Tilting at Windmills

In the July edition of The Hart & The Cur magazine, I wrote about my personal experience with education and the education system, proposing that building a coherent sense of self relies on historical context, objective value, and a familiarity with tragedy. In contrast to this idea, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) recently published a position statement arguing that traditional reading and writing competencies were outdated, ineffective forms of education for preparing young students for the modern world. Instead they propose…well, you can read what they propose in its place below.

Part One, Wherein I introduce the infamous position statement

The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) issued a position statement in April of this year titled “Media Education in English Language Arts”, which states “The time has come to decenter book reading and essay writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education.” Instead, the NCTE recommends English teachers actively ‘participate in contemporary culture.’ Through media education the NCTE seeks for students to ‘deepen the sociopolitical consciousness as they recognize how power relationships structure the narratives that surround us.’ This appears to be a legitimate aim because they cite a study from 1993 that demonstrates media education accomplishes this objective.

It’s humorous to watch an institution dedicated to English and Language Arts education undermine its own platform in the same way all tragedies are funny. It has echoes of Orwell’s 1984:

The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink.

(Alas, if the NCTE gets its way, future children won’t read 1984.) Obviously it’s absurd for the institution purporting to support English Language Arts to declare, under the aegis of research, the need to ‘move beyond the exclusive focus on traditional reading and writing competencies.’ As you can imagine, this hurts more than themselves—they are sawing off the branch upon which we all sit. (The NCTE recommends I insert the following after the last sentence: shrugging emoji, winking emoji, grimacing emoji.)

The irony of the NCTE’s statement is that de-centering the written word makes deciphering the meaning of their statement difficult, if not impossible. I, for one, am glad my middle school Language Arts teacher drilled Latin and Green roots into my head. She made me identify parts of speech and sentence structure so that I can determine what ‘deepening the sociopolitical consciousness’ means as students ‘recognize how power relationships structure the narratives that surround us’. Literally, at least.

I suppose the NCTE doesn’t actually mean for future students to be able to read and understand position statements such as these that de-structured American civilization. We are witnessing a prediction made by Neil Postman, an educator and communications theorist, come true.

In 1992, Postman warned that “…school was an invention of the printing press and must stand or fall on the issue of how much importance the printed word has.” Educational institutions, he pointed out, “can do little to prevent that breakup, but surely there is something perverse about schoolteachers being enthusiastic about what is happening.” He compares it to a blacksmith at the turn of the 19th century who not only welcomed but encouraged the advent of the automobile.

Thus, the horse dies again: once as a form of transportation and now as I belabor my point. (But will future students understand the oblique reference to ‘beating a dead horse’? I fear not.)

Part Two, Wherein we examine the logic and veracity of one of their claims using traditional reading and writing competencies

There is a mind-boggling paragraph subtly buried in the midst of the NCTE’s “position statement” that begins “Research evidence amply shows…”

I apologize to the reader for having to endure the remainder of the paragraph, a paragraph which is a discredit to logic and the English language generally. It babbles on,

“Research evidence amply shows the need to move beyond the exclusive focus on traditional reading and writing competencies.” So far so good. They have made a claim, now they must support it, as we were all hopefully taught to do in our middle school Language Arts classrooms.

“For example…” it continues. Well done! A classic choice for illustrating one’s point. “…secondary school students lack critical reading comprehension skills that require them to distinguish between journalism and sponsored content, and they routinely ignore the source of a message when judging its accuracy (Breakstone et al., 2019).”

Before we move further into this paragraph, let’s analyze what the premier leaders of English Language Arts have done with the preceding two sentences, (something I was taught to do in the antiquated traditional reading and writing competencies): they point out a problem and make an assumption about that problem without supporting their claim.

Just because research shows secondary school students lack the ability to distinguish sources and discriminate against the veracity of a claim does not immediately mean traditional reading and writing competencies are to blame. Could there not be a host of other explanations? Poor teaching, for example? Or, given the lack of emphasis on reading in the last 20 years, could it in fact be a dearth of these traditional competencies?

Maybe if our fearless friends at the NCTE watched less Bridgerton and read more books this would be obvious.

Part Three, Wherein we examine the research behind the NCTE’s position statement and discover it to be woefully lacking

You might be thinking at this point that I am being unfair. After all, they cite a well-known research article, and surely those people did their homework.

The truth is far grimmer.

Instead, the conductors of the survey used research that very narrowly examined 3,446 high school students who were administered six online questions during a social studies class in the middle of a high school day. They extrapolate the findings of this fairly narrow study to “prove” that traditional reading and writing competencies, as they call them, are inadequate for the education of the modern student.

Furthermore, the study offers the unsubstantiated claim that “traditional ways of reading are not merely ineffective. They’re dangerous.” But the study did not directly examine the effect of reading and writing on a student’s ability to distinguish online content. Instead, it looked at a student’s ability to check the reliability of an online source.

If this—a poorly conducted study leading to a questionable claim—is the type of research on which the NCTE is basing the need to chuck out reading and writing, then might I suggest spending a bit more time reading and writing may have helped them come to a better conclusion?

Now, the study does draw two narrow conclusions that might be within its scope of research:

• First, students needs carefully designed curriculum;
• Second, socioeconomic status correlated with a lower ability to evaluate sources

I don’t believe many people would argue with the first conclusion. Careful thought should always be put into how and what we teach our children.

However, I fail to understand how the researchers saw a correlation between socioeconomic status and difficulty distinguishing the credibility of online sources and then determined that less book reading and essay writing were the answer.

Any cursory internet search unearths a mountain of research correlating educational achievement and socioeconomic status. Anecdotally, children in higher income brackets tend to read more. Could the situation then be the opposite of what this published academic study and the NCTE claim? They misdiagnose the problem and therefore apply a foolish and pernicious solution.

Conclusion, Wherein I tie things together (as I was taught in my Language Arts education)

When Don Quixote set out on his quest, he found an enemy that didn’t exist. As some of you may know—future children of our educational system obviously excluded—he chased only windmills. The NCTE’s efforts to decenter “traditional” book reading and essay writing and replace it with ‘media education’ is quixotism at its worst. However, the difference between the NCTE and Don Quixote is that Quixote’s misguided chivalry is amusing and harmless, while the NCTE’s misguided intentions will cause real damage.

Even if schools around the country adopt the NCTE’s guidelines, book reading and essay writing will continue—in private schools and level-headed public schools. Public school funding is typically based on location and private schools are normally attended by a more affluent sector of the population. Therefore, I can easily see a situation where the benefits transmitted by traditional reading and writing—logic, grammar, communication, and the context of Western values, to name a few—disproportionately aggregate in a wealthier segment of the population, exacerbating the very situation the NCTE is hoping to address. Thus we come to the greatest irony of the NCTE’s short sighted position statement—they may be hurting most the very population which they hope to help.