Encouraging kids to read, Not!

[Morrigoon]

Maybe the competition should be for # of pages read?

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by Morrigoon

Maybe the competition should be for # of pages read?

"Cat in the Hat" vs "Harry Potter". You can't use number of pages. Time is the only real option I see that enourages kids to read whatever they want.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Heehee, guys.

Our library has a standard summer reading program, and it does not count number of books read, it counts number of minutes read. The advantages to a system like this are pretty apparent.

As a kid I cheated my summer reading club by reading short books and listing books that I'd read last year. Guilt to my grave.

As for the lazy librarian, you're right in thinking you need to go above her head and get help from administrators. Librarians always have problems allowing something "disruptive" into their schedule, no matter how sensible. It's so nice a quiet when there's nobody in the library...

[MickeyD]

When I was in elementary school they counted minutes, not books. I kicked ass in the competition every year.....I also won my 5th grade spelling contest. It's sad how my life has been all down hill since 5th grade.

[tracilicious]

It amazes me that there are so many ways in which we encourage mediocrity in our children. Don't believe me? Just watch Higglytown Heroes on Playhouse Disney. There is a hero featured in each episode. Past heroes include: Grandma for knitting a sweater on a cold day, the baker for baking bread, the grocer for finding noodles in the store, and the pizza guy for lord knows what. I'm all for teaching civic responsibility, but lets not disguise it as heroism. Save a life? Hero. Give a kidney? Hero. Put out a fire? Hero. Deliver a pizza? Minimum wage earner probably on your way to something better.

Incidentally, Michael will watch the show with Indi while I'm sleeping on weekends. Indi's favorite is the pizza guy. He goes around saying, "Me pizza guy!" I'm hoping his ambitions aim a little higher in the future, lol.

[scaeagles]

Just a thought.....we hear all the time about how we are falling behind other industrialized nations in areas of math and science. How we do know this? Standardized testing.

SATs are standardized testing. ACTs are standardized testing. So are the Stanford acheivement tests.

Is it not important to have a measurement of how we are doing in education? Isn't a large part of education an accumulation of knowledge and an ability to process information presented? Standardized testing seems to me to be a good way of doing that.

Part of education has to be rote memorization. Knowing facts. Part has to be deductive reasoning. In "teaching the test", aren't we giving them the ability to do that? To meet certain minimal requirements? For math, the students are not given the problems and given the answers and forced to memorize them. They are taught the process of how to come to the answer, and that is how they come up with the solutions to problems on standardized tests.

I guess I don't see the problem with expectations of students knowing certain things at a certain age and having tests to see if the educators are doing their jobs.

[Ghoulish Delight]

All standardized tests teach you to do is take tests.

Okay, that's a bit unfair, and a small amount of standardized testing is a necessary component of tracking student progress. However, it's become the be all and end all. No Child Left Behind was written with the belief that the entire education process can be distilled and analyzed based on standardized test results. It's a load of crap. And it means 2 things. 1) Decissions are now based almost solely on the incomplete picture that standardized testing provides and 2) As these decissions fail to fix the problem (because, again, they're based on an incomplete assessment), the "solution" is to attempt to make the picture more complete with more standardized testing. Soon, the only things that will be taught is how to pass a test. And teaching someone how to pass a test is NOT the same as teaching the subject.

[scaeagles]

With certain things I can certainly agree with that. However, in terms of basic knowledge, such as vocabulary, math skills, etc, the best way to measure whether someone knows it is to test them on it. If someone can sit down and do a basic quadratic equation on a test it is because they have been taught in algebra how to do quadratic equations.

(edited to add: Clinton)

[Ghoulish Delight]

That's one theory. Another one has shown that standardized tests, especially in things like vocabulary and reading comprehension, are biased based on socio-economic lines. They make certain assumptions about "common knowledge" that is only common if you're above a certain economic class. Assumptions about what a home looks like, who cooks meals, who takes care of kids, etc. It's subtle, but it's been shown to make a difference.

Never mind that these, by necessity, are multiple choice tests. There are techniques for taking these which can guarantee better scores, without necessiraly better knowledge. I'm a master of multiple choice tests, no matter how clever the test maker gets. They are good to a point, but are severely lacking.

[scaeagles]

Well, if teaching the test means teaching strategies for answering multiple choice questions, then that should not be done.

So....what is a better way than standardized testing? I've had enough really, really bad teachers (and also really, really good teachers) to know that we need something besides inconsistent measurement standards from teacher to teacher to assess what is being successfully taught and learned.