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For our first class, 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. 
I would like to use this article to frame our discussions this semester. For that to happen, I think it's important to consider what the article is actually saying:
11 Comments
Liz
9/2/2020 03:53:51 pm
I read David Brin's 2006 article "Why Johnny can't code." Brin's personal experiences seem to have fueled this article, as he describes his son's desire to learn code and the quixotic nature of that task. Specifically, he pleads for an accessible way for young people to learn the basics through, as it turns out, BASIC, a largely obsolete programming language. It's how many now-famous computer scientists got their start, but it's nearly impossible for modern students to run it on their Macs and PCs, making it increasingly difficult to learn programming independently. School plays a relatively minor role in this article, although it is mentioned that IT classes were more easily found in high schools than it was at the time of writing. Brin seems to be pointing his fingers at the folks who profit from how difficult it is to learn code rather than pedagogical practice, which is remarkably different than Sheils's article.
Kyle Rego
9/2/2020 03:54:13 pm
I read an article from the New York Times entitled "Why Kids Can't Write," originally poublished in August of 2017. This publication date makes it quite a bit more recent than the 1975 article that we read to class, and yet the two articles were nearly mirror images of one another. In my reading, each article seemed to point out ways in which American students have been proven to lack the ability to express their thoughts clearly and in organized fashion while while providing context for such an assertion. However, one important difference in the ways in which this issue is treated is in that the more recent NYT article calls for more attention to the grammar and construction of writing. It asserts that more and more professors find that students are entering their freshman year at university are doing so without the most essential skill they need. The article cites "Snap chat style" writing and the like. The article seems to criticise high school teachers in that they expect their students to absorb good writing habits through "hearing" good writing rather than puting the work in to practice.
Katelyn Fitzsimmons
9/2/2020 03:55:08 pm
The article entitled, “Why American Students Can’t Write,” posted in The Atlantic in 2020 discusses discusses Peg Tyre’s piece, “In Writing Revolution.” This piece discusses a troubled New York high school where students were struggling with writing at the basic level. To fix this, the school lessened its focus on creative writing ans shifted the focus to ensuring that students were receiving more formal writing instruction, specifically in the areas of expository essays and the fundamentals of grammar. According to the article, this shift of focus positively impacted the high school’s overall dropout rate by 20%.
Carl Olson
9/2/2020 03:56:13 pm
In the article "Why Americans Can't Write" by Natalie Wexler as published in the Washington Post in 2015, she begins by laying bare that it is "no secret that many Americans are lousy writers." The biggest reason given is that writing is apparently simply not taught anymore. Much of the blame for this is placed on the new Common Core standards. These standards are largely focused on what the outcomes should be for students, with little information on how to actually implement these goals. Wexler argues that there needs to be better understanding of sentence level construction before there can be paragraph level essays. Yet, Wexler also states that grammar drills are ineffective.
Andrea Hicks
9/2/2020 03:56:21 pm
As a followup reading to "Why Johnny Can't Write", I found an article titled "Why Johnny Can't Read--But Jane Can" by Kevin Mitchell written in 2010. I thought that this title was an interesting twist on the original article’s title. The 2010 article was wildly different from the 1975 article in that it took a much more scientific approach to the problem which was being analyzed. It was more objective in just about every way than the 1975 article. While the 1975 article made some valid points, many were subjective. However, there was virtually no subjectivity in the 2010 article. Dyslexia was the subject of the article; more specifically, what dyslexia looks like inside the brain. While there was complex language used throughout the article, the idea that boys are more likely to have dyslexia than girls was brought up. However, it was the conclusion of the article that I found most fascinating. In the end, it was found that the difference among sexes was not a direct difference in the brain; instead, the difference was between the ways in which a female brain and a male brain respond to the defect. In other words, the female brain was not responding quite as negatively as the male brain to the defects. While the 1975 article was subjective at times, the 2010 article was purely objective and simply described research without the addition of biases.
Nicole Moscone
9/2/2020 04:00:45 pm
Natalie Wexler’s article “Why American Students Haven’t Gotten Better at Reading in 20 Years” was published in 2018 and eerily similar to the article “Why Johnny Can’t Read” which was published in 1975. Wexler’s article brings the audience's attention to the fact that students’ reading scores have remained stagnant and even decreased in many parts of the country. Wexler explains that at the elementary school level teachers focus on teaching foundational reading skills because it is assumed that they need to learn to read before learning for content. This has become the root of the problem according to Wexler. Teachers have taught comprehension as a set of skills but research shows that comprehension is dependent on what students already know. It is often thought that students can comprehend any article they are given to read if taught comprehension skills but awareness of vocabulary and prior background knowledge is more important. Wexler recommends instead of giving students easier articles or novels to read that we expand their vocabulary and build on their general knowledge. Giving children an easier text is only hurting them because they are given the cancer to build on their vocabulary. It seems both articles expose a conflict in the teaching of major skills.
