Losing faith (some more)

But this time in the public education system.

My 202 students read "La abeja haragana" by Horacio Quiroga today for their literature section. It's a great story, you could do some fun things with it with students who had more language or more literature interest. With mine, all I was going for was the theme of "community helps us all to live a better life." The first thing that I had them do was to get into groups and think of stories with similar themes.

They couldn't come up with any.

Not. One. Single. One.

So I gave them the theme. And mentioned "The Little Red Hen" and "The Ant and the Grasshopper". And asked again.

Still nothing. I thought it was the language barrier. Turns out, of the 56 students, only 5 had heard of either story. (Unless they were just playing stupid, which is entirely possible)

This tells me two things:
1) In the course of a generation, elementary schools have shifted their focus SO MUCH toward proficiency testing that they've failed to give students a basic foundation of literary works to draw from.

2) Students, even when they have a story/theme, struggle with critical thinking-type tasks.

This makes me want to homeschool. Because while there are those who will argue that literature is unimportant or too abstract to merit study, I want my kids to be able to read things and analyze them. Reading a story to find its theme isn't that far from reading a contract to get its "gotcha" clause.

And even if there were no practical application, what's wrong with reading a story that makes you think, "Wow, I'm glad we live in a community. My life is better because I don't have to raise my own sheep to shear their wool, spin and weave it, then sew my clothes, all while raising enough food to subsist on and building a house out of whatever I can find lying around."