Kate Cox2 said:I post on these forums and vent because I can—that doesn't mean I'm doing it in front of my child. I explained the exact same thing to her: that her teacher believes they are ready for this material and that it's perfectly fine for people their age. My daughter doesn't see the issues I'm highlighting, whereas I am writing this because I am genuinely frustrated with certain aspects of our American school system. And frankly, I am certain that as time passes and my little one moves up through the grades, I will encounter even more things that bother me. Having worked in a classroom for fifteen years, I have found many things about our educational framework to be indescribably foolish, and now that I am viewing it through the lens of a parent, it irritates me all the even more. Our system is flawed in most respects, and it is only held together by the wonderful teachers who go above and beyond to mitigate those shortcomings.
My child's teachers are incredibly sweet women who work themselves to the bone. However, this is their first professional workplace; it's their first time running a classroom, and you can tell in many instances that they lack concrete experience with certain problems or topics beyond what they learned in their textbooks. I don't hold it against them—they are young, they are learning, and at one point, we were all standing in front of classrooms without any experience ourselves.
I suppose she has a different perspective regarding Pinocchio and the reading list and what children are capable of. Children can do just about anything; the real question is whether it is necessary to expend such immense effort and struggle on a specific task, or if it would be better to wait for a later time when the task is easier to master.
I don't intend to complain about the reading list itself; these women are simply doing the best they know how to do. My frustration lies more with those who decided to include this on a second-grade syllabus in the first place.
And yes, I am absolutely certain that over the coming years, I will find myself complaining about school matters quite often... so many things are just poorly handled.
Good grief, give me a break.
But you should probably just go into this expecting that not everyone is going to come up to you and offer a sympathetic pat on the back or try to shoulder the weight of whatever you're feeling, because, I guess, people don't always have the capacity to carry someone else's grief, no matter how massive it might seem.🙂
I suppose I should probably mention that I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately, though I can't say I have any definitive answers, just some vague, drifting impressions that seem to settle in my mind whenever things get too quiet. It feels like one of those slow, rainy afternoons in Seattle where you just sort of sit with your thoughts and let them wander without much direction, I guess. Maybe it's just me, or maybe there's something more to it, but I find myself circling back to these same ideas over and over again, almost like a song you can't quite shake from your head. It's a strange sensation, really—this feeling of being caught between wanting to understand everything and just accepting that most things remain somewhat blurry, which, if I'm being honest, might be the most natural way to exist, anyway. urbantinker8 says:
I suppose I should probably start by saying that I don't usually weigh in on these kinds of things, but lately, I’ve been thinking about how much our reading habits change depending on where we live, or maybe just how much they change as we get older, which is a bit of a depressing thought if I'm being honest. It feels like there's this constant pressure to keep up with whatever the latest bestseller is, though I find myself drifting more toward the classics or maybe just rereading things I already know by heart, because there's a certain comfort in knowing exactly how a story ends, isn't there? I was talking to urbantinker8 the other day—well, I wasn't really talking to them so much as just observing their take on the current literary scene—and it made me wonder if we all just crave that same sense of predictability, even if we pretend we want something groundbreaking and experimental. Maybe it's just me, though, and I'm just getting old and tired, but I think there's a quiet beauty in the books that don't try too hard to be important, you know?
I suppose I really ought to say something regarding that mention of King.😁
I guess people tend to write Stephen King off as just some guy who illustrates monsters and clowns that snack on kids at birthday parties, but I don't know, maybe that's missing the point entirely. If you actually sit down with his novels, he’s really more interested in dissecting those quiet, creeping anxieties we all deal with in our everyday lives. Take "It," for example; to me, it feels like this incredibly deep study of childhood and that awkward transition into adolescence in a typical small-town American setting. It’s less about the creature itself and more about the hidden neuroses simmering right beneath the surface of those pristine white houses with their perfect lawns, tucked away between Sunday morning church services and weekend trips to the local baseball field.
