Admittedly I have been paying intermittent attention to this discussion. And I always have a reflexive?and negative?reaction to "young people today are so different (by implication not as good) than we were) a complaint that to my knowledge can be found consistently in written history right back to the Greeks and Babylonians. I am wondering if we are comparing our students to the younger version of ourselves not to a younger version of the universe of people with whom we grew up.
Sure I read a lot as a child and teen. And in that way I was very DIFFERENT than most of my peers. And I suspect that we all as kids were very different from our peers - thus we landed in careers as academics, researchers and scholars - while they went on to a vast universe of other work in which having a history as a good reader was not so crucial. Also, there were (and are) many ways in which I was and AM the same as my students. The us-versus-them thing, especially around issues of age, just fogs our ability to see how much similarity there is and have understanding or empathy for them (when appropriate). Where applicable, enjoy the holiday. Nancy Melucci Long Beach City College Long Beach CA -----Original Message----- From: Pollak, Edward <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) <[email protected]> Sent: Wed, 21 Nov 2007 7:42 am Subject: RE: [tips] Am I expecting too much? ?Louis Schmier wrote, "I think some of us are being too harsh.? We aren't very understanding of our very young students.? We're not walking in their shoes or remembering how we were like at those ages." I remember how I was at those ages. I'd been books for pleasure for many years. As for being too harsh, that assumes that I believe in free will and want blame students (or whoever) ?for not using their free will well. But as an orthodox probabilistic determinist (if there is such a thing) I don't "blame" anyone. There?is a plethora of reasons as to why children don't learn to read for pleasure (or even watch the History & other educational TV channels). We could make a long list. But the fact is that they don't read for pleasure and common words, famous events, etc. are often unknown to them. You can say it with contempt, anger, pity, concern, are any combination thereof. But it dopesn't change the fact that they're woefully unprepared in areas of general knowledge. ? Ed ? Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D. Department of Psychology West Chester University of Pennsylvania http://mywebpages.comcast.net/epollak/home.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Husband, father, grandfather, biopsychologist, bluegrass fiddler and herpetoculturist...... in approximate order of importance. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ________________________________________________________________________ Email and AIM finally together. You've gotta check out free AOL Mail! - http://mail.aol.com ---
