In reference to our discussion yesterday, I wish to pass along the most recent data from Statistics Canada in regards to Internet use. According to their 2009 survey, 80.3% of individuals age 16 and over in Canada use the Internet, accessing it from a variety of locations. 77.1% of those individuals have home Internet access. Access is 70% or higher for all income quartiles, with 76.2% in the lowest income quartile claiming they use the Internet.

Here are some tables:
Internet use by individuals, by selected characteristics (Canada): http://www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/comm35a-eng.htm
Internet use by individuals, by location of access (Canada): http://www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/comm36a-eng.htm
Internet use by individuals, by location of access (BC): http://www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/comm36k-eng.htm

Notably, British Columbia has the highest rate of Internet access across the country: 85.4% of individuals in this province use the Internet, accessing it from a variety of locations. 83% of those individuals have home Internet access. The only area in which BC does not lead Internet usage across Canada appears to be Internet use in schools. School Internet access is 15.3% for British Columbia compared to 16.6% for the nation.

The target population for the survey was 16 years and older, which is evidently a limitation in giving secondary school educators a clear picture of student Internet use. Significantly, though, we find usage by individuals under the age of 34 is highest–over 96%–and that 91.1% of single-family households with unmarried children under age 18 have Internet access.

As well, an article reporting figures from 2005 states that rural access is lower than urban access: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/070913/dq070913d-eng.htm. If this trend remained the same over the past four years, Internet access in the Lower Mainland may be higher than what is represented by province-wide numbers, while Internet access in remote regions may be lower.

The matter of the digital divide mentioned in class is a serious concern; however, we should recall that there has always been a divide in regards to information access. Just as we have long taught print literacy in classrooms knowing full well that some children do not have access to books in their homes, we likewise need to address the question of digital literacy in classrooms knowing that some children do not have access to computers in their homes. Ultimately, to omit or downplay particular topics of study because students don’t have equal access to resources is to head down a slippery slope. It’s true, some students don’t have access to computers at home. Some students don’t have access to collections of literature at home. Some don’t have access to books at all, or to any print materials. Others cannot practice the language of instruction in their homes. Our response to such discrepancies must be additive rather than reductive — that is, rather than omitting a worthwhile topic because students don’t have equal access to resources beyond the classroom, we must consider how we might modify instructional strategies and provide support to accommodate those who are less advantaged.

For many, digital technologies have replaced print technologies as the dominant method of access to text for reading. The question is, how will ministries of education and teachers of English language arts respond? Certainly there are no easy answers.

BC Ministry of Education Policy Document: English as a Second Language: http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/policy/policies/esl.htm

BC Ministry of Education ESL Learners: A Guide for Classroom Teachers :
http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/esl/

BC Ministry of Education ESL Standards:
http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/esl/standards.pdf

Graded Readers:
http://www.cis.doshisha.ac.jp/kkitao/library/student/esl/list/esl_list_high.htm

http://www.eslreading.org/resources/resources/aboutreaders.html

Here follows a link to the TED Lecture by Sir Ken Robinson on how schools discourage creativity:
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html .

The Blake Archive, where you may find images of Blake’s prints, may be found here: http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/ .

September 25-October 2 is “banned books” week in the United states. In an article on the NYT Paper Cuts blog, Lela Moore speaks of recent attempts to ban Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, the story of a high school girl who is raped and then ostracized because of rumors about the incident. In such cases Twitter is increasingly being used as a vehicle for opposition. Writes Moore, “Twitter has become, as Anderson told me in an interview, a ‘game changer’ in public discourse” (Moore, 2010, September 28).

While Life of Pi has to the best of my knowledge not yet been formally challenged, it seems the sort of book that might eventually draw the attention of censors on the grounds of its religious content and some depictions of violence. How would you defend this book, or any other book, from potential censorship were it challenged in your classroom? How do we determine whether a book is “appropriate” for young adults and what are the inherent challenges in attempting to do so?

References and relevant links:

Moore, Lela. (2010, September 28). “Twitter: Banned Books’ New Best Friend.” NYT Paper Cuts. Available:
http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/twitter-banned-books-new-best-friend/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Banned Books Week Website: http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/

In speaking with Carol Shaben about her non-fiction writing recently, she reflected briefly on her experience giving writing workshops in a local high school. She remarked that while students seemed to be willing to take risks as creative writers, they appeared less willing to do so when approaching the task of writing non-fiction, possibly because they brought to the latter task knowledge of particular rules of essay writing that limited their willingness to experiment.

I mused that an approach they were likely to have encountered was the five-paragraph essay, that utilitarian formula for writing widely promoted as a way to express one’s opinion clearly on any matter: say what you’re going to say, say it, and say you said it.

