Anonymous wrote:Can you imagine an AP exam essay in which a student uses "The Help" as their answer, OMG.)

I don’t know, I once had a student who told me she wrote about Harry Potter on question 3 (I was horrified, having told them many times not to use YA). She still got a 4! She was a very talented writer though. I still laugh thinking about it!

AP graders aren't ignorant elitists.

Can you imagine an AP exam essay in which a student uses "The Help" as their answer, OMG.)

I don’t know, I once had a student who told me she wrote about Harry Potter on question 3 (I was horrified, having told them many times not to use YA). She still got a 4! She was a very talented writer though. I still laugh thinking about it!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I worked in a 3rd grade class in which a girl student was reading The Help during her free reading time. Teachers thought it was a bit odd but she got it from her parents so nobody objected. I am totally in favor of kids reading what they want, including adult books, but even I thought this was a bit much.

I read Flowers in the Attic around that age. Reading isn't the same as comprehension. Sometimes you need life experiences to understand the undercurrent.

I agree. I actually think that pushing certain books on kids before they have the life experience to really “get it” just serves to make them dislike the book and guarantees they’ll never get anything out of it (because why would you read it as an adult when you remember hating it as a teen?)

I think Walden is a perfect example of a book that is utterly wasted on high schoolers.

Anonymous wrote:I worked in a 3rd grade class in which a girl student was reading The Help during her free reading time. Teachers thought it was a bit odd but she got it from her parents so nobody objected. I am totally in favor of kids reading what they want, including adult books, but even I thought this was a bit much.

I read Flowers in the Attic around that age. Reading isn't the same as comprehension. Sometimes you need life experiences to understand the undercurrent.

I read it in honors English 9. My 10th grade just read it in honors English 10…..

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, give your kid a copy of AARP Magazine. It is recommended for ages 55 and up, so will be a stretch challenge for your genius child.

Funniest post ive read here in a while.

Very sad to see tiger parenting reach the level where one would brag about their elementary school child reading Lord of the Flies, Heart of Darkness, and other books with dark depressing themes. Oh but the books have big words! If your child is verbally gifted, let them do the NY Times crossword or read Anne of Green Gables.

Basically all children's literature from the 19th century (heck, even Nancy Drew from the 40s) has more sophisticated language than most students read now.

But what is the purpose of learning old English no longer used? When writing i was always taught to simplify the language and not to use a $20 word when a 25 cent word was perfectly fine.

Court documents were being simplified years ago so that anyone with a with grade education can read them. Too many insecure people want to be seen as so much more intelligent than the average guy that they would like to see old awkward language stay around.

By old english you mean english written hundreds of years ago, not Old English like what Beowulf was written in?

anyway, no, students should read old books so that they know how to read old language, not so that they will write like that. People should know how to read and understand literature like Frederick Douglass's autobiography, Shakespeare, etc.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, give your kid a copy of AARP Magazine. It is recommended for ages 55 and up, so will be a stretch challenge for your genius child.

Funniest post ive read here in a while.

Very sad to see tiger parenting reach the level where one would brag about their elementary school child reading Lord of the Flies, Heart of Darkness, and other books with dark depressing themes. Oh but the books have big words! If your child is verbally gifted, let them do the NY Times crossword or read Anne of Green Gables.

Basically all children's literature from the 19th century (heck, even Nancy Drew from the 40s) has more sophisticated language than most students read now.

But what is the purpose of learning old English no longer used? When writing i was always taught to simplify the language and not to use a $20 word when a 25 cent word was perfectly fine.

Court documents were being simplified years ago so that anyone with a with grade education can read them. Too many insecure people want to be seen as so much more intelligent than the average guy that they would like to see old awkward language stay around.

Learning roots, prefixes, suffixes, and synonyms grows the mind.

Anyone can learn 25 cent blogger or biz speak. Won’t grow your mind a bit.

School is for growing and learning. Hopefully your career is too, but maybe yours isn’t.

Everything that challenges you grows your mind. You want children to align their growth with the world they live in. Sure learning old British terms for various clothes and school functions might be new information to them, but if it doesn't deeply inspire their historical imagination and connect to their lives, it's kind of pointless. I think it's more important to focus on whether books are well-written, whether discussions help them deeply take on others' perspectives, and connect the themes to their own experiences and to the world around them. Language is a tool that evolves.

I also agree that "reading difficulty level" which looks at vocabulary and sentence tells you little about the actual difficulty of a literary text. The Sound and the Fury was one of the more difficult books I read in high school, but it only has an 800 lexile level. But the non-linearity of the text, the shifting of narrators without warning, and having to adopt the perspective of characters who thought very differently than me was really challenging.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, give your kid a copy of AARP Magazine. It is recommended for ages 55 and up, so will be a stretch challenge for your genius child.

Funniest post ive read here in a while.

Very sad to see tiger parenting reach the level where one would brag about their elementary school child reading Lord of the Flies, Heart of Darkness, and other books with dark depressing themes. Oh but the books have big words! If your child is verbally gifted, let them do the NY Times crossword or read Anne of Green Gables.

Basically all children's literature from the 19th century (heck, even Nancy Drew from the 40s) has more sophisticated language than most students read now.

But what is the purpose of learning old English no longer used? When writing i was always taught to simplify the language and not to use a $20 word when a 25 cent word was perfectly fine.

