One of my grandsons is a junior in High School. Some Juniors may be quite sophisticated. This one is not. The reading list sounds like something out of the 70's, a disappointment to me since there is so much good stuff being written today. He has had to spend many weeks on discussions about Catcher in the Rye and is now to read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest! Of all the scary preparations for someone who knows nothing of current psychiatric care! I can't think of a worse one.
Shock treatment is used today, when medications fail, quite differently, and can be life saving. In the 60's, it was being used with too great a charge and left people with severe loss of memory. It has been greatly improved. Portraying the staff as so horrible serves no current purpose other than turning people off to the system which they may need someday. I have no idea how competent this teacher is about current psychiatric care, how knowledgeable. It has left me wondering if the school curriculum has changed in 40 years if these are still the books being assigned and wonder at the purpose. Shouldn't this be History and not English? Or am I forgetting that everything is being lumped into 'Social Studies'?
Am I wrong to be concerned about this. If anyone reads this, I would like some feedback on the experience of readers not so far out of school as I.
2 comments:
There is a story that periodically goes around the Education Graduate schools and goes like this:
A time machine is invented and the inventors go back 100 years and retrieve a surgeon and bring him back to todays day and age. He is speechless with the changes in medicine- anesthesia, antiseptic operating rooms, the technology etc..The time machine folks then go back in time and retrieve a scientist from 200 years ago - like the physician he is stunned at the improvements in lab equipment, the availability of computers, and the mathematical tools that are now available. It all seems like magic. Finally, the time machine people go back 150 years and fetch a teacher and bring them back to a present day public school. As they observe the classroom of the present the present day classroom teacher faints and is carrried out of the classroom. The teacher from the past steps in and, demonstrating a total mastery of the curriculum, completes the lecture, creates a quiz and finishes the lesson plan...right where the teacher from the present day left off...
You validate my observations....
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