Wow, after reading this article, I really see how literacy skills gained by students has had dramatic changes over the years. The thought that I wanted to bring up was the idea of memorization. In the beginning of the article, there is a quote about Joseph Rice observing a classroom and seeing something that I think still exists today. The teacher he observed basically pulled out a map and located several spots and then students were expected to recite from memory all the areas on the map by heart. As further explained, this is a "conglomeration of oral reciations based on rules of elocution..."
My concern isn't primarily with the technique of oral recitation, but rather with memorization and how teachers go about assessing students most of the time. Students are required to memorize facts instead of understanding facts. Is this how students should be taught? Even though gaining literacy has changed throughout the years as we learn in this article, has this changed very much? I don't think it has!
Another interesting thing that caught my interest was that in about 1892, the National Education Association's Committee of Ten said that the purpose of English as a subject was to be able to learn how to express one clearly and learning to understand others. Do you think this has changed much? We see trends throughout the article of recitation literacy, decoding and analytic literacy, but are they only trends? We go through so many phases and trying to make perfect lessons to get through to our students, but what are we lacking? There will always be criticisms, but we have to strive to break the trends that come and go in our English classrooms!
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I found the issue of memorization very interesting too. I agree that things haven't changed too much with the uniform way schools try to teach but I think the goal has changed. I think that today we do strive for the students to learn to derive meaning from all sorts of texts. The memorizaiton technique they used did not concern itself with helping students gain meaning.
ReplyDeleteMemorization definitely has its place and importance, but it seems that the emphasis should probably be changed. The students that come from years of memorization are not people who understand their world. An example would be a popular spoof on television shows like the Colbert Report. It is common for them to interview people and ask them about international places and people. They think they know about Iraq, but it shows that the average American actually retains little more than maybe regurgitated capitals, etc.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your statement that memorization isn't as important as understanding. Just because I've memorized something doesn't mean that I understand it. But if I understand something, there is a better chance of me memorizing it. While reading this text I think there was even a part where they say that it was assumed that because they could recite and read these things it must have meant that they understood them. I would rather have my students be able to really understand and analyze something, than to be able to read it back to me from memory but not know what they're talking about.
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