Johnny Can't What? Really? You're Sure?

2/4/2021

The topic of our class today is what outside forces are shaping the US ELA classroom today. We started today talking about our own experiences in the classroom and what those experiences, good and bad, tell us about what we think should be happening between teacher and student in a literacy classroom. That is one force that shapes us as educators.

On the other end of things are the forces we have no control over and little say, as classroom teachers. We start today's class with a wide focus on the kinds of things people think about, protest about, legislate about--which sometimes means that people other than educators are making decisions about what happens in the classroom.

I've asked you to read this 1975 article from Newsweek, "Why Johnny Can't Write." If that title seems familiar to you, it is because, since that appearance, the trope of "why Johnny can't" (or Jane or American Students, etc) do whatever (read, write, code, do algebra, etc) has persisted in education.

why_johnny_cant_write__newsweek_1975_.pdf
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I would like to use this article to frame our discussions this summer. For that to happen, I think it's important to consider what the article is actually saying:

what is wrong with student writing?
where does the blame lie?
what should be done to fix it?

10 Comments

Gabriel El Khoury

5/25/2021 01:08:16 pm

While many students demonstrate themselves as being verbally articulate, they find it difficult to distill their thoughts into words, find it nearly impossible "to write clearly." The blame falls on a number of offenders. Televisions are certainly to blame. Likewise, the overemphasis on creativity. Structural linguists also share in the blame. There is plenty of blame to go around. In order to help students articulate themselves better on paper, it will take a number of different strategies. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. A course simply titled "Competence" has been suggested, which helps students on the sentence-level, walking them through the construction of a competent paragraph. Ultimately, if students wish to write better, they need to write. Period. While articulate speech is laudable, students must also be able to transcribe their thoughts into writing, to express themselves just as articulately on the page.

Sarah Egan

5/25/2021 01:10:20 pm

Students are unable to write because they cannot organize their thoughts clearly. Much of the blame is put on teachers. The article talks about teachers spending more time helping children express creativity through film or photography. Many teachers also believe that having grammar rules negatively impacts creativity. It is also sometimes believed that speech is more important than writing.

In order to prevent further problems with writing, many teachers are required to attend workshops that focus on research writing and approaches to teaching it. Some schools are creating courses that students must pass in order to continue moving through their school years. Teachers are even basing some of their assignments off of their student’s interests such as television shows so they can incorporate audiovisual techniques that support learning about writing.

Alexis Medeiros

5/25/2021 01:13:37 pm

Marshall McLuhan believes that the blame lies within society. Society has taken the emphasis off writing and now students do not practice the skills of writing, instead their eyes are glued to a television screen where they are no longer forced to write. Students are not forced to think intellectually anymore as there are numerous distractions. Speech is not corrected because people don’t speak grammatically correct, people speak in slang avoiding grammatical correct language altogether since it is mainly used in writing. It is found that many 4 year college graduate students lack the basic skills of writing. College graduate, even those that attend Harvard lack the basic writing skills which are necessary in jobs.There has been such a decline in writing because students are not writing as much as they used to. They are now preoccupied with TV and instead of practicing and continuing their writing skills they are now loosing them. In order to improve their writing skills students need to actually write, their attention needs to be diverted. Instead of watching television students should write because the only way to improve their skills is by putting them into practice.

David T Golden

5/25/2021 01:16:42 pm

What is wrong with student writing is the fact that students have a difficult time organizing their thoughts onto paper. They do not fall behind because of a lack of intelligence, they just lack adequate ranges of formality. According to the the panel of English teachers the blame lies in our simplistic spoken style of English. The effects of television and online media made speech far more useful. It is now discouraged to learn proper grammar, structure and style because there is no real need. One solution to this problem is to make teachers seasoned experts. That solves the problem at the source. If teachers themselves became masters of writing that would improve the students overall writing performance. They would learn from someone who has the capabilities to teach them in a safe learning environment. Another solution would be to have the students attempt to write more. The children will learn from their own set of writing and not from templates. Students should given the opportunity to improve alongside their teacher. This would make this experience a whole lot smoother as this involvement weeds out their bad habits. We learn from participating and coaching ourselves. The skill of writing does not get better without practice.

Emma Healy

5/25/2021 01:18:12 pm

Student writing has become much less effective or structured. If students don't have the correct literacy foundation, there is essentially a lack of hope for success in the future that stems from early writing. There has become a decrease in motivation to write well and intellectually. Even the brightest pupils have shown signs of illiteracy. Writing skills have declined and prove to worsen as the child ages. A lot of blame is put on the use of television, which could be spent reading or writing. Another blame is teachers having overfull classrooms and devote more time to short answer prompts opposed to formal essays. This way teachers' time grading isn't so tedious, but in response, students aren't participating in active, challenging writing. A step in the right direction to fix this problem is to first teach the English teachers how to properly write through workshops or courses. Students in some areas also had to pass required reading and writing courses before advancing to the next grade. Educators needed to come to the conclusion that the only way for students to better their writing is to simply write.

