December Days 12 - A Failure To Illuminate

[silveradept]

[It's December Days time! There's no overarching theme this year, so if you have ideas of things to write about, I'm more than happy to hear them.]

If I haven't mentioned it yet, I detest reading level systems like Accelerated Reader and Lexile, when they're not being used strictly as assessment tools. The general purpose of these systems is to assign, based on length, complexity, and density of text, a numerical score to any given work of prose. The higher the score, the more complex the text is, generally speaking. There's also a framework around the scores set so that each major division of score (single point for AR, 100 points for Lexile) roughly corresponds to what the average child of a given grade level can read. So a 3.0 AR score or a means a child entering third grade should be able to read the work without trouble. (Lexile explicitly disclaims this use, saying their system is just for classification, but providing what they consider to be the ranges of the 25th-75th percentiles for each grade level.)

As an assessment result, it's probably helpful for seeing who is reading at grade level and how far behind some percentage is. That way, those who need it can get extra instruction on reading in an attempt to bring them up to level. (Only for many of those behind to get struck by another Summer slide - enrichment and practice and books are often in short supply where they are needed most.)

One of the things that fosters enjoyment of reading and the commensurate amount of practice with text it takes to become fluent and able to read well is free choice of books. Being able to select materials according to interest, enjoyment, and format ensures that a reader has the best chance of a positive experience with books. Especially nonfiction text - interest trumps just about anything when it comes to learning facts, figures, statistics, and so forth.

There are fewer things more effective at killing someone's interest in reading than to tell them they can only read materials within a restricted range. And yet, that's what these systems are used to do in the service of reading practice when implemented poorly.

They are all implemented poorly, whether by teaching to tests that are supposed to reward comprehension, or by restricting reading, or by the very act of taking a complex child and their relationships to text and reducing it to a single number, one that can be posted for their peers to see and pass judgment on. Or for the teachers to pass judgment on.

How horrible it is that we take the act of acquiring knowledge and stories and reduce it down until we have distilled all of the fun out of it and eliminated any desire for someone to do it on their own.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

When I was in first grade, I checked exactly one long chapter book out of the school library. The librarian gave me the "That's way above your head, little lady" thing. And I saw my peers having a great time with the sort of brightly colored, pop culture laden (something my father scorned) and *fun* books aimed at the typical first grade reading level.

I would select several of the fun ones, after that, read several of them while in the library for our allotted book selection time, and check out the remaining two.

I kept the chapter books to the public library, where they were unsurprised to see me toting around as many books as I could carry, of whatever size and complexity. No-one interfered with my choices there, except knowing that I was under the watchful eye of my parents.

[silveradept]

Ah, a great way of beating the people who think you should be restricted in reading.

[azurelunatic]

My parents didn't see why I might want literary junk food when there were so many good books out there. So it all worked out.

[wohali]

When I was going through my PhD in Education, one of the things they wanted us to do was to calculate metrics such as the ones you describe for student's forum posts and homeworks as a way of determining how engaged they were with the topic at hand. I was appalled. My advisor backed me up, saying that such things were "the hallmark of the US education system" and that "not everything can be reduced to a number," but later on even she embraced these scores as at least one aspect of trying to assess student performance.

Rigorous mathematical assessment of prose is one reason I stopped pursuing my PhD.

[silveradept]

Guh. That's an entirely crap way of assessing student engagement.

[redsixwing]

Egad. Is THAT what they're doing? That's horrific. Way to maul somebody's chances of actually LEARNING reading comprehension, by presenting them with material at level and material +1. (Or +2 or 3. Some of us learn faster when presented with hurdles.)


Probably off topic, as it's a very different usage, but I'm going to leave this here anyway:

...I like graded readers, as a language learner. They're a good way for me to set a bottom level and make sure I can get over that (admittedly low) hurdle - you must be able to read at this complexity to pass the test.

Never would I limit myself to my N-level graded readers, though. They're way too simplistic for that, even though they were designed with adult language learners in mind. Those are a floor, not a ceiling, and they get real boring real fast once I can routinely handle the complexity presented.

[sithjawa]

I have long wondered why (beyond the level required for basic comprehension) reading is privileged. When I was a young adult, I wasn't allowed TV (until the high school started assigning required movies), mom would periodically discover that I was actually doing interesting things on the internet and restrict my access, I mostly wasn't allowed to see friends or go out alone or, you know, basically anything --- but despite mom having repeatedly discovered me reading upsettingly interesting things and taking them away and lecturing me, she never monitored my access to books. Reading was perceived as a basic right for children in a way that my mom wasn't willing to challenge even in private. it's long been a substantial loophole in the more totalitarian kinds of parental control (the idea-related kinds, you know, don't watch that TV show it has thoughtcrime) and I don't entirely understand why this is allowed, when such control is often encouraged if it's of, say, TV or video games. It seems to send mixed messages about how children should be raised.

edit: Because, like, there seems to be a general acceptance of the concept of books teaching rebellious thought, or that rebellious thought encouraged by books is a better quality of rebellious thought than that encouraged by other media. That's where I get confused, because I don't think the... type of anti-authoritarian idea that an idea is depends on what media is used to present it?

