I feel children are taught single tasking by either parents or teachers. Most children lack focus and are always all over the place and parents and teachers are always trying to pull them in and have them do one thing at a time. Multi tasking on the other hand as I just kind of explained is natural. Children are born with a lot of curiosity and need for adventure and are all over the place when they’re younger. As they get older they are taught by mostly teachers at this point that they need to focus when being taught something so they can fully understand the new material. Today technology is adding to students’ lack of focus by students constantly going on the internet and being directed to a million different places. The internet is all about grabbing a person’s attention which causes students to become use to jumping from reading to reading, and not fully indulging into one particular text to either relate to what they’re reading or find deeper meanings within the text.
I agreed with a lot of the things brought up in this article. I feel students are not pushed hard enough with what they are reading and that a lot of times teachers are making their curriculum easier to increase graduation rates or to just move students along to the next grade. I believe this dumbing down of reading begins in middle school around fourth and fifth grade because teachers are expecting students to know how to connect to a text and find deeper meaning because that’s suppose to be taught in third grade. Fourth grade teachers don’t feel it’s their responsibility to re-teach it or waste time reviewing it because they have enough curriculum they need to get through, and this causes students to lose this reading skill because their memories are not refreshed and there for can’t be built on or strengthened.
Katie--I agree that school is easier than in the past. I think in our efforts to challenge kids, teachers realize that it may result in low grades and resort to dumbing down the work. I think it's funny when I hear teachers say "Wait until you get to ____ grade next year, they won't tolerate this/it will be much harder" because in my experience, it never was. I was always waiting for that transition to middle school or high school or senior year to bring me the biggest challenge of my life, but really it was just new information in a different grade.
ReplyDeleteI agree that single tasking is taught by parents or teachers. Not necessarily for children of the past, as they did not have many distractions, but now kids are battling so many temptations while they are doing their work. It takes a knowledgable parent or teacher to show them to turn off everything electronic, find a quiet space, and "get in the zone" for productivity.