Re: Ideocosmology

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@mindspring.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sam Sampere <sampere@SUHEP.PHY.SYR.EDU>
>
>
> > There is nothing to teach about learning!!  You have to teach kids how to
> > read.
>
> Sorry, but if we are going to have to teach reading (not scientific reading,
> but _reading_) at the College level, then the educational system is doomed
> to semi-literate mediocrity, AT BEST.  If students can't read and can't
> study by the time they get to College then we really _should_ be failing
> them, having them reassess their skills, having those motivated enough to do
> so go back and gain the necessary skills for entering college, then
> returning to get their education.  IF on the other hand, the colleges and
> universities buy into the 'everyone can learn everything if taught properly'
> mantra then clearly we WILL have to go back to square one, teach reading,
> writing, arithmetic, study habits, etc. and then perhaps our COLLEGE
> GRADUATES will be ready to GO TO COLLEGE.   Of course, teaching at a private
> college, we aren't about to flunk out the numbers we should (we'll give them
> Bs instead) lest we put ourselves out of business.  ;-(
>
> rick

I have been thinking about this reading problem for some time now, and I
think that this thread is heading in the direction I have been working
toward for a couple of months. One of the problems with what students bring
to our physics courses (by no means the only one, but an important one) is
an inability to read a textbook.

As I think back on how I was taught to read, lo these many years ago, and
that I too was a non-reader of textbooks in college (I'm still not very
good at it), it has occurred to me that perhaps the problem lies in how we
are taught. From the beginning we are taught how to read stories, and only
that. I never remember reading anything in elementary school that was other
than either a story or simply descriptive (like my history or geography
text). Never were we expected to read anything in which we were going to
have to follow an argument to a conclusion, much less critique that
argument. A student who has no experience in that kind of reading will be
totally lost in any worthwhile science text

Why couldn't reading, by the second or third year at the latest, include
samples of the kind of writing that they need to be proficient at by the
time they get to high school? They could be very simple at first, even
couched in the guise of stories, with increasing complexity as time goes
on, until by the seventh or eighth grade, they can be expected to read
selections from appropriately graded texts and understand them, pehaps
even, find intentionally planted errors by applying the logic included in
the selection.

I would like to hear from others with more experience (or more recent
experience) with early reading instruction than I have. Are we creating a
country of non-textbook readers because we never teach them how to read one
(telling them how to do it-I do it all the time-is not teaching them how)?

Hugh

************************************************************
Hugh Haskell
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
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