In her novel *Rose Madder*, Stephen King manages to capture this incredibly subtle, creeping sense of psychological abuse within a marriage, which, if you ask me, feels far more visceral and unsettling than any story about bloody clowns could ever hope to be.
Since we’re already on the subject of refreshing the required reading list, I was just sitting here thinking that maybe Elif Shafak could be a good addition; I suppose something like kopile Istanbul or tri Evin might actually hold the interest of high school seniors.
I suppose Herman Koch’s *The Dinner* might fit the bill here too. It feels like something that would resonate quite deeply within the American political landscape, especially given how it follows a politician desperately trying to sweep his adopted son's crimes under the rug. Then again, maybe we could look at *The Casual Vacancy* by J. K. Rowling instead. It offers such an interesting cross-section of characters navigating those deep-seated racial and class divisions in a quiet little American town just as an election is looming.
Maybe I could pick up something by Elena Ferrante, or perhaps Zadie Smith. Then again, there’s Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, or maybe Junot Diaz. I suppose I could also dive into Viktor Pelevin, or even Isabel Allende, if I were feeling particularly inclined toward that sort of thing.
I think you really nailed everything you wrote there.
I mean, honestly, if you actually tried to feed those kinds of headlines to kids, you’d probably have a mob of furious parents banging on the faculty lounge door within forty-eight hours.
100%.
I mean, I guess there’s just no reason to go around exposing their kids to those kinds of heavy stories—you know, all that intense stuff about someone's trauma, or abuse, or actual crimes. It feels like maybe we should just leave them out of it.
I mean, I guess you have to wonder what kind of school actually subjects children to those kinds of horrors... it really makes you think about the environment they're being raised in.😲
rowdypanther12 said:There’s really no point in trying to convince anyone or explain myself anymore; I gave up on that a long time ago, though seeing that kind of exclusion still hurts deeply
I suppose I should probably mention that SummerNight was here, though I can't quite decide if they were being particularly profound or just lost in thought, which, to be fair, is a distinction that often feels a bit blurry to me anyway. It’s funny how those moments pass, I guess. Maybe it's just the way the light hits the street in places like Chicago or maybe it's just my own wandering mind, but there's always this sense of something lingering, something unsaid, that stays with you longer than the actual conversation does. I find myself drifting back to those thoughts quite often, really. kaže:
I guess I was just sort of pointing toward that one attempt by some random jerk to try and explain why King is actually worth reading. 😁 It just doesn’t work, I suppose, when someone decides to dismiss potential value from the get-go simply because they have some preconceived notions about a specific genre. It feels a bit futile, maybe, trying to argue for quality when the judgment is already closed off based on something as arbitrary as what category the writing falls into.
My dear.
I suppose there’s something about the way summer just sortically settles over everything, isn't there? It’s that heavy, humid stillness you get in places like Atlanta or maybe somewhere deep in the South, where the air feels less like gas and more like a warm, damp blanket you didn't ask for but have to live with anyway. I was sitting on my porch the other day, just watching the heat shimmer off the asphalt, and I found myself thinking about how much we all rush to get through it—the sweating, the sunburns, the constant hunt for air conditioning—only to spend the entire winter moping about the lack of sunlight. It’s a strange, cyclical sort of madness, I guess. Maybe it’s just the light, though. There's a specific quality to an American July afternoon, where the shadows stretch out long and lazy, and for a moment, everything feels like it might actually stay still if you just breathe deeply enough. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part.I wouldn't say I'm being exclusive at all when it comes to what I read, really. If anything, I’m quite the opposite, I guess.
I guess what—I’ve realized I actually quite like Stephen King.😲
Just because I personally found Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings to be total disasters doesn't mean I wouldn't let my kids pick them up and give them a go, I guess; it might actually be a decent way for them to develop their own perspectives and figure out what they think about those kinds of stories.
I suppose I should probably point out that most people don't really have a clue how today’s teenagers actually feel about reading, or rather, how they don't feel about it, and honestly, I don't think blaming school reading lists is the whole story. It feels like there's more to it than just assigned books, maybe... I guess you also have to look at how little reading happens at home, combined with this constant stream of instant information they're fed every second, and then there's the general social atmosphere surrounding education and literacy in general, which I suspect plays a pretty significant role too.
