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Oct. 9th, 2024 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatI probably don't need to be posting in this thing daily? Hopefully, if all goes well no reason why it shouldn't, I'll be gone next week. Visiting Mother for her birthday next week in Hilton Head Island, SC. And working Columbus Indigenous Peoples Day Holiday Weekend into the mix.
Back hurts, heating it up. Also digesting a bunch of pills, I just took - which appear lodged in the old esophagus. A fat lot of good the Magnesium Citrate and Vitamin D will do there.
Tried. Got maybe 5 and a half hours of sleep the night before. According to my watch it was 5 hours and 42 minutes. The device breaks it down into deep, core, and REM, with most of it falling under Core.
So, overall goal is to get to bed earlier tonight. Maybe by 10 at the latest?
Lack of sleep makes me irritable. As does boredom. And I tend to get myself into trouble on social media platforms when I'm bored. I've many to choose from now, so it's usually one of them? And people can be annoying when one is sleep deprived and bored. Well, they can be annoying anyhow, just more so, when one is sleep deprived and bored.
I should go to bed now, but can't - heart-burn and digestive issues. Have to wait a bit. Frigging internal plumbing is not being cooperative. My father used to complain about the plumbing and how they needed to root it all out - I think he was talking about his own.
***
On Facebook, someone introduced an "Atlantic" article in a misleading manner.
FB: In the Atlantic, a Professor discusses how his students told him that books will soon go the way of vinyl records.
Me: Well, considering Vinyl Records are making a come back, and being sold at B&N now. Also there are at least four book stores that have popped up in my area, with extensive children's literature sections. And various people are reading them on the trains...I'm not worried. Although I continue to be concerned about serious journalism and our educational system...
Read or skimmed the article? And honestly, I was right. It's not about what she said it was about. It's about...
Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books
"Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they’re assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames’s students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.
Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they’re assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames’s students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.
Explore the November 2024 Issue
This development puzzled Dames until one day during the fall 2022 semester, when a first-year student came to his office hours to share how challenging she had found the early assignments. Lit Hum often requires students to read a book, sometimes a very long and dense one, in just a week or two. But the student told Dames that, at her public high school, she had never been required to read an entire book. She had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover.
“My jaw dropped,” Dames told me. The anecdote helped explain the change he was seeing in his students: It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading. It’s that they don’t know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to."
I think part of the difficulty is the Humanities Lit Professors insist on assigning the same books. Folks? Assign something other than 19th Century and 18th Century and early 20th Century literature.
Let's face it most high school and college kids are not going to understand The Great Gatsby, or get through Pride and Prejudice or Moby Dick. There are other novels you can assign. Such as "The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison" or "Kindred by Octavia Butler" or "Dubliner's by James Joyce" or "Neuromancer by William Gibson" or better yet Pattern Recognition.
When I was in college - I got a much broader spectrum. And if I were teaching literature? I'd pick from a slew of different writers, and centuries, decades.
My impromptu list of literary works:
1. The Ghost Stories of MR James
2. The poetry of Dorothy Parker and Sylvia Plath
3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
4. Twelth Night by William Shakespeare
5. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
6. Member at the Wedding by Carson McCullures
7. Dubliner's by James Joyce
8. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
9. Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
10. Bram Stoker's Dracula
11. Mary Shelly's Frankenstein
12. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
13. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
14. Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
15. The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell
16. Murders in the Rogue Morgue and The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe
17. Curtain by Agatha Christie
18. Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
19. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
20. Dune by Frank Herbert
I never understood people who don't love books, or reading. I had to work hard to learn, and once I did, I devoured. I wonder sometimes if something comes easily to someone, and they don't have to earn it - they take it for granted and don't bother?
Also, I'd expand the above list to include foreign translated works and graphic novels. Along with YA.
Such as:
1. Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
2. Persepolis - Graphic Novel
3. 100 Years of Solitude by Gaberiel Garcia Marquez
4. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
5. Candide by Voltaire
6. Kafka on the Shore
and so on.
Off to bed.
Back hurts, heating it up. Also digesting a bunch of pills, I just took - which appear lodged in the old esophagus. A fat lot of good the Magnesium Citrate and Vitamin D will do there.