[silveradept]

I think there are a few things about the privileged status of books.

The subversive quality of text is often that it hides in plain sight, presenting itself as material that's inoffensive to the Moral Guardians, while allowing itself to be read in such a way that the right person finds what they need. This is possible even in materials that are established in the canon of Acceptable Books. The Classics, including Tanakh and the Christian Foundational Writings, are often much less morally wholesome than the people promoting them realize.

I also think that illiteracy is a thing that draws attention to censors and Moral Guardians. Forbid television, movies, and video games and you have a child that doesn't relate to popular culture. Forbid books and you have people questioning your parenting practices and investigating what's going on.

Finally, I think that there's still a major hitch in culture about visual depiction versus textual depiction. Despite knowing that a child's imagination can do far better than plenty of visual artists, censors tend to believe that seeing an act depicted in a screen or page is infinitely worse than reading it, because they assume kids will imitate what they can see and learn things they wouldn't otherwise know by watching it. Comics are obscene, books are Literature.

[sithjawa]

Right?? It never ceases to amaze me that The Classics tend to be accepted while things that are much less potentially disturbing, violent, or subversive are challenged. For that matter, how many people learned that it's possible to present as some gender other than the one everybody says you are via Shakespeare?


You have a point about visual vs. textual depictions. The more something *looks like reality* the more people want to apply ratings (at the least) to it.

[silveradept]

Shakespeare and others. There's lots of transforming magic and crossdressing in myth and legend, which often goes unremarked upon because they're myths and legends. (Also, lots of sex.)

There's a pretty clear throughline for me about visual depictions and their censors. Text got theirs out of the way fairly early in, and so only occasionally end up being challenged in society. In schools, much more common to see challenges.

But then you have the Hays Code, the Comics Code, the MPAA rating system, the ESRB rating system, the Parental Advisory sticker, and so forth. Visual depictions and new media always get scrutinized, declared corrupting, attempted to be regulated, and eventually accepted.

There are always holdouts, though, who are a few steps back on what they will accept as okay.

[sithjawa]

Traditionally published text though, yeah? I don't think the same "this is rarely challenged any more" thing applies to text that exists on the internet.

[sithjawa]

And of course, there's also the challenges that authors receive re: text *before* it's published. At least, I seem to recall tales of publishers requesting people remove gay characters, etc.

[silveradept]

Those are all true. I guess I should say that text has gone through the phase where anything in text is given the scrutiny and demanded to be censored or heavily regulated. Now we're down to specific texts and ideas getting challenged. Or requested to be changed before they get published.

Television, movies, software, music, graphic novels - all of those still have people categorically dismissing the entire medium as worthless or in need of blanket regulation.

[sithjawa]

Oh, yes! I don't want to see what you mean but I do! And what programs are cut in schools, too. But visual art and music have been around forever, too... I wonder why they aren't also "past that point?"

[silveradept]

Some are. The depictions of nudity and violence is classical art tends to go by unnoticed, if tittered at by young children. Classical music and opera also gets a pass because while the piece may be about the lust the composer feels for their friends, since the lyric is either absent or in another language, it too gets a pass. Things that are present in our day and that use the vernacular tend to collect the criticism, even if you can trace their origins as far back into antiquity as you need to go.

[sithjawa]

True, and it seems like a "white people antiquity" thing? But I feel like we don't distinguish between classical and modern literature in the same way we distinguish between, say, classical nad rap music. (though, see also "fanfic isn't literature")

[silveradept]

I think, in textual things, Literature is a reified section that gets beyond reproach, regardless of when the work was written. I think the contested ground for text is the literature / popular divide, much love it is for other media. Popular and "genre" material are accorded lesser status and subjected more to the outrage of the Moral Guardians.

That particular throughline goes all the way back to the Homeric Greeks, though, and is likely to never go away, because there is always New Media to declare evil.

[azurelunatic]

I think there's a potential future where more internet connections get subject to the sort of invasive filtering that monitors for thoughtcrime words. And possibly ebooks, too.

[silveradept]

That's true. And much more likely to happen in the current political climate.

[tsutsujigirl.livejournal.com]

I love AR. I used it in my classrooms and the kids absolutely loved it; they set individual goals for points, stored in their desks. It helps them have some independent texts on top of what I assign that they can actually read, so that they can sit at their desks and quit bugging me, and actually enjoy what they're reading (It's important to have a very wide variety of texts) Without levels, students tend to choose things that are too hard, and therefore aren't effectively reading, and AR is way more interesting than Basal readers, which is the other dry, horrible option for a struggling child. It also makes creating reading groups a breeze when combined with direct testing. My rule was three texts per child: one from me, one AR, and one free choice of any level (untested) in their desk at all times. Positive implementation is key, but my classes adored AR.

Mina's school uses lexile, which does help me pick some independent texts for her as gifts, but she has access to texts up to high school level, should she choose.

[silveradept]

Your implementation sounds a lot better than the ones I've seen around, definitely, or the way I've seen parents use it in the public library. Plus, free choice of reading and a wide variety makes it less lovely to be horrible.

So maybe not all implementations are bad.