(no subject)

[conuly]

Metafilter is having a, uh, lively discussion on whether or not this study proves that contemporary English majors can't read.

There's a lot of potential ways to divide the commenters into two groups, but the one I expected the most was "people who think the correct way to deal with unfamiliar references in literature is to immediately look it up" and "people who think the first group needs to learn to use context clues already".

As always, I am in the second group, and every time the first group appears in real life I find myself wondering if they somehow weren't taught this skill at school. I well remember the worksheets! (To be honest, they were a little hit or miss for me - 95% of the time they just used text with words they assumed the students would be unfamiliar with, which I was never actually unfamiliar with. But the other 5% of the time they used text with made up words or with blacked out bits of text, and that was fun, and presumably we all learned a great deal. Or at least in theory... one of the reasons I had such a good vocabulary as a kid was because I read so much and never looked anything up except for fun, so... well, the point is, my classmates probably learned something! And I use that skill every time I try to read something in Spanish.)

Anyway, I'm really posting this because of two reasons.

1. Somehow, nobody has posted about the lawyer cat from the pandemic. Did they all forget? Or not see that?

2. This paragraph: One of the interesting thing about the Inns of Court is that we have some early dance choreography and melody lines not found anywhere else, in a collection that was used there to teach the law students how to dance. Of course the choreography document predates Dickens by a couple of centuries...

Somebody needs to explain wtf is up with this because wtf.

Edit: No, I thought of a third thing, which I forgot because of the second thing.

3. When your kids are very little, every well-meaning person everywhere will tell you that it's all right for them to watch a little TV, just so long as you watch with them and discuss what you're watching, and ask them questions about it. Watch actively, and train them to do so. And it wasn't until the niblings were in middle school that I realized I wasn't actually doing that the way people keep saying - instead of talking about the plot and "what do you think happens next" my running commentary during TV shows and movies goes "Wow, that background music is awfully forboding for such an apparently hopeful scene" and "Ugh, he put a blanket over her, I guess they'll hook up now" and "That transition sure is cheesy!" and, once, "You think you'll be happy when you get to Omashu , but obviously not", which prompted the kids to ask why and I had to actually think about it. (Because they left the secret tunnel and then had to climb a mountain which blocked their view of the city while chatting about how amazing it'd be to get to the city. If everything was hunky-dory then there would've been no mountain, they would've emerged from the tunnel and seen the city right there.) I don't know if the way I did it was better or worse than what people kept saying to do, but it doesn't seem to have hurt the kids and their ability to pick up on foreshadowing!

Comments

[sovay]

I find myself wondering if they somehow weren't taught this skill at school. I well remember the worksheets!

That is fascinating to me because I don't believe I was taught how to construe from context with worksheets, I just read everything within reach and acquired the skill of necessity.

Somebody needs to explain wtf is up with this because wtf.

I am afraid I immediately looked it up.

[conuly]

Well, at least somebody looked it up, thanks!

[ethelmay]

I remember having a 1960s reading textbook around the house when I was growing up (I think it was a teacher's version that my mother had bought secondhand) that had little stories about kids reading for context clues - someone figuring out what "aileron" meant was one, and there was another about figuring out what it meant that a girl put on "her mother's old mules" to run outside, or something like that. (Apparently it was called Reading for Meaning: High Roads.)

[sovay]

little stories about kids reading for context clues - someone figuring out what "aileron" meant was one, and there was another about figuring out what it meant that a girl put on "her mother's old mules" to run outside, or something like that.

That's very neat.

[ethelmay]

It was more concrete instruction of that sort than I was getting in class, I am pretty sure. Though it's entirely possible that I paid no attention.

[conuly]

It's also possible that you just don't remember your lessons in elementary school that clearly. I cannot tell you how many times I've gotten into it with people who say, in all sincerity, that it only took a day or a week for their entire class to learn how to do long division (or multi-digit addition and subtraction, or multiplication and division of fractions, or how to do any arithmetic using negative numbers).

None of them have ever been able to tell me what the hell their class did for the other 39 weeks of the school year, not to mention the remaining few years before moving into prealgebra. It's like they remember exactly one math lesson and believe, therefore, it's the only one they ever had.

