New educational standards in Georgia and Arkansas - hope you’re paying attention, FCPS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Memorizing classic words doesn’t mean they understand them. I’d rather my child understand the purpose and meaning without being able to recite word for word.

Bingo!!! Memorizing is not learning! Applying knowledge show mastery in learning.

If you don’t commit knowledge to memory how can you master anything? Do you people listen to yourselves?

Amazing what the downward slide in education in the US over the last 40 years has led to, if not for COVID the momentum would have been unstoppable.

I think you are missing the point memorizing by itself does nothing if you cannot apply the knowledge to something bigger that what you regurgitate. “Just” memorizing does not cut it in the real world. The OP post was about AZ and GA making kids memorize classics. There is nothing mentioned about what they do after or during the memorization.

Wrong. From the article:

"Recita­tion al­lows stu­dents to ex­pe­ri­ence a text as a liv­ing thing, ready to be taken up by a new gen­er­a­tion. Com­mit­ting a poem or speech to mem­ory means step­ping into the au­thor’s shoes and pon­der­ing what he meant. De­cid­ing which words to stress when recit­ing means think­ing about what those words mean. This is why pub­lic speak­ing was once a re­quire­ment at many col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties."

In addition, other posters whose kids have done this at private schools say it's all part of a larger assignment in which they also write critical essays about the meaning of the piece. This isn't just rote memorization.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like you guys are just looking for reasons to be against this. There’s no good reason to oppose it 🙄

+1

Yes there is. How much class time will be used to memorize a 3 stanza poem? Way more than you think. It is a waste of time.

What do you want to bet that Georgia and Arkansas have *gasp* homework? Do you really think students are memorizing their poems during class time?

Of course Fairfax students cannot possibly memorize anything. They cannot spare the time...

This is why anyone who can leave FCPS should. Gatehouse doesn’t get it and the parents that elect the rubber stamp school board don’t get it.

FCPS moves from educational fad to educational fad trying hard to close the gap by bringing the brightest students down.

+ a million
As a former FCPS student (1980s), I'm appalled at how far this school system has sunk. I'm very grateful for the education I received, but whatever my kids are currently getting bears no resemblance to what was once taught.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Memorizing classic words doesn’t mean they understand them. I’d rather my child understand the purpose and meaning without being able to recite word for word.

+1. I can’t believe OP thinks memorizing is something worth praising and recommending.

Memorization is part of learning. It is a simple as that. How did you learn your times tables?

Except this is not how kids learn their times tables now! There are all kinds of strategies that teachers incorporate into learning multiplication and division. Researchers discovered long ago that rote memorization does not work for many kids.

DP. And this is why we taught our kids to memorize the multiplication table from the get-go. You can learn about the *why* of it while also memorizing the facts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This would be far too traumatizing for kids today due to high level of anxiety disorders. Neither of those states are beacons for inclusiveness so of course they would require this. I would opt my kid out.

No memorization and no writing assignments. All classes described as advanced. No recognition for outstanding academic work. No consequences for not following rules. No standardized assessments scores needed. Mediocrity is the goal!

You’re kidding on this one, right? Have you seen how many assessments students have to take? Do you see the threads about just iReady?

They don't appear to be used for any particular purpose.

You are very uninformed.

You are incorrect. I evaluate students and understand all too well how/when assessmwent results are used.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Opps wrong thread.

I was trying to figure out your meaning. And the low expectations-low results FCPS students do seem to be the identified patient here. Without parental support, schools cannot require more from students, since it just won't happen. And this thread shows there's no parental support for requiring more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like you guys are just looking for reasons to be against this. There’s no good reason to oppose it 🙄

+1

Yes there is. How much class time will be used to memorize a 3 stanza poem? Way more than you think. It is a waste of time.

What do you want to bet that Georgia and Arkansas have *gasp* homework? Do you really think students are memorizing their poems during class time?

Of course Fairfax students cannot possibly memorize anything. They cannot spare the time...

Duh. This would be HW not something they are practicing as a group multiple classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like you guys are just looking for reasons to be against this. There’s no good reason to oppose it 🙄

Bingo. If this had been suggested and implemented by schools in say, New York, California, or Massachusetts, the same detractors would be climbing all over themselves to promote it. So typical.

