[QUOTE=DSYoungEsq]
Well, more properly: scanning it will help you understand the meaning of the words, allowing you to recite it accurately.
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To be quite frank, you’re already displayed a willingness to define the job description of English teachers without any regard to their actual jobs, as well as claiming that something which can happen quite often is impossible. If you’re going to be claiming that scansion aids comprehension of connotation/denotation, you need to provide a cite.
One hit does, however, deal with possible "negative impact[s] of poetry instruction based on scansion, biography, genre theory and formal principles. " I did find this, which has the first page for free and the rest with JSTOR subscription.
Got any cites?
[QUOTE=DSYoungEsq]
The theme of the OP is: Don’t use the concept of “teaching kids to think” as a cop-out for teaching kids important, useful concepts.
[/quote]
Well, no, it is not. It’s:
‘I sat in on a class for a day or two, in a situation where most teachers don’t leave all that much more than busy work. In that context, I saw something I didn’t like, although I have neither the training nor the knowledge nor the experience to evaluate its efficacy in a pedagogical setting or to put it into a larger context. And at one school, students weren’t as academically successful as the others I saw, but I know nothing about the students, their families, the state curriculum or the individual teachers’ long term lesson plans. But I’m still going to claim that the school is broken. And what do you mean that I have to take other factors into account? Just educate students to my standards even if it isn’t actually possible to do so. ’
[QUOTE=DSYoungEsq]
Not that you are alone; one of the more vocal critics in this thread has failed to grasp not only this aspect of what 2.5" said, but has also managed to make assumptions about what 2.5" did that weren’t accurate, and berated the OP on that basis as well.
[/quote]
You could, of course, respond directly to such a person and even call them out.
As it is, the only assumptions that I remember anybody making were mine. I’ll assume you were trying to rebut my claims. They were based on the assumption that 2.5 understood some of the most obvious basics of pedagogy as this entire thread was started to complain about what the proper pedagogical approach should be.
If you were criticizing me, it’s more than a bit snarky for you to claim that I was reading English ‘without comprehension’… while you’re distorting what 2.5 was actually saying and whether or not his argument even made sense or had any logical/factual support.
Especially since you’re missing the entire context and reason why 2.5’s rant lacks substance and support. Which has been elaborated on, numerous times, on this page alone.
The point, of course, is that instead of possibly humiliating a student and telling him to read again in the ‘correct’ manner, best practices dictate that 2.5 would have taken the time to either A) make sure that the student knew the ‘correct’ method or B) model/scaffold the knowledge/behavior that he was demanding.
You have, as well, stated that you know better than English teachers how to teach English and what they should devote their time to. In fact, you went as far as to claim that if a teacher didn’t teach public speaking, they weren’t “even doing their job”. You went on even further to claim that it was impossible to gain the meaning of a poem without reading it ‘correctly’. You claimed it wasn’t even possible. You used all caps.
When it was pointed out that you needed to know the actual state standards (an English teacher’s job description) before you could claim that an English teacher wasn’t doing their job, and that it was fully possible to understand poetry without reading it aloud as students have done just that… you didn’t respond.
Hopefully you at least plan on defending your claims, retracting the incorrect ones, and engaging with posters with whom you disagree rather than sniping at them using the third person.
[QUOTE=DSYoungEsq]
The point 2.5" is making here is that, IF you are going to leave the students a movie, at least make it something that has some educational value.
[/quote]
It is a poor teacher who couldn’t find educational value in just about anything. Off the top of my head, I could use a movie like AKT to motivate students to get interested in and do research on the social situation of Medieval Europe. I could see a compare/contrast exercise being particularly valuable, especially if students weren’t high achieving to start with.
Hell, even WotW could, with a bit of imagination, be used to connect concepts with, say, the Mongol invasion of Mandarin China. Which isn’t to say that I’d use either in a class, but it’s still interesting that you don’t see how such films could be used in an educational context.
It’s odd that, along with 2.5, you are claiming things about the curriculum that certain teachers have developed. And you are doing so, based on nothing more than snapshots.
[QUOTE=DSYoungEsq]
Where in the pedagogy classes did we learn to do that?
[/quote]
In the part where we’re taught that getting students viscerally interested is the best way to get them into a subject, that even comic books can easily be used as ‘text’ and properly exploited by a talented teacher and that learning is most often a process of acquiring new information and being able to link it to and build upon prior knowledge.
In short, in the hands of a talented teacher, invading Martians who are destroyed by our biological climate can quite easily serve as a bridge to concepts of an invading and unbeatable Mongol army that was essentially defeated by the very culture of the group they crushed militarily.
Just as an example.