(I do remember, actually, that in 8th grade we seemed to spend a lot of time going over and over and over negative numbers. Our teacher was really big on cumulative review, but more than that, when I taught the niblings I discovered that they just could not internalize things like "If you start out with 5 - x, and then you subtract 5 from both sides, one side will be left with -x - not "just x"! We spent so much time going over the basic concept of "how to work with negative numbers". When they went to high school they each came back and reported to me, independently, that their classmates all really struggled and they were glad I'd spent so much time drilling them on that specific thing the year before. It turns out that for most students negative numbers are conceptually easy enough to grasp, but doing anything with them past putting them on a number line involves a major cognitive leap. If I remembered my 8th grade math teacher's name I might look her up to thank her! I did not appreciate her efforts nearly enough.)

[ethelmay]

Generally speaking I thought of myself as learning most things at home and very little at school, but I suspect I picked up more at school than I realized. But that seems to have been a fourth-grade textbook and I was reading it in first or second grade, so it isn't surprising or discreditable if they weren't teaching at that level in my classroom.

[spiralsheep]

I danced a branle (pronounced brawl) on New Year's Eve but I haven't done a French galliard for years because they're too fast for me these days. We did a copy-cat branle so everyone else in my set had to copy my floor-crossing move and I chose the Adam Ant's well-known voguing from Prine Charming. Very historic dancing, lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p__WmyAE3g

[sovay]

We did a copy-cat branle so everyone else in my set had to copy my floor-crossing move and I chose the Adam Ant's well-known voguing from Prine Charming. Very historic dancing, lol.

For one brief shining moment I thought you had linked me footage of you historically voguing! How did everyone else who had to follow your lead do?

(I can pronounce a branle, I just can't dance one.)

[spiralsheep]

No recording at New Year's! :D

Folk dancers are stylin' and everyone got a turn to lead across the floor so we all got our chances to shine. Our oldest dancer, who is extremely spry, pantomimed doddering across the room with a non-existent stick, some people did dainty steps and some people bopped. Nobody complained I'd given them 80s flashbacks, lol. A friend and I used to punk pogo and chest-bump the freestyle sections in partnered bourree, which was exhausting but fun (would've been better in cap n bells, obv).

[sovay]

Our oldest dancer, who is extremely spry, pantomimed doddering across the room with a non-existent stick, some people did dainty steps and some people bopped. Nobody complained I'd given them 80s flashbacks, lol.

Excellent.

[spiralsheep]

I like how by pantomiming doddering he was celebrating his luck while also making people acknowledge ageing as a reality, and he can communicate that in follow-the-leader movement when he would never say it in words. We were taught movement as expression at school and it was such a valuable lesson.

[cellio]

What fun!

Italian balli (15th-century dances) have a step called movimento, which is also very fast. Researchers are not entirely sure what it is, but the historical dancers I know have interpreted it as any sort of quick gesture, bounce, nod, etc. In dances like Petit Vriens where each dancer executes a set of steps in sequence, we sometimes get little action scenes or dialogue via gesture -- fun stuff!

[spiralsheep]

I don't know much about Italian historical dance but I love tarantella music. And some dance historians claim English Morris dancing is related to moresca. I'll have to watch some Petit Vriens videos. The French seem to favour toe-pointing as a fast move, but the English are known for bouncing inelegantly, lol.

[gatheringrivers]

I tend to look stuff up when I don't get a reference, but that's years of my dad telling me "Go look it up, you don't need me to answer that!" and pointing to the encyclopedias.

I never saw "lawyer cat" originally, but damn, that IS amusing! Thanks for sharing, I needed that giggle. :)

[conuly]

We all needed that giggle, during the worst part of the pandemic.

Also, your father paid good money for those encyclopedias, of course he wanted you to use them!

[gatheringrivers]

hahaha, that he did, but it never FELT like they were expensive when I was growing up. Back in the old days of "sure, let's take a vacation" and still have a job when you get back, lol.

[cactuswatcher]

Well, you can't 100% rely on "looking it up" or "using context."

I've been translating some Agatha Christie novels for my own amusement. I'm not exactly a kid anymore, and there are a very few words in the text, that I've seen many times in many places, but if you asked me to define them, I wouldn't come close because I don't use them actively. I've used the "in context" method in English so much that basically I ignore the word and only care about the context. That's fine if you are reading to get on with the plot and you don't need to care about some stray adjective. But when translating, yeah, I need to stop and think and probably look it up to be sure.