[phone]

[Anonymous]

I wouldn’t want my kids wasting time memorizing something like the Gettysburg address. Very pointless. In addition, some kids have issues with memorization. And can you imagine the teacher and students having to listen to 28 kids recite the Gettysburg address?!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Imagine, being required to memorize a recite passages from famous works of literature! Such a novel idea. /s Is this happening in FCPS?

New ed­u­ca­tional stan­dards in Geor­gia and Ar­kansas in­clude mod­est-sound­ing re­quire­ments that are in fact rev­o­lu­tion­ary.

In Geor­gia stu­dents will be re­quired to build “back­ground knowl­edge” by recit­ing all or part of sig­nif­i­cant po­ems and speeches. The Ar­kansas plan calls for stu­dents to re­cite a pas­sage from a well-known poem, play or speech. That’s it: an old-fash­ioned de­mand that stu­dents mem­o­rize the Get­tys­burg Ad­dress or Ham­let’s “To be or not to be” or Gwen­dolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool” and re­cite it to an au­di­ence.

Most par­ents would prob­a­bly call this a wor­thy ex­er­cise, fos­ter­ing the courage to speak in pub­lic and fir­ing the ado­les­cent imag­i­na­tion. Who could ob­ject to lodg­ing mem­o­rable words in teenage heads oth­er­wise packed with Tik­Tok videos?

Eng­lish teach­ers, that’s who. Mod­ern ed­u­ca­tors view mem­o­riza-tion as empty rep­e­ti­tion, me­chan­i-cal and pre­scrip­tive rather than cre­ative or thought­ful. Recit­ing texts from mem­ory, they say, merely drops in­for­ma­tion into stu­dents’ minds. It’s rote learn­ing in­stead of crit­i­cal analy­sis.

That’s wrong. Recita­tion al­lows stu­dents to ex­pe­ri­ence a text as a liv­ing thing, ready to be taken up by a new gen­er­a­tion. Com­mit­ting a poem or speech to mem­ory means step­ping into the au­thor’s shoes and pon­der­ing what he meant. De­cid­ing which words to stress when recit­ing means think­ing about what those words mean. This is why pub­lic speak­ing was once a re­quire­ment at many col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties.

In our age of so­cial me­dia and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, the prac­tice of recita­tion has never been more needed. Mem­o­riz­ing clas­sic words re­minds us that they are alive.

Ar­kansas and Geor­gia have some­thing even stronger than ped­a­gog­i­cal the­ory to jus­tify the new—or, rather, old—stan­dards. Watch the faces of par­ents as they lis­ten to their chil­dren urg­ing us all to­ward what Mar­tin Luther King Jr. called “a dream deeply rooted in the Amer­i­can dream,” or say­ing with Robert Frost, “I have been one ac­quainted with the night,” or with Shake­speare, “To­mor­row and to­mor­row and to­mor­row . . .”

When young re­citers re­turn to their seats, they know they have made age­less words their own. What par­ents and stu­dents feel at that mo­ment tran­scends a good grade. For a few min­utes, striv­ing teens be­come King, Frost or Shake­speare.

“Every man is an or­a­tor,” Ralph Waldo Emer­son wrote. “The elo­quence of one stim­u­lates all the rest . . . to a de­gree that makes them good re­ceivers and con­duc­tors.” Recit­ing clas­sic lines brings past elo­quence into the present, turn­ing us into re­ceivers and con­duc­tors. When we weigh the words of in­flu­en­tial men and women and re­al­ize they are still use­ful, we all ben­e­fit. Geor­gia and Ar­kansas un­der­stand this. Let’s hope many more states fol­low their lead.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/kids-and-the-power-of-the-spoken-word-georgia-arkansas-memory-classics-c55366e4

Note to self: do not move to Georgia or Arkansas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wouldn’t want my kids wasting time memorizing something like the Gettysburg address. Very pointless. In addition, some kids have issues with memorization. And can you imagine the teacher and students having to listen to 28 kids recite the Gettysburg address?!

