The intellectual calcification of kids...

Well, we had a two hour delay due to extreme cold. That made for another slightly confused day, but we managed. My creative writing kids are working on free verse poetry for the next couple of weeks; we started with prose poems. They seemed totally game to give it a shot. Today, we'll work on an abecedarian-- not really a fully free verse poem (but then, neither is a prose poem), but they are both good transitions from the form poems we have been invested in of late. We'll get to some wildly odd stuff soon enough. 

The APLit kids are back in their shells, it seems. We read Benet's "By the Waters of Babylon" and they had no response. I mean NO response. Cracking this nut is getting harder and harder. I still need to finish reading and assessing their first round of essays, and then this one is going to be due on Friday. The focus is on the function of the narrator, primarily. We'll see how it goes. They are not really a particularly inquisitive or imaginative bunch. 

That is really the problem altogether, with students these last few years, and most recently, this crew. I've had these kids, most of them, for three years, and nothing has changed. Kids have next to no imagination; they are good at math and science, terrible at history, and entirely linear in language arts. It takes a helluva lot to get them to imagine anything at all. I blame two things in particular: the over-emphasis on STEM and the introduction/reliance on digital technology. STEM is good, please don't misunderstand, but they only want "right" answers, and they don't even try to wonder "what if." Which is so weird; if one is going to be any good at STEM, a healthy curiosity and sense of wonder is the only path to success. And computers, and now AI, have only made things a lot worse. They don't need to do much in order to be "right," even if they are dead boring. They aren't willing to be "wrong," so they don't go outside of the safe and known. When it comes to doing any sort of critical analysis, to see how things work, and the all-important complexity of the "why," they are sunk. They want to just give a summary of the plot with no insights, no "popping the hood" to see how the narrative works. 

YET. 

I will hammer on it. I will make it as important as higher order math and dissecting frogs. Engineers need wonder. Health care professionals need to be able to make connections with a "what if" mentality. Even business people need to be able to inspire others with innovative ideas-- heck, I have one going into marketing. She'd better get creative quickly. 

Kids need to play in all mediums. Not just sports, where there are rules, but riffing in music. Playing with art materials. Fooling around with words. These kids are calcified. I need to help them break that carapace of indifference and help them create a world they deserve instead of the stone edifice of "rightness" that they are hiding in. 

Have a good day, and hold those loved ones. 

C