PC051
The Conqueror (Newport Beach, CA: Newport
Christian Schools) I:2 Covenant Media Foundation, 800/553-3938
Learning How to Read in High School
Fear of failure is the educational
equivalent of the FBI’s “public enemy number 1). When a student becomes afraid that he or she will fail a course –
not merely concerned enough to motivate diligent work, but absorbed with dread
over the mark which will appear on a report-card – then the student stops
paying attention to the content and purpose of the course and focuses attention
on formalities like “how many points do I need to gain in order to pass this
test?” At that point, getting a true,
maturing, intellectually stimulating, and personally enriching education has been replaced with simply getting by.
How can
parents and teachers help students to overcome fear of failure? There are
things that can be done. There is no
need to throw our hands up in despair, imagining that it is somehow a
fortuitous matter of “chance” (fate, luck) that some students do well and
others do poorly in schoolwork. Every student of normal ability (i.e.,
every student who is free of physical handicaps such as retardation, eye-motor
disorders, etc.) can do well in schoolwork.
As blunt or even as harsh as it may seem at first, we will eventually
have to face up to the grim truth that there is no such thing as a (normal)
student who cannot do passing
work. There are simply some students
who will not (choose not) to do
passing work. Now they may very well desire
to have at the outcome of the course a passing mark. They want that end –
BUT without being willing to pursue the
means to that end.
The age in
which people commonly believed in magic has not passed. It has simply taken on a more sophisticated
front. Parents and teachers who believe
that (or operate as though) the difference between successful and unsuccessful
students is a mystery beyond our control assign good schoolwork, in effect, to
magic or chance – beyond any cause-effect explanation. Students who want a passing grade at the end
of the course, but who ignore or refuse the means to that end, are hoping for a
magical deliverance. We live in a
universe where events (effects) have their corresponding causes. There are appropriate causes of good
performance in school. This is bad news
and good news. The bad news is that
students who fail cannot “cop-out” and blame their failure on something beyond
their control. The good news is that something can indeed be done to improve a
student’s work in school. There is hope because there exist proven methods
of achieving success as a student.
One of
those methods was touched upon in my last article. The first rule to be observed is that students must not fall
behind in their work – tuning out during a lecture, during a reading
assignment, failing to ask for help when something is unclear, failing to
complete homework – and then expect to understand later portions of the course
work. As I said, we cannot “leave things
behind at the Ramada Inn.” We will
eventually have to go back and pick up what as omitted, and so the sooner we do
so, the better. Students must keep
abreast of the course in listening, understanding, reading, and completing
homework.
A second
rule to be observed for achieving success in school is that students must learn how to read. A shocking suggestion, perhaps, because the
assumption commonly held is that high school students already know how to read.
But that is held because we erroneously think that reading is merely a
matter of knowing how to sound out words, recognize punctuation, and understand
basic vocabulary. That is, we are often
satisfied simply with the mechanics
of reading – getting the encoded message on the page through the eyeballs, into
the (reasonably alert) brain. I do not
doubt that most (if not all) high school students at Newport Christian can do
this. Reading mechanics – the basics –
have been mastered. But reading has
not.
Once the
basics have been learned, students need to learn how to tackle a reading assignment
in such a way that they understand its meaning, point, and structure. They need to master skills of comprehension
and retention. In a word, they need to
learn how to analyze and interpret – not simply translate – the message encoded
on the page(s) of their assignment.
Let me
suggest a proven method of reading.
Never plan to read an assignment only once; good readers will read at
least twice and usually three times.
The first time through should
be a quick and casual reading to familiarize yourself with the material and
find out the main point(s) the author intended to communicate. The second
time through you should take notes for yourself, attempting to outline
(roughly) the material presented so that the way in which the author gets to
his conclusion is made clear; also write out important lists which may appear
in the reading, along with key sentences which express important insights or
necessary declarations (as far as the author is concerned).
Only after
these two steps have been accomplished should you go through the assignment
again the third time and underline
(or highlight) the words, phrases, or sentences which will help you to review
and recall the material later. Keep
these underlinings to a minimum, for too many such markings will simply force
you later to reread most of the assignment again – which defeats the purpose of
underlining. By the time these three
steps have been completed, the reading assignment will be clearly recorded in
the mind.
The reading
notes along with underlinings will facilitate quick and effective review of the
material, which should be accomplished once a week until the end of the
term. This method of reading may appear
to consume more time initially than the less rigorous style practiced by most
students, but in the long run it saves not only time (for instance, rereading
the entire assignment every time a quiz is possible) but also emotional energy
which is lost over the fear of failure at exam time.