Yes--what is the point of learning the words of one of our greatest Presidents? What is the point of learning how and where he wrote it? What is the point of knowing why he wrote it? What is the point of learning the history of what happened at Gettysburg?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This would be far too traumatizing for kids today due to high level of anxiety disorders. Neither of those states are beacons for inclusiveness so of course they would require this. I would opt my kid out.

No memorization and no writing assignments. All classes described as advanced. No recognition for outstanding academic work. No consequences for not following rules. No standardized assessments scores needed. Mediocrity is the goal!

You’re kidding on this one, right? Have you seen how many assessments students have to take? Do you see the threads about just iReady?

They don't appear to be used for any particular purpose.

You are very uninformed.

You are incorrect. I evaluate students and understand all too well how/when assessmwent results are used.

Are you an FCPS teacher? Because I see the assessments being used to identify gaps, provide curriculum and measure growth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wouldn’t want my kids wasting time memorizing something like the Gettysburg address. Very pointless. In addition, some kids have issues with memorization. And can you imagine the teacher and students having to listen to 28 kids recite the Gettysburg address?!

Yes--what is the point of learning the words of one of our greatest Presidents? What is the point of learning how and where he wrote it? What is the point of knowing why he wrote it? What is the point of learning the history of what happened at Gettysburg?

They can learn all those things without memorizing it….and they do, it’s part of the 6th grade standards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like you guys are just looking for reasons to be against this. There’s no good reason to oppose it 🙄

+1

Yes there is. How much class time will be used to memorize a 3 stanza poem? Way more than you think. It is a waste of time.

What do you want to bet that Georgia and Arkansas have *gasp* homework? Do you really think students are memorizing their poems during class time?

Of course Fairfax students cannot possibly memorize anything. They cannot spare the time...

They won’t memorize poetry as homework. They barely do their existing homework.

Speak for yourself. Sorry you can't get your kid to do their homework.
DP

Not a kid, a teacher…about 50% wouldn’t do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Memorizing classic words doesn’t mean they understand them. I’d rather my child understand the purpose and meaning without being able to recite word for word.

Bingo!!! Memorizing is not learning! Applying knowledge show mastery in learning.

If you don’t commit knowledge to memory how can you master anything? Do you people listen to yourselves?

Amazing what the downward slide in education in the US over the last 40 years has led to, if not for COVID the momentum would have been unstoppable.

I think you are missing the point memorizing by itself does nothing if you cannot apply the knowledge to something bigger that what you regurgitate. “Just” memorizing does not cut it in the real world. The OP post was about AZ and GA making kids memorize classics. There is nothing mentioned about what they do after or during the memorization.

Wrong. From the article:

"Recita­tion al­lows stu­dents to ex­pe­ri­ence a text as a liv­ing thing, ready to be taken up by a new gen­er­a­tion. Com­mit­ting a poem or speech to mem­ory means step­ping into the au­thor’s shoes and pon­der­ing what he meant. De­cid­ing which words to stress when recit­ing means think­ing about what those words mean. This is why pub­lic speak­ing was once a re­quire­ment at many col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties."

In addition, other posters whose kids have done this at private schools say it's all part of a larger assignment in which they also write critical essays about the meaning of the piece. This isn't just rote memorization.

No, it means morning a string of words and nothing more. Actually, it means spending an inordinate amount of time on one section of one piece of prose just memorizing. That time could be otherwise spent learning the context of the work or learning other works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wouldn’t want my kids wasting time memorizing something like the Gettysburg address. Very pointless. In addition, some kids have issues with memorization. And can you imagine the teacher and students having to listen to 28 kids recite the Gettysburg address?!

Yes--what is the point of learning the words of one of our greatest Presidents? What is the point of learning how and where he wrote it? What is the point of knowing why he wrote it? What is the point of learning the history of what happened at Gettysburg?

Sadly I don’t think this is sarcasm.

The battle at Gettysburg was the turning point in the Civil War. Had Lee been victorious he would have had a stranglehold on the north while Sherman would have had a similar hold on the South. A standoff. The US would have split in two.

That is why learning about the battle and what it led to is important.