Myers Article

While reading the Myers article, one of the quotes on page 76 really stuck out to me:

"Reading as a school exercise has almost always been thought of as reading aloud...The consequent attention to reading as an exercise in speaking... has been heavily at the expense of reading as the art of thought-getting..."(Huey [1908], 1968, 359).

I feel like reading as a school exercise should be a little bit of both. Students should be practicing speech while reading, as well as inferring meaning. Today's exercises in reading are definitely more geared towards reading comprehension, rather than diction and speech. Rather than memorization and repetition, today's teachers focus on meaning and interpretation.

I also found it very interesting to read that post Civil War teachers contributed to the sorting function in schools (69). I definitely think that sorting students by achievement contributed to the decline in school attendance of the lower class students. I was not surprised to read that the majority of children who remained in schools were white males from wealthy, professional families (69). I am so glad that schools today are more discreet about the socioeconomic status and achievement level of the students. At my school, my teacher is extremely careful to speak with the students who are on IEPs in private or letters or emails. My cooperating teacher told me that she uses discretion because she doesn't want the students on IEPs to feel embarrassed or apart from the rest of the class.