Lauren

5/25/2021 01:22:06 pm

In this article, the author suggests that students aren’t being effectively taught how to write. Offering an ample amount of evidence, students demonstrate to move through high school and even onto college, while demonstrating to acquire skills in other academic areas, yet perform excessively behind in writing skills.
The reason for this is said to be because of increased exposure to television and decreased exposure to literature. It is also due to changes in school curriculums in which teaching the written language has begun to dissipate. For example, teachers shifted from teaching expository writing to emphasizing creative writing, decreasing the likeliness for students to develop well-structured and organized writing skills.
One solution to this issue is to focus on teaching teachers how to write themselves, assuming that teachers enter the field lacking these skills of their own. Professional development workshops for teachers and remedial courses or “competence” tests for students can have a positive effect on beginning to face this issue. Other strategies to help solve this problem include using an SEI approach, where conventions are employed to teach standard English. Most importantly, a “renewed emphasis on reading” is imperative for the improvement of writing skills; And, although media and technology cannot be replaced, we can find effective ways to incorporate these modern aspects in the classroom to further promote writing skills.

Elizabeth Cheesman

5/25/2021 01:26:02 pm

There is a significant concern that student writing is not sufficient enough to be successful in higher education. The English language is slipping away, according to some testing data. Students have a tendency to not speak in proper English and instead use “slang” or incomplete sentences. This limits students’ ability to apply their general Academic English to their own life while also learning in school.

The blame seems to lie in the technology that has “taken over the world” as some people may say. Television shows and music may encourage students to use condensed words and phrases that limit their abilities to write academic papers. When students use informal dialogue when speaking with peers they are straying away from proper grammar.

One way to solve this lack of practice is cue cards on students’ desks during discussion such as a list of words that may be synonyms for the simple words. If students use the word “similar” instead of “like” and “This text suggests” instead of “this text says” this will build confidence in academic language. Once the English language is a part of students’ oral vocabulary dialogue, it then is easier for students to translate their thoughts into written vocabulary. I learned this scaffolding approach throughout my studying for my MTELs and in my SEI course assignments. There should be no shame in growing and strengthening a skill.

Aliyah Pires

5/25/2021 01:26:36 pm

Students are unable to write clearly, and it seems that errors that were common in high school students are now becoming common in college students. Students are unable to organize their thoughts on paper.

It seems that blame lies within students reading abilities, distractions and being taught standard English. When students are unable to comprehend what they are reading and are just focusing on the words being read they are not gaining a sense of how to write at the level they should be. This article brought up the idea that television was replacing time for reading, leaving many students distracted by watching a show rather than expanding on their reading abilities. I think reading has a major impact on a student's writing and if anything were to change someone's writing abilities it would be through reading.

I would suggest would be to have writing classes be more required for students in all grade levels. Staring from a young age and up. Although writing is involved already, I think having classes where you go over the basics would be beneficial in all grade levels as those aspects seem to be forgotten. I would also say to encourage more reading with complex thinking involved to get students aware of writing styles and writing language.

5/25/2021 01:27:49 pm

I am endlessly fascinated by this essay as an historical document. Essentially, the author (who by all accounts is a journalist and not a teacher/educator) argues that there is a steep and problematic drop in student reading and writing skills. She offers a series of standardized test indicators. She presents the opinions of a number of scholars. In the earliest part of the essay, she seems to be indicating that the problem is due to a lack of rigorous reading and writing experiences in the classroom of a certain kind. It seems like she is favoring direct instruction in grammar, syntax, sentence structure and in prose--the expository essay--over any other kind of writing. She calls young readers and writers a generation of :"semiliterates." She goes on to blame teachers for not being able to teach correctly. She also blames TV--something that entertains but does not edify the way reading does. A few things about her argument here: she positions written English as more important to intellectual grownth than spoken English. She indicates, through the use of other scholars, that written English is the only way to really know what you think about something. She also clearly identifies "standard" English as the gold standard--the section about Chicago students in what she refers to as a "black ghetto" particularly troubling--the idea that students born speaking English treat school English as a second language. At the same time, she sort of contradicts herself later in the essay when she talks about scholars who say that students learn best how to write from looking at their own writing. She talks about the San Francisco Bay Writing Project, which I know becomes the National Writing Project. And that program did not teach the expository essay, nor did it privilege standardized written English in writing. SFBWP focused on writing process and helped teachers to learn how to include process in their classrooms--they were not learning how to diagram sentences or "correct' grammar. She does hit on some point I see as true--that teachers assign less writing because it's a lot of work to "mark" so much writing. I also want to make note of some of the schools she mentions: Harvard and Princton, and Andover--all elite prep schools. She makes mention of how Mark Twain complained about writing when only 7% of people had a high school education. So now, in 1975, one question I have is who has access to education now? It's not just 7%. It's a much bigger and more diverse collection of citizens. And isn't that a good thing? And of course, I come back to one question:if things were so bad in 1975 are we really illiterate now? Is TV making us dumber? How have we managed the 45 year decline of writing and reading in the united states?!? It's worse than Covid!

tenneh

5/25/2021 06:48:15 pm

I believed that writing isn't not sufficient enough to be successful in any higher education. First of all English is an language of slipping, have some date. Not every students speak proper English and all the kids use slang when they speaking with their friends. The limits students is ability to apply to their own general academic english or even try to learn how to speak english . We all know that technology is taking over the world. But television, and music can encourage student and even the phrase that can limit they abilities to write their academic papers. Students can be use for informal dialogue when they speaking in school or with their friend. English is part of student, oral vocabulary dialogues, and its easy for student to translate their feeling or what they thinking about.

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