I suppose one could just recite things from memory, without really bothering to look at how things actually stand in reality. It feels like it’s all quite irrelevant, honestly—the actual facts or the current state of affairs don't seem to matter much in the grand scheme of things, I guess.
I suppose I should probably mention that vasa... Kids, you honestly just don't have a clue how things actually work in a classroom.
I suppose I could go on rambling about the specific ways I’d overhaul the diagnostic protocols and treatment plans for certain illnesses I’ve personally dealt with, but then again, I’m hardly a doctor, am I? It’s not like I’m planning to start practicing medicine on myself, nor would I dream of posting some kind of one-size-fits-all medical manifesto here intended for the general public to follow blindly.
I was just sitting here thinking about how much we rely on those little comforts, you know? I guess it’s funny how certain things just stick with you, like that one specific feeling when you finally finish a heavy book and you're just staring at the wall for twenty minutes trying to process everything. It reminds me of how people talk about literature—how we look for ourselves in the pages of a novel, searching for some kind of connection to a character's struggle or their quietest moments. Maybe that's why authors like Zadie Smith or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie resonate so much; they have this way of capturing the messy, unvarnished reality of being human, which I suppose is what we're all really looking for when we pick up a book in the first place. It's a bit of a rabbit hole, isn't it? Anyway, I was just mulling over that while having my coffee, wondering if we ever truly find what we're looking for in stories, or if we're just looking for a temporary escape from the noise of everyday life. I don't know, maybe I'm overthinking it. urbantinker8 says:
Of course it isn't. I suppose part of the issue stems from the fact that many educators, once they finally wrapped up their degrees, were just relieved to be done with the studying part of life, maybe feeling like they could finally breathe now that the textbooks were closed.
I suppose if educators actually took the time to learn something new every once in a while—you know, if an elementary school teacher occasionally picked up some obscure comic book written in a script they never studied in college, or if a history teacher decided to dive into basic coding, or if that math teacher spent their weekends learning the ukulele or finally tackling a Dickens novel—things might be different. Maybe even if an English teacher dabbled in animation studies or learned how to fix a leaky toilet, or if a foreign language instructor suddenly embarked on a journey to learn Japanese... I feel like they would have so much more empathy for their students. It seems to me that experiencing the struggle of being a total beginner at something completely foreign would bring them closer to what their pupils are going through. They’d understand the mechanics of making learning easier for oneself, which would probably mean they'd be better at guiding students through it, too. They would actually get what it feels like to abandon a MOOC halfway through because you just can't face it anymore, or because you missed a quiz, or maybe because your partner isn't texting you back and, honestly, art history just isn't your priority in that moment. It’s just a thought, I guess.
I honestly don't think anyone has ever actually died from looking up definitions in a dictionary, though I suppose people rarely realize how much it kills the actual rhythm and flow of the prose. Back in middle school, I tried reading Dorian Gray, but I eventually just gave up once I realized I wasn't really reading a book so much as I was maintaining a running log of unfamiliar words in a notebook. Maybe try reading someone like Elena Ferrante instead of Petrarch if you have any grasp of the language, and you'll see that nobody is dropping dead from checking a dictionary every few minutes.
It would probably help if the average teacher actually understood how people learn—you know, by following modern cognitive science—but then again, even just having some consistent, hands-on experience would go a long way.
which is just more proof of how out of touch everyone is with all these supposedly "innovative" methods, outcomes, and nonsense they keep shoving down our throats at every workshop and seminar we attend.
If other professions were subjected to this kind of constant "professional development" across the country, things might actually be blooming. 😍
It’s a shame, really; I guess teachers can't pull all the magic out of thin air. 🙂
And
manchild, what a little prince, seriously.
Aside from Alice, that's the one book from my middle school days I'd toss out without a second thought.
boooooring 🥱
damn. I liked that kid from Sutla way better than those two little essays. 🤣