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Phinaldi's avatar

Thank you for this. K-5 teacher in the US. I started to respond, got carried away, and lost the response. So here's the short version:

-Yes, cultural literacy and a.shated literature base is priceless. But the limited and extensive (hyped?) focus on the Hitlers over the Agamemnons is a problem. For one thing, recent history is highly biased as taught, and we take time better spent on solid skill building and knowledge acquisitiin to reach it. Far better to curate more intelligently, and with less commitment to polical and social agendas, and with more attention to quality. And beauty. And ethics.

In my lost post, I babbled on about American idiomatic speech, American love of popular culture, and relative valuation and cavernous gaps in knowledge and understanding, even among peers and colleagues.

Did you know that American quarters now can have two heads? George Washington, then some Mexican woman I never heard of, or Maya Angelou on the back. At least I recognize Maya. I bet most Mexican Americans don't, though. Maybe most Americans don't. And I would bet more than a debased US quarter that 99.xx have no idea who the Mexican woman is.

On the topic of debasement, we now have generations of parents and teachers who have sprung from the same devolving system that we are relying on to educate an ever eroding populace. Poor us.

It's a howl some days. Yesterday, a very young male teacher told a couple of us veterans that he will not be back. In his first year, they threw him into a K/1 split classroom with 25. He's going back to work at Starbucks. Better to figure it out early rather than being the frog in the pot like some of us, I said. The 40-year veteran teacher did not understand the reference.

American English is full of it. Chock-a-block with strange, amusing and confounding idiomatic phrases. In another example, I remarked to my principal that we are merely kicking the can down the road via our policies, methods and curricula. She neither knew nor could infer the meaning. I translated, and of course she disagreed.

It is a given that increased marketing-based language in the environment will influence the lexicon. Given the shared-language communication disconnects, it makes sense that literate US parents are increasingly opting for classical-leaning, independent options. Better founding myths of old empires than the tinny, shallow and almost comical stuff now in circulation. There are reasons for Maya Angelou and Rosa Parks, and the Mexican woman. Inez, was it? Never heard of her. God Bless them all. But most people couldn't pick them out of a lineup.

Did you know there is no US coin with Herman Melville on it? I can't make heads or tails of that.

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Sara Hjelm's avatar

Thanks! That goes straight into my collection of links together with the Sutton Trust report this Sunday morning.

I’m still unsure of what to do with your initial summery posts or if I’ll add examples of this from elsewhere in the world … It’s after all a global phenomena right now, not just a US one.

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