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

[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.