It's bad enough that parents who have their children in public schools may have to have them tutored to help them understand the material, or tutor them themselves. It's sad that some parents are afterschooling, teaching them what they want them to learn outside of school, like art or music, or even afterschooling to cover gaps in the public schools learning curriculum. Now it's cool for a teacher to assign parents to read what their children are reading in high school, and have the parents comment on it? Um, no. Read about it here; use Bugmenot if you don't want to create a log-in yourself.
This is not to say I don't read things myself. As a matter of fact, in some areas I feel I've given myself a better education than even college gave me. I read The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Buccaneers for leisure reading, just for examples. But if I'm going to, or have to, go to the trouble to read everything my child reads and discuss it with her and comment on it, I might as well just teach her myself. I can tell you there wouldn't be any "hip-hop poetry" in my dream high school curriculum. And “I take it as giving back to the teacher what he is apparently giving to our kids, a lot of attention and a lot of requirements.” Um, wouldn't that be called "doing his job"? Maybe not.
Via kitchen table math, the sequel.
2 comments:
I'm finding it hilarious that the English teacher in the article you linked is requiring Kafka and Walt Whitman.
Excuse my overt opinionizing here, but PUKE.
If I'm going to drag myself through some classic literature, you'd better believe I'm going be doing the choosing!
Sheep, that's what these parents are. Their children are sheep, and they are sheep. Baaa!
(Ok, I know I'm being harsh, but Mad Musician's out of town and I'm grumpy!)
I had to read Kafka in Honors English. The one where the narrator turns into a cockroach. How timely! :) That's all I remember, which tells you how valuable of an experience it was. I also had to read some fairly modern British novel about a family where all the in-laws were sleeping around with each other. Yeah, that was useful. At least the work I did in high school enabled me to breeze through writing assignments in college, so that was something.
I felt the same way you did seeing Kafka and Walt Whitman, but apparently some people think they are valuable for a curriculum. I'm glad I'm setting the reading list myself.
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