Bacon and Reading

 

I have long agreed with much of what I've read from Francis Bacon, and it has formed how I teach. That's why it make me so sad and angry how things have shifted and trended in education today. Reading is the foundation of all knowledge, and it also keeps a person from looking like a total fool in social situations. In his essay, "Of Studies," Bacon explains that the best way of going about one's life is to read, discuss, then write, in order to fully learn and understand a topic. This is how I run my classroom, as an ideal model. And, for the most part, this is how I have always approached my own studies --formal and informal-- as well.

So, it's really hard when kids don't choose to read. Then, they try to BS their way in the conversation (or they sit there mutely staring, hoping that THE ONE KID WHO READ will distract me enough). Forget about anything cogent in the writing. Teachers who now rely on audio books to "get the kids through a book" are either choosing the wrong books, or they are dialing it in. It's far too passive to just hear the story (though pleasurable, and that has its place, of course). One has to grapple with a text sometimes, in order to engage in a way that is both meaningful and useful. If a young reader is puzzled by a passage, he/she may have to go back to it, unpack it, shake it a little, and see what it's telling the reader. That is not possible when the book is exclusively read at the students who are idly sitting there, flipping pages, and more often than not, staring into the middle distance, likely pondering anything but the text. No wonder they get so annoyed with me, when I get them in class, when I insist they (gasp!) read.

Yes, I read aloud with and to students in my classes. But I know where to stop and show them how to wrangle with the text, what to highlight, and what they might miss. We read plays aloud, and we pause to reflect on characters' motivations. We re-read passages that are important (or poorly mis-read)-- the language is important, in all of the ways we encounter it. 

We can move on to discussion --good, scholarly discourse (which I also model in the classroom)-- only when everyone is familiar with the text. Otherwise, the classroom dynamic degenerates to facile Q and A, with answers having to be dragged out of them. This is not fun for anyone. Or useful.

Pre-writing happens for all major essays; students need to blurt out on paper, handwritten (unless there's a reason not to), all that they are thinking and that they think they know, after they've read and talked with others. That makes room, as I tell them, for new ideas and information from outside scholarly sources to aid their understanding. And so, we go back to reading a bit, and then building from primary text to source materials, to --finally-- writing. And those first drafts go through peer input, then revision, then conferences with me, then revision, and then, an assessment draft. Which likely will need revision and resubmission before grading. 

Sounds like a lot, doesn't it? But we need to slow kids down so that they engage in their work fully; skimming across the surface only makes them look foolish and lazy. If we don't show them how to approach learning to understand, then who will? 

Take care,

C