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Re: Why..



At 12:37 PM 10/8/01 -0500, Tina Fanetti wrote:
Why can't students read and follow directions? Why?

I strongly suspect the following is not responsive to Tina's question, but
I can't pass up the opportunity to tell a funny story that makes a
tangentially-related point:

Once upon a time I was working with my brother in his law office. It was a
Saturday, and he had his kids with him. Carolyn was 2 years old. She
looked like she was barely 1, because she was so tiny. She was busy
building towers and bridges out of paper cups and books (about the only
things to play with in that office). Very cute. At about 2:00 she looked
up and said "I think it's high time for lunch." Very cute. Not the sort
of thing you expect to hear from pseudo-one-year-olds.

My brother says, "Yes, sweetie, it's high time for lunch. Where would you
like to go?"

Carolyn says, "Eegies. They have really good hot dogs."

So we go trundling off to Eegies. But when we get there, the parking lot
is empty, and there's a big sign in the door that says "CLOSED. Please
come again later."

We were about to drive off, but I said "Wait a minnit. It doesn't make
sense for a joint like this to be closed at 2:00 on a Saturday. Let's go
take a look." Sure enough, the place was open. Six or eight staff were
lounging behind the counter, wondering why there were so few customers.

I said "It's a good thing we didn't follow the instructions, or you'd have
no customers at all. If you turn that sign around, I'll bet business will
pick up considerably."

(About the time I finished my meal, Carolyn said she wanted another hot
dog. I started looking around on the bench, on the floor, et cetera,
trying to figure out what she had done with the first one. But no, she had
actually eaten it. She ate the second one, too. Real good-sized hot
dogs. Go figure.)

Anyway, over lunch we had a good discussion of the importance of !not!
believing every sign and !not! following every instruction.

I've got a whole department full of people who don't follow instructions
unless they feel like it. But they're very, very successful, because they
have good judgement about what they feel like doing.

As a further tangent: I hypothesize that one (among many) reasons the
Harry Potter books are popular with kids, and with a goodly number of
adults, is their portrayal of rule-breaking, with all the negative and
positive consequences it brings.

========================

So, there are really several questions one might ask:
1) Why is reading comprehension so low?
2) On occasions when students are trying to follow the instructions, why
are they so sloppy?
3) On occasions when students consciously or semi-consciously decide to
deviate from the instructions, why do they exercise such bad judgement?

Question 3 is very, very hard. Questions 1 and 2 are probably what Tina
was asking; they're somewhat simpler but still nontrivial.