In 1985, Donald Stewart bemoaned North America’s long-standing love affair with the form:

The five-paragraph essay is a formula, not a composition. It is rule-governed, hence easy to mark, but imposing it on every subject one writes about is the equivalent of trying to put a wiggling 100-pound dog, or a barrel of apples, or several gallons of fresh maple syrup, or the unassembled parts of a ten-speed bicycle, or three different typewriters, or a wardrobe for a Florida vacation all in the same size box. (137)

In English language arts classrooms, encouraging students to read and write a variety of non-fiction is often overlooked, and the result is that students finish their formal education with no clear understanding of how to approach non-fiction as writers or critical readers.

Reference:

Stewart, D.C. (1985). Some History Lessons for Composition Teachers. Rhetoric Review, 3 (2), 134-144.

In “Raising Boys’ Attainment in Reading: Some Principles for Intervention,” Moss observes,

It has been known for some while that, in general terms, boys do less well than girls at reading, almost regardless of the criteria used to assess competence. Not only is their performance weaker, they also read fewer books than girls, and much less fiction (Barrs, 1993; Millard, 1997). (p. 101)

She points to research indicating that boys–again, in general terms–prefer non-fiction and remarks, “the commonsense view of why boys do less well at reading starts from the assumption that either boys’ preferences in reading material are insufficiently represented on the curriculum, or that boys see too few men reading to aspire to being readers themselves” (p. 104). While she sees the issue as being far more complex than what “commonsense” might suggest, she emphasizes that the only solution to the problem is to clarify “what our aspirations for readers are. The reading curriculum should be capable of preparing young people to tackle a wide range of texts, in a range of different media, intelligently and critically. Essentially it should enable them to put their reading competence to good use” (105).

I welcome your thoughts on Moss’s observations or on possible ways of engaging students through the non-fiction selections for 20 and 22 September. If you wish to comment on this topic, please click on comments below to do so. If you would like to start a new topic, go to the dashboard and write a new post.

Reference:

Moss, G. (2000). Raising Boys’ Attainment in Reading: Some Principles for Intervention. Reading, v34 n3, p101-106.

Hemingway is known for his economy of style. His writing has been characterized variously as spare, simple, and lean; nevertheless, his narratives can be challenging. In interviews my research team carried out with secondary and post-secondary educators last fall, for example, “Hills Like White Elephants” was identified as a difficult text to teach because of what is not said. Instructors noted that students were generally unable to pick up on what is implied but not named in this narrative. Further, when instructors explicated the story for their classes, they found students tended to become caught up in moralizing to the exclusion of any discussion about the subtlety of language use. I welcome your thoughts on this post or on one of the two below.

“Kew Gardens,” suggests Stevenson, “can be read, from a very objective, detached, abstract point of view, as a physics experiment”:

A hidden microphone (the snail) is placed randomly within a large public garden, and it records fragments of the conversations of a series of couples as they approach and pass, their voices emerging out of noise to make sense, then fading again into noise . . . There is also an omniscient observer, no less apparently trans-human, standing outside the system and encompassing or enclosing it, although this second observer or point of view becomes clearest at the story’s end.

Stevenson goes on to discuss the relation between these two perspectives, arguing that the narrative is “a sort of self-enclosed, self-creating, autopoietic ‘system’.” What is the effect for readers of this shifting viewpoint, and how might we facilitate the reading of such complex narratives for young people?

Reference

Stevenson, F. (2008). Enclosing the Whole: Woolf’s “Kew Gardens” as Autopoetic Narrative. Journal of the Short Story in English, 50, n.p. Available: http://jsse.revues.org/index721.html

In 1863 Gustav Freytag published Die Technik des Dramas, a book in which he considers dramatic structure in ancient Greek and Shakespearean tragedy. Freytag’s model of dramatic structure has been appropriated for use in teaching the short story, but whether it is suitable for this purpose is debatable.

Freytag's Pyramid

Considering the four short stories assigned for this week, to what extent is Freytag’s Pyramid useful when applied to contemporary fiction? What other approaches might be employed in considering narrative structure?

Welcome to the LLED 449 LitBlog. In this writing space you may engage in personal response or literary analysis, or you may consider the text under discussion from an educator’s point of view. (For example, what issues does this text give rise to? What are the potential challenges or benefits of teaching this text? For what age level might it be appropriate? What are some possible teaching strategies specific to this text?) In education, theory should inform practice and vice versa, so it is hoped your responses will reflect a range of perspectives, theoretical and practical, and demonstrate the relations between those perspectives. You may use this writing space, as well, to ask questions and engage the ideas of your peers.