Diana Cross
9/2/2020 04:16:24 pm
The article that I read in conjunction with "Why Johnny Can't Write", is titled "Why Johnny Can’t Sing, Dance, Saw, or Bake" Written by Jack Berckemeyer from The Association for Middle Level Education. The article, argues that the exhausted argument posed in the original "Why Johnny Can't Write" is incomplete in depicting areas of concern for our country and students. Berckemeyer questions "Why can’t Johnny have the opportunity to study art, music, technology, drama, band, or any of the other electives or explor- atory classes?" in an effort to highlight the recent movement to eliminate "elective courses" in school systems. Berckemeyer doubts the effectiveness that removal of these courses will have on our students. He suggests that to strive for true academic achievement, our students, who have a mirage of learning abilities, strengths and interests, should be able to develop math and literacy skills within the "elective" classes. For example, he recommends that a student can work on math skills in a technology design class using materials such as legos. In closing, Berckemeyer opts to rename "elective" as "essential" classes to insist that these classes are necessary for student success in the classroom. Berckemeyer is offering one solution to "fix" the problem of writing by suggesting we make an effort to include classes that engage our students and provide them with skills they can use in the future.
Erin Slayton
9/2/2020 04:18:59 pm
The article I read was published in 2015 and focused on the “Why Johnny Can’t” trope in the form of “why our students can’t think critically.” This buzzword is thought to be a significant part of educating students – teaching them how to critically think – and yet no clear definition of what this is has been agreed upon. Authors Elizabeth Olijar and D.R. Koukal, of the University of Detroit Mercy, detail in the article how “thinking about thinking,” more commonly known as metacognition, is a vital aspect of critical thinking and yet is oft undervalued or overlooked in the process. The authors here argue that specific stand-alone courses should be offered to explicitly teach critical thinking, which involves learning to critically “[judge, discern, or estimate the value of something” (3). This article compares to the original text we read in that a general problem is identified, and potential factors are presented as to what is to blame, but not as much attention is paid to how to solve the issues, or perhaps reimagining them.
Maeve McDonagh
9/2/2020 04:19:05 pm
I looked at an article from the New York Times titled “Why Kids Can’t Write” published in 2017. This article pointed out many deficiencies in student writing that were similar to the errors noticed in the 1975 article, such as poor spelling and grammar in addition to an inability to create coherent sentences. The main difference I noticed between the two articles is that while the original article puts the blame slightly on teachers who do not know how to properly teach writing, it also blames television as the factor contributing to this decline in skill; however, the New York Times article mostly blames teachers for either choosing to not teach basic writing mechanics or for not knowing how to teach these mechanics effectively and does not blame technology. One other difference between the articles is that the first article suggests ways that may remedy the situation such as teacher conferences or starting students out with more relatable writing topics, while the New York Times article mainly discusses the ways in which teachers have been unable to remedy the decline in writing skills, such as trying to hard to develop a love of writing without the basics or trying to teach basic mechanics without engaging the students.
Clare Nee
9/2/2020 05:53:18 pm
For this week’s discussion I read the article entitled “Why Students Can’t Write -- And Why Tech is Part of the Problem” written by Jeffrey Young, published April 9th, 2019. I selected this article because it was fairly recent, and I thought that it would show the span of the larger discussion, stretching back from the 70s to today, within both articles regarding pedagogy and writing for students. This article examines the problems of student writing via the experience of John Warner, a college professor for twenty years. Warner describes what he believes are some of the largest problems with the inability to write being attributed to the “structure” and form in which we are taught to write. He claims that this structure has created student writing as something very formulaic. However, arming students merely with strategic “moves”, limits their ability to write in the long run, because it does not engage in the critical thinking process. Thus, from Warner’s standpoint as a professor, he largely sees a vast amount of students who are underprepared for college writing, because the “how-to” structure is removed, and the creativity and rules are left up to the writer. In this sense, the blame lies in the systemic issues and systematic approaches to education, particularly in how we teach students to write. Warner argues that the system needs to be redesigned, starting with the teachers, who are the framework for the students, up. The teachers can only teach as much as they know. Thus, if the teachers have been taught themselves a limited way of writing, they will teach the students the same limitations, etc. and the pattern will continue. We must reframe and reshape how we think, act, and behave within the classroom, more specifically how we teach reading and writing in order to counteract the student learning regressions at hand. Despite the title of the article, Warner’s central argument is not the technology, but rather the issues that are highlighted and amplified through the access of said technology.
For this week's discussion, I chose to focus on an article from NBC News titled "Why Johnny Can't Write, and Why Employers Are Mad", which was published in 2013. Although there is almost four decades between "Why Johnny Can't Write" and the article I have chosen, there are many echoes of blame on students' ability, teachers' professionalism, and criticism of the education system across the nation as a whole. Both articles claim that teachers and technology are to blame for a growing lack of proficiency in writing skills. Although I agree that technology has impacted, and continues to impact, student learning to some extent, I do not blame technology (and definitely not teachers) for a lack of writing proficiency - instead, I blame a negative and outdated attitude that all writing needs to be taught a certain way and produce alike results. No two students are the same and no two teachers teach the same way. In my response, I call on critics of students' writing skills to reevaluate their stance on the matter and ask the following questions: 1) why is teaching writing and learning how to write hard and 2) what can we do to change the attitude and approach to teaching and learning writing? Leave a Reply. |
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