Making Children Hate Reading John Holt Analysis

As the last words escaped my lips, a burst of applause echoed through the room. The bright smiles of my audience, be it family, friends, teachers, or colleagues, never failed to keep me writing. Being able to pique someone's interest enough to show them even just a small piece of the world of imagination inside my head was the very concept that drew me to writing. Creative writing was one of the key factors in developing my literacy skills because I learned to communicate ideas to my audience efficiently and effectively, expand my vocabulary, and broaden my scope of interpretation to discern themes.

    English teachers play an extremely important role in our country’s education system. The whole role of an English teacher is to teach students literature, how to write grammatically correct,

The teacher understands effective writing and teaches students to write effectively in a variety of forms and for various audiences, purposes and contexts.

In order to provide students with the best education and future possible, writing in schools needs to be focused on more in depth. Everyone needs to have a basic understanding of grammar, spelling, sentence structure, and other writing aspects. This is so they can communicate correctly when they get a job in the future and be confident in their writing and communication skills. If someone is not comfortable speaking and/or writing to communicate with others, they are not going to be willing to go out of their comfort zone when they have to communicate with others. With this being said, teachers and schools need to take larger steps to ensure that their students are receiving the proper writing skills needed to be successful in the near future.

I, one of millions of first-year college students, believe that I write bland essays due to the fact that my high school English teachers failed to teach me how to think clearly and creatively. For instance, with my twelfth English teacher, Mrs. Tuttle, there are many cases to which I felt she could’ve improved her teachings not only for me to understand how to write a well-developed paper but as well as others students. First case scenario being how she gave class activities and her teaching style. She had a way of giving activities based on the feeling of how she felt would be a good way for us to learn the material versus what we felt would be the best way to learn the material. These ways included little to no group work. Writing a bunch of illegitimate papers that would be graded by my peers who had little to no idea of what right or wrongs they were looking for. Thus for leaving me with an ambiguous reason to what my writings were lacking or why I never made anything higher than a C in her class. Another way would be the fact that she lived off the teaching theory of “if one can do it then all can do it”. This hands down was the number reason why I could never write a well thought out, clear and creative paper. With this method she felt that if Amanda Ho, class valedictorian, could write an outstanding paper, then the entire Class of 2015 could write one just as well. Never coming to an understanding that everyone wasn’t Amanda Ho, everyone didn’t have the brains

English is a hard language to learn, for there are numerous elements of effective usage and writing. Many people, including me, struggle in writing because of a lack of knowledge. Since middle school, English was not a strong suit of mine. I struggled with the simplest of tasks often taking a considerably longer time to complete a task than the other students. Unmotivated teachers and a lack of interest resulted in remedial writing skills. To put it simply, I had little confidence in my writing and I dreaded taking the class because of the writing involved. In spite of my fears, I took the course and I was able to perfect and challenge my mediocre writing skills.

From personal experience, I used to be an average writer in high school but during my senior when I took college English, the quality of my writing increased because of more strict guidelines and expectations which in return gave me the ability to improve and learn from mistakes. As matter of fact, if my teacher didn’t point the mistakes out and made me redo it, I wouldn’t have improved and had better quality writing experience or somewhat college-level writing. As can be seen, some individuals might not have quality writing skills as they were not exposed to the level of writing they need to obtain before coming to college which makes them lower than average. In essence,, this could because of many factors such as institutional or family

First, the writing class helps one on tests. From SATs to finals, writing is needed. If one is not strong in writing, they miss a huge part of their tests. Even though the student may know the right answers, if they can’t write well, there is no point. It's like listening to two same age high school students speak against each other. However, they both are speaking about the same topic. Whoevers voice, explanation and stance is better would win more approval. The same thing applies when it comes to tests. The better written, the more likely a teacher

Effective writing is becoming a real concern among teachers and college professors. As a matter of fact, the quality of writing appears to be worse than it used to be. In past years, studies have proven that there is a constant decline in people's writing ability. This article, Student Writing: Strategies to Reverse Ongoing Decline, gives you some insight as to the decline and ways to improve your writing skills.

“Writing for Teachers,” an article written by Peter Elbow, opens a world of thought not seen by many students and teachers alike. They, including myself, have fallen into a trap of formats and teacher pleasing. Elbow excellently describes the circumstances of the symbiotic relationship between the teachers and students. He describes the scenario where teachers grade papers upon what they find is most similar to what they have written, and the students aspire to please their teachers. A student’s writing, though it could be good for the intended audience, is graded poorly for being too dissimilar from how the teacher likes writing. These students learn to start “writing for teachers” so they get a better grade. These students develop a very bad habit of writing to please the teachers so much so that they never can write for an audience. Students that

In my second attempt at English class I realized after the first couple classes that writing was no longer some magical formula you could follow and if you did you would pass. “For some it will come as a surprise to learn that reading and writing have no transformative powers.”

Writing is something that most people will encounter every day, whether they are composing a personal email or typing a professional resume. In a time when “text talk” is something that we have grown accustomed to, it can be ease to allow our writing skills to suffer. While being a good writer is important in school, these same skills can help you to advance in your career as well (Bethel University, 2014). Throughout Unit 2 we not only learned the benefits of being a good writer, but we were also given tips to help ensure we become the best writers we can be. By teaching the kids I work with basic rules of writing, I hope to give them confidence in their writing. Also, teaching the kids to speak properly will not only improve their

School provides children with future opportunities, experiences to develop social skills and recognize responsibilities, a learning environment and encourages children to focus on their self-improvement. John Holt believes otherwise; in his essay “School is Bad for Children” he claims, “The child soon learns not to ask questions...Having learned to hide his curiosity...to be ashamed of it...Given no chance to find out who he is--and to develop that person, whoever it is” (73). Yes, some children have bad experiences in school, however Holt exaggerates these experiences and belittles children. School can and does have a positive impact on children’s lives. They need school.

The lack of time that these students spend on writing directly correlates to their lack of writing skills. For example, my coaching teacher spends the most time out of the four third grade teachers on this subject area. Granted, this is only one or two days a week. She begins every writing day with a discussion on what she is looking for in the area that they are writing on, then she gives them forty five minutes to an hour to work on their piece. Other teachers may only spend fifteen minutes a day on writing, but they try and fit it in five days a week. I do not think this time allotted to practice is helping to improve students writing and from what I have learned using Best Practice my thinking is supported.

I am a person who can remember never having read more than two books in a year, and in fact I did not read one book in ninth grade. One of the memories that upsets me most is that in English classes where students were expected to develop or improve their writing skills, teachers would grade my essays “Excellent.” The reason why I am upset is because currently I am having difficulty with fragments, agreement, and other grammar issues that take forever to sort out. Back then, I really had been led to believe that my writing skills were excellent. Needless to say, most teachers in public schools are just trying to survive, and sometimes they can be careless about how they lead students on. This has a lot to do with why the majority of public school students do not attend elite colleges such as Yale, Harvard, or Princeton. We just never had a chance. Those doors were closed on us a long time ago.