Why can't you rely on just looking it all up? Well, that's fine if you are looking up one word in a page or even as many as one in a paragraph. But studying Russian many times I'd have to look up three words in a sentence, and literally would forget the definition of the first word by the time I was looking up the third, particularly if every sentence on the page had three words I'd needed to look up! It gets to be a horrible grind. At some point even in a foreign language you have to use what you understand to help get through the parts you don't, or you'll just give up.

[conuly]

Well, you can't 100% rely on "looking it up" or "using context."

Definitely not! And I'm reasonably sure that all the "looking it up" people can rely on context at least a little because if you can't you could never learn how to talk.

But sometimes context just isn't enough. Like that time fantasy writers all learned the word "lambent" and started applying it, of all things, to eyes.

(It means "flickering or gleaming, like a candle". But if you don't set that up properly in the text I guarantee your readers will all think you're talking about sheep.)

[cellio]

I read a lot as a kid and had a father who actively encouraged curiosity and learning. We had a good dictionary and an encyclopedia (this was way before home computing and the Internet), but we also had conversations. I think I learned to work things out from context in the home (definitely not in school), and sort of settled into a middle ground of "work it out from context; if I can't and it seems important enough to interrupt what I'm doing, go look it up".

What's the question about Inns of Court? I've seen some of those sources and have danced and/or played music for some of the dances.

[conuly]

Dancing, why? Seriously, why?

That's the question.

[spiralsheep]

But why wouldn't young men want to dance together? It's normal. And good practice for dancing with girls. Of course most boys want to learn to dance. Not dancing is culturally exceptional and usually a state inflicted by authoritarian control, such as religion or (anti-)social segregation.

[conuly]

Yes, that’s fine. What’s strange is storing your dancing instruction notes at your law school for several centuries.

[spiralsheep]

An artefact of the Inns of Court keeping all written precedents, lol, or more likely merely that they had the space so why turn anything out (which is why unused rooms in older buildings are often crammed with historic artifacts - it takes more effort to throw them away).

[cellio]

In terms of "why learn to do it?", this was part of "cultured society" at the time, like table manners are (or at least were) in our time. We ordinary folks just learn this stuff as we go, but just like hoity-toity rich kids get tutors and special instruction, these lawyers were of a class that was trying to operate in higher-class circles, so it makes sense that there would be some manuals or instruction. Plus maybe it helps them pick up girls?

In terms of "why does a law school have these documents?", I have the impression that they were packrats and dance was not particularly special when it came to preservation priorities. But I haven't researched what else is in that stash; I came at this as a musician and dancer, not a law-school-history researcher.

[siderea]

From Dances From The Inns Of Court by Peter and Janelle Durham:

Throughout this work, we will be examining a suite of dances known as the Old Measures, which were taught and danced in England between the times of Elizabeth I and Charles II. To help gain a more thorough understanding of these dances and their social context, we will examine their role within the Inns of Court in London. Surviving manuscripts from this period provide us with information about dancing within this culture of upper-class gentlemen, in an environment bound by tradition. These sources indicate a knowledge of dances such as branles and galliards which are detailed in French and Italian manuals of the period, providing verification of the widespread knowledge of these dances. And, more interestingly, they provide detailed choreographies of a set of eight English measures which were danced for a period of over 100 years.

[...]

Social Context

The Inns of Court are four groups of buildings in London (Gray's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, Middle Temple, and Inner Temple) where English trial lawyers lived, studied, taught, and held court. In 1574, there were 769 members of the Inns; by the end of the 16(th) century, the membership had risen to 1040 men.(19)

Gerard Legh, in 1562, presented this image of the Inns: `A place priviliged by the most excellent princes' wherein are the store of gentlemen of the whole realm, that repair thither to learn to rule, and obey by law, to yield their fleece to their prince and commonwealth: as also to use all other exercises of body and mind whereunto nature most aptly serveth to adorn by speaking, countenance, gesture, and use of apparel, the person of a gentleman. Whereby amity is obtained and continued, that gentlemen of all countries in their young years, nourished together in one place, with such comely order and daily conference, are knit by continual acquaintance in such unity of minds and manners as lightly never after is severed, than which is nothing more profitable to the common weal.'(20)
Study of Law

Young men from throughout England gathered at the Inns to study law. There were no professional teachers; the Utter Barristers were qualified, active practitioners who used their chambers as law offices, and whose duties included teaching younger members of the Inns. Students also attended courts at Parliament, and participated in moots (mock trials) and bolting (debates).

