Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 364 posts

Re: Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

#341

Post by Telaneo »

1718627440 wrote: post #340
Telaneo wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when there is a clock in every direction I look at. This does not reflect my life. Clocks are out there, but not to the point of there being one a just turn of the head away no matter where I am. My phone is the closest device with an accurate sense of time the vast majority of the time. > wristwatch would also be analog again. Smart watches exist. Digital wrist watches also exist, but seem to have gone out of fash…

> This does not reflect my life. Clocks are out there, but not to the point of there being one a just turn of the head away no matter where I am. That part was specifically about train stations and classrooms. > By not having shit exams. Most (all?) of mine were open-book. We also now have mostly open-book exams, the rule to be allowed to use everything, that does not do network calls is the rule for open-book exams.…

> That part was specifically about train stations and classrooms.

Depending on where I'm standing inside a train station, I'll be much more likely to see a digital sign saying when the next one arrived in minutes rather than a clock (a fair amount do have clocks, but they all have digital signs that give you what you actually want more quickly anyway, while being a whole lot more visible). If I'm at a tram or a metro stop, I'll definitely have the sign, but probably no clock.

I've had a computer and thus a digital clock in front of me in class since high school.

Re: Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

#342

Post by eudamoniac »

I lost the post I meant to reply to, but here is the reply:

I tend to see literature, especially fiction, as a way to practice empathy. A lot of people mentally stagnate later in life, and books help break that. Empathy isn't some magical trait, it's something you can actually train. Think Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep even if the animal is fake, the act of caring still has meaning. Practicing empathy like that helps you understand other people's worldviews. You don't have to agree with them, but if you want to function in life, you at least need to understand why people think the way they do. You can also take Paul Schrader's view that art is a vessel for emotion. It's a place to purge or process uncomfortable feelings. Watching Taxi Driver, for example, gives you a space to confront isolation, violence, and male nihilism. Instead of becoming Travis Bickle, the film lets you observe him and put those thoughts into words. That's Schrader's defense when people say the movie glorifies Bickle; the art itself is the safe space, not the man.

Re: Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

#343

Post by brightball »

komali2 wrote: post #212
msteffen wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one? https://www.arrowsmith.ca/cip-arrowsmith-school

I kinda rabbit holed on this and it seems to be a very lucrative scam https://medium.com/myndplan/myndplan-9961a084f750

All good points, particularly the control group piece. Scrutinizing control groups makes it easy to invalidate most studies about treatments in this space because control groups are so difficult to assemble. You should see the variance in autism spectrum.

It still worked for my son and my friend’s two children.

I have no affiliation with the program at all. I talk about it because it worked for us.

I latched onto it because I know the type of things that I have struggled with my entire life, but just learned a lot of coping mechanisms. I’m also very self aware. I pay a lot of attention to how my own brain works because of the need to develop those coping mechanisms. When I saw the full program, everything made perfect sense to me and I absolutely believe that it would have helped me when I was younger.

Had I been able to tolerate working half days for 7 weeks, I would have participated in the program myself.

Re: Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

#344

Post by lelanthran »

idontwantthis wrote: post #330
watwut wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hard questions (only those slightly interested got these correct): Examine the tone of the conversation between $A and $B in $chapter, first from the PoV of $A and then from the PoV of $B. List the differences, if any, in the tone that $A intended his instructions to be received and the tone that $B actually understood it as. I always got As on these ... but the primary reason was that I was good at bullshitting. T…

I never understood people who say their English writing is "bullshitting". Oh you read the book and offered a plausible interpretation? That sounds to me like learning and creating.

> I never understood people who say their English writing is "bullshitting". Oh you read the book and offered a plausible interpretation? That sounds to me like learning and creating.

I'm skeptical that watwut was as good in HS English lit as he claims to be: see his other response to me - he basically believes that recycling plot points is both meaningless (correct) and a path to high marks in literature (incorrect) :-/

I mean, it's possible but unlikely that plot examination will lead to good marks.

Re: Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

#345

Post by [deleted] »

mmooss wrote: post #332
rayiner wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're moving the goalposts. You made a good point earlier: "for people to survive and thrive, they need politics and institutions that don't kill them and that produce CO2 scrubbers." We know what "politics and institutions" created the CO2 scrubbers ( i.e. our present technologically advanced and prosperous society). It was the ones that displaced and killed the native americans and celebrated it in movies. By your…

This is silly. The 'society' has done very, very many things over the centuries (including other awful ones - slavery, Japanese-American internment, segregation, oppression in Latin America and elsewhere, climate change, etc etc). To pick one and say it's necessary to CO2 scrubbers is just a rhetorical/philosophical game. That can be fun - we're on HN after all - and even informative to explore, but is not tied to re…

[deleted]

Re: Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

#346

Post by watwut »

lelanthran wrote: post #344
idontwantthis wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood people who say their English writing is "bullshitting". Oh you read the book and offered a plausible interpretation? That sounds to me like learning and creating.

> I never understood people who say their English writing is "bullshitting". Oh you read the book and offered a plausible interpretation? That sounds to me like learning and creating. I'm skeptical that watwut was as good in HS English lit as he claims to be: see his other response to me - he basically believes that recycling plot points is both meaningless (correct) and a path to high marks in literature (incorrect)…

> he basically believes that recycling plot points is [...] a path to high marks in literature (incorrect) :-/

I had those As.

> I mean, it's possible but unlikely that plot examination will lead to good marks.

The key is that plot must match. The rest of it can be made up.