Tried. Got maybe 5 and a half hours of sleep the night before. According to my watch it was 5 hours and 42 minutes. The device breaks it down into deep, core, and REM, with most of it falling under Core.
So, overall goal is to get to bed earlier tonight. Maybe by 10 at the latest?
Lack of sleep makes me irritable. As does boredom. And I tend to get myself into trouble on social media platforms when I'm bored. I've many to choose from now, so it's usually one of them? And people can be annoying when one is sleep deprived and bored. Well, they can be annoying anyhow, just more so, when one is sleep deprived and bored.
I should go to bed now, but can't - heart-burn and digestive issues. Have to wait a bit. Frigging internal plumbing is not being cooperative. My father used to complain about the plumbing and how they needed to root it all out - I think he was talking about his own.
***
On Facebook, someone introduced an "Atlantic" article in a misleading manner.
FB: In the Atlantic, a Professor discusses how his students told him that books will soon go the way of vinyl records.
Me: Well, considering Vinyl Records are making a come back, and being sold at B&N now. Also there are at least four book stores that have popped up in my area, with extensive children's literature sections. And various people are reading them on the trains...I'm not worried. Although I continue to be concerned about serious journalism and our educational system...
Read or skimmed the article? And honestly, I was right. It's not about what she said it was about. It's about...
Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books
"Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they’re assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames’s students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.
Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they’re assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames’s students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.
Explore the November 2024 Issue
This development puzzled Dames until one day during the fall 2022 semester, when a first-year student came to his office hours to share how challenging she had found the early assignments. Lit Hum often requires students to read a book, sometimes a very long and dense one, in just a week or two. But the student told Dames that, at her public high school, she had never been required to read an entire book. She had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover.
“My jaw dropped,” Dames told me. The anecdote helped explain the change he was seeing in his students: It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading. It’s that they don’t know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to."
I think part of the difficulty is the Humanities Lit Professors insist on assigning the same books. Folks? Assign something other than 19th Century and 18th Century and early 20th Century literature.
Let's face it most high school and college kids are not going to understand The Great Gatsby, or get through Pride and Prejudice or Moby Dick. There are other novels you can assign. Such as "The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison" or "Kindred by Octavia Butler" or "Dubliner's by James Joyce" or "Neuromancer by William Gibson" or better yet Pattern Recognition.
When I was in college - I got a much broader spectrum. And if I were teaching literature? I'd pick from a slew of different writers, and centuries, decades.
My impromptu list of literary works:
1. The Ghost Stories of MR James
2. The poetry of Dorothy Parker and Sylvia Plath
3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
4. Twelth Night by William Shakespeare
5. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
6. Member at the Wedding by Carson McCullures
7. Dubliner's by James Joyce
8. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
9. Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
10. Bram Stoker's Dracula
11. Mary Shelly's Frankenstein
12. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
13. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
14. Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
15. The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell
16. Murders in the Rogue Morgue and The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe
17. Curtain by Agatha Christie
18. Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
19. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
20. Dune by Frank Herbert
I never understood people who don't love books, or reading. I had to work hard to learn, and once I did, I devoured. I wonder sometimes if something comes easily to someone, and they don't have to earn it - they take it for granted and don't bother?
Also, I'd expand the above list to include foreign translated works and graphic novels. Along with YA.
Such as:
1. Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
2. Persepolis - Graphic Novel
3. 100 Years of Solitude by Gaberiel Garcia Marquez
4. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
5. Candide by Voltaire
6. Kafka on the Shore
and so on.
Off to bed.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-10 01:34 pm (UTC)That was good. The high school I went to didn't do that well in English class, nor in the writing class I took there. Fortunately for me, my high school journalism teacher did teach that skill very well. My Freshman year of college, over and over in many classes after tests, the professors would gripe about how bad the Freshmen in the classes were at writing essays, before returning the test papers. I'd shiver at the thought of how badly I'd done, only to find I wasn't one of the Freshmen the professors were griping about.
Yes, we all had a required composition writing class as Freshmen in college. But that came too late for many kids to avoid tongue lashings.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-10 02:32 pm (UTC)