Although records indicate that some wealthy merchants were able to send their sons to the Inns, the majority of students were sons of the landed gentry. The average age at admission was 17, and 70% of the membership was between 17 and 30. About half of the students had previously attended University at either Oxford or Cambridge.(21) Students began as Inner Barristers. After 7 years, they could be confirmed as an Utter Barrister, or qualified member of the Bar. The benchers, or governing members of the Inns, were chosen from the Utter Barristers. Readers, who lectured formally during the intervals between legal terms, were also chosen from the Utter Barrister.

The majority of the gentlemen who attended the Inns apparently did not intend to pursue a legal career. During the last 30 years of the 16(th) century, only 15% of students pursued studies long enough to be admitted to the bar.(22) For the rest, as indicated by Legh, the Inns served as a sort of `finishing school'. They were a place for noblemen to meet and mingle with their peers from throughout the country, to take advantage of the opportunities found in London, and to acquire some knowledge of a variety of useful subjects.(23)

Place of Dancing

Within this culture of educated, upper-class gentlemen, knowledge of dancing was considered an important skill, and was pursued along with education in law. Circa 1470, a member of Lincoln's Inn described the opportunity at the Inns of Court, to `beside the study of laws as is were an university or schoole of all commendable qualities requisite for gentlemen of quality. There the learn to sing, and to exercise' and also they practise dauncing and other noblemen's pastimes as they use to doe which are brought up in the King's house'.(24) During the Christmas revels of 1584, members of Lincoln's Inn were instructed to `carry yourselves courtiously' shewing yourselves forward and able to lead a measure in peace as a march in wars.'(25) In 1631, a Middle Temple bencher stated: `The measures were wont to be trulie danced, it being accounted a shame for any inns of court man not to have learned to dance, especially the measures'.(26) In 1666, Sir William Dugdale wrote: `Nor were these Exercises of Dancing merely permitted; but thought very necessary (as it seems) and much conducing to the making of gentlemen more fit for their Books at other times'.(27)

Study of Dancing

However, the Inns themselves did not provide any instruction outside of common law. Members who wished to learn fencing, music, and dance attended special academies or hired private tutors.(28)

Evidence of this can be found in contemporary records. John Petre joined Currance's dancing school in April 1568 during his 3(rd) term at the Middle Temple, and also purchased daggers and foils. In 1586, George Manners wrote from the Inner Temple, `for exercises' I use the dancing scole, tenise, runing, and leapinge and such like in the fields.' William Fitzwilliam, admitted to Gray's Inn in 1594, paid 20 shillings a month to Rowland, a London dancemaster. This price was almost as much as he paid for a month's commons (meals). He also studied singing and fencing. In the 1620's, another Middle Templar paid only 6 shillings a month for viol lessons, but paid fifteen shillings for entrance fees and tips alone at a dancing school. Simonds D'Ewes was admitted to both fencing and dancing schools. John Hutchinson of Lincoln's Inn, hired tutors for dancing, fencing, and music. In 1635, John Green of Lincoln's Inn, noted that he and three colleagues attended dancing school.(29)

There were several professional dancemasters in London at the time, so many that in the 1560s, the mayor and aldermen felt the need to limit their numbers, and ordered several to cease instruction. In 1574, the Crown granted three dancing masters a monopoly within London.Ward (1993) discusses these instructors in more detail. The Old Measures manuscripts also name two dancemasters, Robert Holeman (RCM), and Rowland Osborne (RD).