Re: Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

#347

Post by watwut »

idontwantthis wrote: post #330
watwut wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hard questions (only those slightly interested got these correct): Examine the tone of the conversation between $A and $B in $chapter, first from the PoV of $A and then from the PoV of $B. List the differences, if any, in the tone that $A intended his instructions to be received and the tone that $B actually understood it as. I always got As on these ... but the primary reason was that I was good at bullshitting. T…

I never understood people who say their English writing is "bullshitting". Oh you read the book and offered a plausible interpretation? That sounds to me like learning and creating.

> I never understood people who say their English writing is "bullshitting". Oh you read the book and offered a plausible interpretation? That sounds to me like learning and creating.

It was bullshitting, because it was not even an attempt at a good analysis of what the author actually wrote or meant to write. I know for a fact that I was not trying to analyze the book. When I am actually trying to analyze a text, I think about it differently and treat it differently.

The thought process was closer to what I do when I am joking around, it is just that result was put into formal language.

It was a bit like a debate club - you know you are having sleazy untrue argument, but it is being rewarded, so.

> That sounds to me like learning and creating.

I dont think I learned much or anything about literature. I did created something. I learned something that, imo, schools should teach less - generate BS on command.

Re: Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

#348

Post by 1718627440 »

Telaneo wrote: post #119
inimino wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I convert that to digital time in my head What? They are the same thing.

Not to other people I've talked to. I'm the wrong person to ask this about, since I prefer digital time, so time is just a number to me. But Technology Connections made a video atleast talking about it,[1] so hopefully that get part of the point across. To him and plenty of other analogue-first people, time is a progress bar, or a chart, or something along those lines, and that's the natural way to perceive time, and…

To me time is somehow both, but more so an analog thing. It is a multimodular linear scale, that turns logarithmic, the moment I focus on any specific point.

Re: Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

#349

Post by rayiner »

mmooss wrote: post #332
rayiner wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're moving the goalposts. You made a good point earlier: "for people to survive and thrive, they need politics and institutions that don't kill them and that produce CO2 scrubbers." We know what "politics and institutions" created the CO2 scrubbers ( i.e. our present technologically advanced and prosperous society). It was the ones that displaced and killed the native americans and celebrated it in movies. By your…

This is silly. The 'society' has done very, very many things over the centuries (including other awful ones - slavery, Japanese-American internment, segregation, oppression in Latin America and elsewhere, climate change, etc etc). To pick one and say it's necessary to CO2 scrubbers is just a rhetorical/philosophical game. That can be fun - we're on HN after all - and even informative to explore, but is not tied to re…

The point I’m trying to get at is that you seem to be trying to smuggle “liberty and justice” in under the cover of CO2 scrubbers. But the same “politics and institutions” that created our technologically advanced, prosperous society, also did those other things. Even if they weren’t individually “necessary” to that advancement, it seems like being fairly insensitive to such outcomes has been a feature of the approach that has made the U.S. successful. So why fix what isn’t broken?

Re: Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class

#350

Post by 1718627440 »

mmooss wrote: post #269
haizhung wrote: post #150

Im seeing the same in Germany. Here’s an incomplete list of all books that I read as mandatory high school assignments, which I can recall from memory . * Die Vorstadtkrokodile * Faust I * Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum * Antigone * Die Verwandlung * Bahnwärter Thiel * Der Sandmann * Die Räuber * Hamlet * Der Besuch der alten Dame * Im Westen nichts Neues * Unterm Rad * Woyzeck Im probably missing 5 books or s…

Interesting. Would you share with us their English names and what they're about?

I will only do things from memory, you can use Google yourself.

* Die Vorstadtkrokodile

"The suburb crocodiles", which is also how the youth gang in the book is called. Boy wants to be part of the gang, which has idiotic tests of courage. Plot twist is that the guy who refused to do this idiotic tests ends up being the tough guy. I don't remember if this was the main character or not. Ends up saving some other boy in a wheelchair, I think while they play in a collapsing old industrial building.

* Faust I

Maybe the most famous German book from v.Goethe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faust,_Part_One Old professor Faust makes a deal with the devil that he can take his soul, if he is able to provide him with true joy. Professor gets young again, parties, seduces a flawless faithful girl, makes her kill her mother, she ends up in prison being pregnant, devil proposes to save here if she ditches god, she refuses. Faust flees, huge cliff hanger until v.Goethe gets to write Faust II at the end of his live.

* Antigone

Famous greek drama: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigone

* Die Räuber

Famous play from the other famous German poet Schiller: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Robbers

* Hamlet

Shakespeare, original available in English

* Der Besuch der alten Dame

"The visit of the old Lady" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Visit_(play) The old (now rich) lady visits her home town, which has seen better times and demands the death of her youth lover for a huge amount of money for the town. In the beginning all swear loyalty to the guy, in the end all demand his death, inviting the international press. In between the slow transition is described being framed by the protagonists as the most ethical thing ever.

* Im Westen nichts Neues

"No news from the West (front)" describes the trauma of soldiers in the first world war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Quiet_on_the_Western_Front

* Woyzeck

Soldier Woyzeck gets exploited by both his superior and his doctor. The doctor puts him on a only beans diet, he becomes crazy. The doctor comments his mental struggles with "Very interesting, very good, should also try this ..." Ends up killing his spouse due to jealousy and later maybe himself. Never got completed by the original author, and the order of the acts is disputed, which makes for a quite different ending. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woyzeck

Post reply on HN