources.

Not ‘bullshitting’ per se, but confidence behind one’s own position.
[/QUOTE]

And I would never take that chance. How did I know that was the right answer? And if there is no right answer, I would have a lot of balls thinking my guess had any merit.

I can read that poem now and get the idea (parsing it like Manda JO did) but I still lack the ability to see various interpretations of it.

I was just talkign to a co-worker whose son’s teacher marked him low on English because she thought he wasn’t creative enough. I thought, some of us just aren’t creative!

Oh, and I started college at 16 because I knew the correct answers to things, but that didn’t help me succeed at classes where I had to think critically. I took the required number of those and no more.

[Cartooniverse]

[QUOTE=Napier]
>My H.S. valued writing skills above almost all else and we wrote in every class you can imagine. With those skills came at least an attempt to teach us to dissect and analyze what we read and wrote.

>Is this a lost art?

Apparently it is. Did you realize you added an extra, incorrect space in your fourth sentence, and misspelled “its” in your fifth? I’m not trying to be harsh, here, but on the other hand might enjoy your daughter’s reaction.
[/QUOTE]

:smack:

Mr. Ambler would be dismayed…