Revels at the Inns

Members had a chance to practice their dancing at revels held throughout the winter. Throughout this time period, it was customary to hold revels with `dancing, dicing, and gaming' in the society's hall every Saturday between All Saint's Eve (October 31(st) and Candlemas (February 2(nd). According to Prynne, festivities usually lasted till midnight and sometimes until four in the morning.(30)

It's clear that dancing was not the only pastime at Revels. In January of 1661, `According to costome, his Majesty opened the revells of that night, by throwing the dice himselfe in the privy chamber, where was a table set on purpose, and lost his 100£ (the year before, he won 1500£) The ladies also plaid very deepe' Sorry I am that such a wretched costome as play to that excesse should be countenanced in a court which ought to be an example of virtue to the rest of the kingdom'.(31)

Documentation survives detailing the festivities and pageantry of the grandest of the Christmas Revels. The most detailed account is of the Gray's Inn Christmas celebration in 1594; this was after a period of several years in which Christmas Revels had not been held because of the Plague. The Prince of Purpoole was chosen on December 12(th); he selected a court of mock royalty, which remained in place throughout the Christmas season. On the First Grand Night, `his Highness [the Prince of Purpoole] called for the Master of Revels, and willed him to pass the time in dancing: so his gentlemen-pensioners and attendants, very gallantly appointed, in thirty couples, danced the old measures, and then galliards, and other kinds of dances, revelling until it was very late.' The other evenings of the Christmas revels were filled with masques, additional dancing, feasts, and festivities. The funds for all this were raised from old members of Gray's Inn, and friends. The text for the events' ceremonies includes the names of 90 participants, designates parts for 40 others, and numerous extras. Whether by decree or choice, almost every member of the Inn participated.(32)

During the Christmas season of 1635, John Greene of Lincoln's Inn, described the festivities in his diary.(33) On October 31, All Saint's Eve: We had fire in the hall, noe gameing, noe revells. We had musicke and mirth and solace and the measures.' On November 1, All Saint's Day: the `solemn revels' were performed, `solace was song and measures danst.' On Saturday, November 7: `We had revells.' On Saturday, November 21, he again watched the revels. On Saturday, December 4, `after supper wee had noe mirth and solace, but Mr. Chamber and 4 couples danst the mesaure.'

Dance by Choice or Dance because of Tradition?

Several references to dance at the Inns of Court seem to imply that dance was quite popular and enjoyed by many. At the Middle Temple in Christmas 1628, `they began with the old masques [measures]; after that they danced the Brautes and then the master took his seat whilst the revellers flaunted through galliards, corantoes, French and country dances, till it grew very late'.(34) However, there are a few references which indicate that dance may have been mandatory, and that punishments were meted out against those who did not wish to participate.

`In Michaelmas term, 21 Henry VIII (i.e. 1530), order made that all the fellows of Gray's Inn, who should be present upon any Saturday at supper, betwixt the feasts of all Saints and the Purification of our Lady; or upon any other day, at dinner or supper, when there are revels, should not depart out of the hall until the said revels were ended, upon the penalty of 12 d'.(35)

In 1610, `the Under Barristers were by Decimation put out of Commons, for examples sake, because the whole Bar offended by not dancing on Candlemas day preceding, according to the antient Order of the Society, when the Judges were present: with this, that if the like fault were committed afterwards, they should be fined or disbarred'.(36)

Ward (1993) posits that the Old Measures were ritual dances that all members were required (or expected) to participate in, and the post revels were for those who enjoyed recreational dancing and were skilled at it.

This might seem incongruous to you, but in the 16th century, they didn't have TV and they didn't have video games. Dancing was a wildly popular entertainment, at all social class levels.

Additionally, it is in the late 15th and the 16th century that dance really starts becoming a way of performing membership in the aristocracy. Everybody danced, but aristocrats had the free time and discretionary income to formally study fancier forms. Being a competent dancer at the styles of dance done in court became a really important class shibboleth to the upper classes.

This is where the dance manuals come in: this was the Renaissance, the age of a rising merchant class, flush with wealth but untitled. If they wanted to break into high society, they (or their sons or daughters hoping to marry well) had to act the part. Which means they had to know how to dance courtly dances, and be skillful at it. I mean, really had to.

