Here is an interesting article on a related topic:
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/09/28/who-is-college-material

The article discusses intellectual curiosity. The writer proposes (half seriously) that college placement be determined by whether the applicant knows who Charles Lindbergh was. Surely exposure to something above the mundane inspires at least some children to learn.

However, there is always the danger a child could grow up to be bored when their peers only want to talk about cars, football, or themselves.

Ymar: “they could be born with a genius level intellect, but when they spend most of their life using it to think in double, triple, quintuple contradictory matrixes, even geniuses can start looking dumb”…this may well be the case with many college professors, but I think it rarely applies to K-12 public school administrators–the nature of the job will generally select against anyone who has a genius level IQ or serious intellectual interests of any kind.

It strikes me that I don’t think I’ve *ever* seen a blog or a blog comment by someone who identifies himself as a K-12 public school administrator…I’ve seen teachers, businesspeople, air traffic controllers, military officers, librarians, carpenters, venture capitalists…a very wide array of professions…but public school administrators are making themselves pretty scarce in the blogosphere.

There is also the “Tale of the Samurai”. Not sure if I spelled the title correctly or not. It is a juvenile book centered around feudal Japan and it was very engrossing, for a work designed for those in their teens. A feudal Japanese work about honor, courage, duty, loyalty, and social achievement.

They don’t think *any* subject is *really* interesting by itself, so maybe by hooking them together they will get something that *is*….

Well, David,, I wouldn’t say it is really the Left’s fault. I mean, they could be born with a genius level intellect, but when they spend most of their life using it to think in double, triple, quintuple contradictory matrixes, even geniuses can start looking dumb when they’ve invested such brainpower and energy into convoluted logic puzzles.

Idiots can’t hold two contradictory beliefs at once. Idiots have trouble holding one belief and then another one afterwards, linking the two, let alone linking a 2by2 matrix together, serially. (2 by 2 as in if a is true, then b is true, if a is true, be is false, if a is false, b is true, etc)

So they can’t be intellectual. Their energy is used up elsewhere.

There aren’t any old-fashioned boy adventure books, and boys don’t fit well in “feeling” books.

Au contraire Book. Remember my previous mention of the Alcatraze series by Brandon Sanderson, published by Scholastic? That one has the goods on both old fashioned heroic male personals adventuring amidst world changing events, while still being a ‘feeling’ book!

True modern art only comes by grace of individual talent and verve. Too oftentimes the Left and their ideological parasites attempt to simulate individual ability through their ideological rigamore. Doesn’t quite work, as you may have noticed, Book. A committee of 5 isn’t better than a lone wolf.

Thanks for confirming my sense about the books my kids are reading. Interestingly, my kids prefer sci fi/fantasy books. They want epic experiences and big issues. They think big, even as the school teaches small.

And you’re right too about how books are centered on girls in crisis. There aren’t any old-fashioned boy adventure books, and boys don’t fit well in “feeling” books.

I don’t know where all this will end. I’m toying with a bigger post or even an article on the subject, but I found the inclusive conclusions I’ve reached so disturbing I almost don’t want to touch them.

However, in looking over the list of books I’ve read over the past two years, many of the books are self-referential with a young protagonist as the center of the world. Young adult lit is especially prone to individual drama. Also, there is an appalling lack of male protagonists. Girl characters are everywhere doing amazing things. Not sure what boy characters are doing…

The best place to experience and think about the big issues is science fiction/ fantasy. It is a genre I particularly love, but not one often assigned for classroom reading.

As librarian, I have no role in selecting what classroom teachers/school districts chose to use with classes for novel studies. I do give suggestions to individual teachers in my school to read aloud.

I have complained for a number of years to my colleagues that children’s books published today do not allow kids to be kids. Often there is a minor plot detail about alcoholism or abuse or death or a reference to sex that does not move the plot or significantly impact the characters but is thrown in to be modern or edgy (I guess). The journals I use for selection often don’t highlight such points, and I wind up sending books to the middle school because they don’t suit my population.

Probably not a story that would be very interesting to the average public K-12 school administrator or to the proxies that binadaat mentions.

The “people” doing the selecting are the publishers, the reviewers, and the librarians all of whom have agendas and a definite multicultural, moral relativism value system.

Bottom line: don’t think. Feel your way to answer of life’s meaning.

This also explains why they keep trying to connect subjects together in ways that don’t make sense, like teaching algebra via folk dancing or combining the study of graphing with the study of the Holocaust by plotting the number killed on a year-by-year basis. (I actually saw a lesson plan that called for doing just that.)..They don’t think *any* subject is *really* interesting by itself, so maybe by hooking them together they will get something that *is*….