Court documents were being simplified years ago so that anyone with a with grade education can read them. Too many insecure people want to be seen as so much more intelligent than the average guy that they would like to see old awkward language stay around.

Learning roots, prefixes, suffixes, and synonyms grows the mind.

Anyone can learn 25 cent blogger or biz speak. Won’t grow your mind a bit.

School is for growing and learning. Hopefully your career is too, but maybe yours isn’t.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, give your kid a copy of AARP Magazine. It is recommended for ages 55 and up, so will be a stretch challenge for your genius child.

Funniest post ive read here in a while.

Very sad to see tiger parenting reach the level where one would brag about their elementary school child reading Lord of the Flies, Heart of Darkness, and other books with dark depressing themes. Oh but the books have big words! If your child is verbally gifted, let them do the NY Times crossword or read Anne of Green Gables.

Basically all children's literature from the 19th century (heck, even Nancy Drew from the 40s) has more sophisticated language than most students read now.

Agree

Students need to read more period pieces, not SHw graphic novel dialogs or 2021 victim books with simple diction.

They need to expand their multisyllabic vocabs at this age, not craft generic power points.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This book is for ages 13 and up. I think I read it around 5th grade. By Sophmore year in HS we were reading Ethan Fromme and the Scarlet Letter. Maybe Grapes of Wrath. My kid in a DC metro area public HS is reading Lord of the Flies for English Class. Seriously? Talk about dumbing it down to the lowest common denominator!

The book is a classic and good to read during k-12.

What matters is the class discussions, essay writing and dissection of then books genre, style, tone, characters, themes, etc.

Frankly it’s one of those books one should reread every 10 years.

Unf I had to read Faust in HS and college. I understand that OP is concerned that the book is not “difficult enough,” but see above.
Walden pond, Moby dick, etc were such slogs to read.

Moby Dick was torture. Did anyone read Charles Dickens? I like those better than Shakespeare.

We read “A Tale of Two Cities” in 9th grade. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. Easier than Shakespeare in my opinion, but still a tough read.

Read that one in 10th grade advanced English also when we studied the French Revolution in honors world history. We didn't have AP for that back then at least at our school.

Anonymous wrote:This book is for ages 13 and up. I think I read it around 5th grade. By Sophmore year in HS we were reading Ethan Fromme and the Scarlet Letter. Maybe Grapes of Wrath. My kid in a DC metro area public HS is reading Lord of the Flies for English Class. Seriously? Talk about dumbing it down to the lowest common denominator!

We read it in 10th-grade Advanced English in FCPS in the 70s, along with Grapes of Wrath. We didn't read Ethan Fromme until 11th.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This book is for ages 13 and up. I think I read it around 5th grade. By Sophmore year in HS we were reading Ethan Fromme and the Scarlet Letter. Maybe Grapes of Wrath. My kid in a DC metro area public HS is reading Lord of the Flies for English Class. Seriously? Talk about dumbing it down to the lowest common denominator!

The book is a classic and good to read during k-12.

What matters is the class discussions, essay writing and dissection of then books genre, style, tone, characters, themes, etc.

Frankly it’s one of those books one should reread every 10 years.

Unf I had to read Faust in HS and college. I understand that OP is concerned that the book is not “difficult enough,” but see above.
Walden pond, Moby dick, etc were such slogs to read.

Moby Dick was torture. Did anyone read Charles Dickens? I like those better than Shakespeare.

We read “A Tale of Two Cities” in 9th grade. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. Easier than Shakespeare in my opinion, but still a tough read.

Op you’re not considering what discussion they might have in 10th grade.

It’s not about reading levels.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, give your kid a copy of AARP Magazine. It is recommended for ages 55 and up, so will be a stretch challenge for your genius child.

Funniest post ive read here in a while.

Very sad to see tiger parenting reach the level where one would brag about their elementary school child reading Lord of the Flies, Heart of Darkness, and other books with dark depressing themes. Oh but the books have big words! If your child is verbally gifted, let them do the NY Times crossword or read Anne of Green Gables.

Basically all children's literature from the 19th century (heck, even Nancy Drew from the 40s) has more sophisticated language than most students read now.

But what is the purpose of learning old English no longer used? When writing i was always taught to simplify the language and not to use a $20 word when a 25 cent word was perfectly fine.

Court documents were being simplified years ago so that anyone with a with grade education can read them. Too many insecure people want to be seen as so much more intelligent than the average guy that they would like to see old awkward language stay around.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This book is for ages 13 and up. I think I read it around 5th grade. By Sophmore year in HS we were reading Ethan Fromme and the Scarlet Letter. Maybe Grapes of Wrath. My kid in a DC metro area public HS is reading Lord of the Flies for English Class. Seriously? Talk about dumbing it down to the lowest common denominator!

The book is a classic and good to read during k-12.

What matters is the class discussions, essay writing and dissection of then books genre, style, tone, characters, themes, etc.

Frankly it’s one of those books one should reread every 10 years.

Unf I had to read Faust in HS and college. I understand that OP is concerned that the book is not “difficult enough,” but see above.
Walden pond, Moby dick, etc were such slogs to read.

Moby Dick was torture. Did anyone read Charles Dickens? I like those better than Shakespeare.