These books were cheat sheets and textbooks. Some, that inform reconstructing the Inns of Court notes, were instruction book swritten by dance instructors looking to capitalize (literally) on the cutting edge of technology – the printing press – to maximize their reach as lifestyle influencers. The actual Inns of Court dance manuscripts are

not formal works, like the dance manuals of the contemporary dancemasters such as Caroso, Negri, and Arbeau. They do not contain descriptions of steps, of dance etiquette, or other details. Instead, they are simply notes found in the personal documents of people associated with the Inns, containing only brief listings of the steps composing each dance. Most appear to be `crib sheets', written down to aid in remembering dances the author has learned.

I'm not surprised a law school largely being treated as a finishing school for aristocrat-class young men would have some around, especially for the social climbers in their midst who weren't so fortunate to be taught these dances from when they first started to walk.

I would be remiss if I didn't include some examples:

Old Alman:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-GA3ZYBMwI

Queen's Alman:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYtgvDQljYA

Madam Sosilia's (Cecilia) Alman (music only):
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5X9m2Z59vU

Black Alman:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq4VCGxUXWA
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_9TnuUGDjU

[conuly]

Thank you for the youtube links :)

*reads with interest*

[minoanmiss]

I remember discussions of words and context, though not written material about it. We discussed that a lot with _Watership Down_, because the book teaches one a conlang as well as being written in unsimplified English.

Re: *reads with interest*

[full_metal_ox]

“Silflay hraka” loses something of its pungency once you learn that that’s something rabbits actually do.

[gwydion]

I have always mostly used either context cues or defaulted off of things I already knew, like similar words or words from other languages.

Sometimes you can't though. Every pride I come across flags with identity labels I don't know because they are rare or new. I look them up because that is something I never want to screw up because I could hurt somebody.

Re: watching TV as a family. I was always asking what jokes meant if I didn't get them (We always waited for commercial to talk). It was the '70's so it was usually drugs, politics, or cultural references from before I was born. Or kink. Sometimes it was kink. (Picture my dad explaining foot fetishes to a ten year old). We also discussed things, like themes, symbolism, and biases a lot. Sometimes we analyzed commercials....

We were like that with books, movies, anything really in my house. I remember a long conversation with my mom as a tween about faux feminism in the Betty Davis movie we just watched, for example. Or that time I got Fountainhead out of the library at thirteen with no clue who Ayn rand was. I had a lot of stuff I wanted to discuss, because I saw problems I couldn't articulate and needed help processing.

It was all part of one thing for us, I think.

I also remember going to movies with my lovers in high school and doing what you were doing quietly in movies. It was so easy for me to predict stuff on context cues, narrative logic and the two of them would be like "How do you DO that." It was so obvious it was hard to explain. We'd been discex=ction media for fun my whole life.

[ethelmay]

I used to ask about everything in Tom Lehrer records. My dad bravely answered "What's a necrophiliac?" with "Someone who falls in love with dead bodies."

[gwydion]

Same! I remembering him having to explain masochism tango to 8 or nine year old me.

[siliconshaman]

I don't think I was ever taught how to read, beyond the basics of Janet & john... I kind of just grabbed the ball and ran with it (see Spot run! Run Spot, run!) and raced ahead of formal 'teaching'... mostly picking stuff up from context but with a dictionary to hand for the chewier words.

[sabotabby]

I try to teach the kids reading from context! But also, we have such a range of ability even in my small class. So I have the ELL kids running everything through a translator, autistic kids who get frustrated if they have to read in a way different than they're used to, low-level readers who hit barriers with nearly every word, university-bound kids who just want to run everything through ChatGPT and don't get why they should have to read a book, etc. Granted, most aren't becoming English majors.

That said, while inference skills were hot about a decade ago, there's not a lot that I've encountered on how to teach reading for context. And nothing in the curriculum now. Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

[glaurung]

The "they don't read very well" paper is an appallingly poorly designed study on at least two levels.

1. I am in their top 5% of readers, and I would have struggled and been incredibly frustrated if someone asked me to read the beginning of a Dickens novel one sentence at a time, explaining each sentence as I go along. That's not how novels work, especially 170 year old Dickens novels - you CAN'T read them sentence by sentence and expect to have any clue what's going on. They are designed to be read and understood on a larger scale than that. Reading a whole paragraph and then going back and analyzing it sentence by sentence, sure. But that's not what their moderators asked of the study participants.

