Response #1 for Dr. Pytash-- Classics in the Classroom Chapter 1

Upon reading chapter 1 of Carol Jago's Classics in the Classroom, I was left very troubled. One of the statistics provided on page 9 stated that the "lowest-performing twelfth graders have vocabularies about equal to high-knowledge third graders." Particularly, this fact scared me the most. From the message of this chapter, I feel that it is safe to say that a cause of this statistic is that high school students are not reading enough rich literary texts to develop sophisticated vocabularies. Therefore, this stands as a testament for the first principle listed by Jago, which simply stated, "Students must read."

As this stands as a staple for English education in America, I was even more disturbed by something I heard in Dr. Kist's class today. A teacher from Bosnia was visiting during our class, and when asked about the types of texts she is teaching in her classroom, she explained that the teaching of reading and literature in high schools in Bosnia is not a common practice. Upon hearing that, I was shocked. I couldn't begin to imagine English education without reading literature. This troubles me because without reading rich texts, students' vocabularies tend to suffer, as Jago pointed out in the quote I listed above. Therefore, through this classroom experience and through reading this chapter, I am scared to realize that the issue of inadequate teaching of literature is not only apparent in the United States, but it is a world-wide issue.