2. Making generalized judgements about the reading skill of Americans who struggled with 170 year old British prose is confounding two very different things - their actual reading skill, and their ability to handle not just archaic prose style, not just foreign terminology and vocabulary, but also historical references from a distant era they're unfamiliar with (being English, not history, majors). This is the worst kind of bigoted, classist, prior knowledge based intelligence testing, and the authors of the paper should be fucking ashamed of themselves.

Not sure if this merits being a third point:
41 percent of their participants were "English education" majors, not traditional English literature majors. Which means they were interested in learning how to teach children how to read, not in reading and analyzing 19th century English novels. That they did not break those people out and report on whether or not the education majors differed from the literature majors in their ability to understand the opening of Bleak House makes me raise my eyebrows quite a bit.

That said, I am unsurprised that a lot of the students struggled with the passage. It's dense, even for Dickens, and primary schools turn out tons of students each year who have never really learned to read well. Some of those students are going to end up as English majors, despite the poor fit, because they don't actually love books or reading/learning, they are just obtaining a degree credential that they need in order to pursue their chosen career in which they will never need to know how to read and enjoy any novel, let alone a 170 year old British novel. (that there are school teachers out there teaching children to read, who don't themselves love reading and learning, is a huge problem, but that's getting way beyond the question of "can English majors read")

[conuly]

It’s worth noting, too, that before college these students scored on average in the 60%ile on the ACT. We might argue about how meaningful that really is, but 75 years ago most of them would not have attended college at all, and 50 years before that many would not have graduated or even gone to high school.

One obvious consequence of expanding access to higher education that everybody always acts shocked by is that you’re going to have a harder time comparing students of today with students of way back when.

[amado1]

I might have simply missed it, but I was wondering also ... what kind of instruction did they give the tested students? Did the subjects *know* that they were expected to rephrase every sentence in as much detail as possible? Some of the examples made me think, "This kid probably knows exactly what this sentence is; she just doesn't think it's necessary or wanted for her to break it down all the way." I think even if they did tell students, "Use as much detail as possible," it's not likely the students understood HOW MUCH detail was needed unless an example was provided for them, maybe using a different text like Moby Dick and having the facilitator demonstrate the type of translation expected for a high mark.

I don't think giving such an example would have skewed test results. I got the impression there was a disconnect, in some cases, between what the professors considered a good reading and what the students considered a sufficient answer; the students are working with 12+ years of education where rambling at length in your answer is generally frowned upon, after all. They might assume that the facilitators want them to keep it brief, even when the facilitator says otherwise.

This next part isn't necessarily in response to you, just in general:

I do understand the professors' frustration, though. I was taking a class this past spring on Elizabethan Poetry, and there came a time, after a few assignments, where the prof had to stop and recalibrate. We spent a class period going over the parts of speech together -- what's a verb, what's a noun, how do clauses work -- and we analyzed a sonnet together as well. I was a little unnerved to see how little my classmates understood from a very simple poem.

[glaurung]

After writing a post about this study on my own blog and sleeping on it, I've come to the conclusion that the authors chose the most difficult passage they could find from a famous canon author. They already knew what conclusions they wanted to draw with their so called "study" and they rigged the game to make sure that as many students as possible would do poorly.

So not just incompetently designed: malevolent.

That the study is evil crap and its conclusions (especially the proportion of poor readers to skilled readers in 3rd/4th year English classes) cannot be trusted does not impact on the undeniable fact that lots of university students with high GPAs are ill prepared to handle the kind of reading that one is expected to do in liberal arts classes. This is the inevitable result of decades of teaching to the test in K-12 schools, plus the credentialism that has caused vast numbers of young people to go to college because they know they need a degree to get a job at all, regardless of whether or not they have the skills required to do well in a university setting (all this to get jobs that their grandparents would have been able to get with a high school diploma, and which do not demand any of the skills one obtains with a four year degree).

[amado1]

Yeah, we’ve pushed college to such a degree that everyone in upper education has to deal with this! Professors are faced with students who wouldn’t have gotten into the program at all ~40 years ago; students who CAN handle a college-level course aren’t given the full experience because the majority of their classmates can’t, and the prof has to adjust accordingly; students who might enjoy certain classes are unable to because it’s taught above their level, and they aren’t prepared, so they resort to apathy and cheating, just trying to get through.

I don’t have data to support this, but I had a sneaking suspicion that the 4 proficient readers may all be male. The example given of a proficient response struck me as a very “male” answer — in general I’ve noticed that female students tend to censor themselves and keep everything brief when responding verbally in class, while male students have the confidence to expound at length and never worry that they’re annoying the teacher or going too far. Not sure if sexism played a part here; not necessarily in the test itself, but the way the subjects were raised, how they’ve been taught to behave in academia. wouldn’t be surprised.

Side note: I’m confident that I’m in the proficient reader category, but I KNOW I wouldn’t score well on this test, for a variety of reasons! (I’m sure EVERYONE thinks they’d be proficient, and you have no reason to trust my self-analysis lmao). But the thing that stuck out to me the most is the focus on looking up and thoroughly understanding Lord High Chancellor, Lincoln Inn Hall, and the Court of Chancery. If it were me, I might look up those terms briefly during a test like this, but I certainly wouldn’t waste my 20 minutes researching them in-depth enough to understand what the Court of Chancery was, which seems to be the expectation here. I would think, “This is Line 1, and that means it’s pretty damn important to the book as a whole. I can definitely keep reading and pick up what the significance is through context.” By the end of 7 paragraphs, I’d know that this was a legal situation, but not precisely what chancery entails, and that might knock me down into “competent” or even “problematic.” But if you read the whole book, or even one chapter, you know!

[watervole]

" One of the interesting thing about the Inns of Court is that we have some early dance choreography and melody lines not found anywhere else, in a collection that was used there to teach the law students how to dance. Of course the choreography document predates Dickens by a couple of centuries..."

I actually do make reasonable sense of that. But then I have an interest in historical dance, and know from somewhere or other that the Inns of Court are to do with barristers.

There was a long period in history where most young men of quality would be expected to learn to dance well. Think Georgette Heyer, Jane Austen, etc. But not only the Regency era would expect this. The Tudors danced too.

I dislike Dickens, but I would not be in the least surprised to find balls/public dances featuring somewhere in his novels.

There are choreographic records of many historical dances - Playford and other dance masters taught all those young men, and wrote detailed instructions.

I've danced some Playford myself and also a 16th century sword dance.

I seem to recall that masques were often held at the Inns of Court, (Yep, Google backs up that random memory - "In the early 17th century, the Inns of Court (professional organizations for the legal profession) in London frequently sponsored elaborate theatrical performances called masques. These masques were extravagant entertainments, often featuring choreographed dancing, singing, and elaborate costumes. The Inns of Court, including Inner Temple, Gray's Inn, Middle Temple, and Lincoln's Inn, would stage these masques in the Great Hall of Whitehall Palace or at the Inns themselves.")

Records survive of some of them.

[full_metal_ox]

…my running commentary during TV shows and movies goes "Wow, that background music is awfully forboding for such an apparently hopeful scene"



(Image description: a Far Side cartoon from 27 January 1992, portraying the interior of a stereotypical old-time Wild West saloon, with cowboys gathered at the bar and another at a table. A glowering man in black, one-eyed, scarred, and stubble-faced, pauses outside the swinging front doors, noticed by the bartender and the musicians—prompting the banjo player to warn the piano player, “Bad guy comin’ in, Arnie!…Minor key!”)

[shadowkat]

There's a lot of potential ways to divide the commenters into two groups, but the one I expected the most was "people who think the correct way to deal with unfamiliar references in literature is to immediately look it up" and "people who think the first group needs to learn to use context clues already".

I'm also in the second group and rarely look things up unless absolutely necessary. I think it's a result of being dyslexic and I learned to read by figuring out what things meant in context. I do it with oral or verbal discourse as well - since I tend to mishear things. Particularly with music. Example? Flashdance - "take your passion" sounds like "take your pants off to me" - so I had to figure it out by context.

It's how I think. So I don't understand people who can't think contextually. I've noticed that thinking and reading contextually works really well with science fiction and fantasy, people who don't think or read that way - seem to struggle more with fantasy and science fiction.

Also, as an aside, the lawyer cat never fails to amuse me. Talk about a problematic filter. Now if only I could make all representations of the thing in the White House appear as kittens or cats...