Page 154 - Šolsko polje, XXX, 2019, št. 5-6: Civic, citizenship and rhetorical education in a rapidly changing world, eds. Janja Žmavc and Plamen Mirazchiyski
P. 154
šolsko polje, letnik xxx, številka 5–6
leading questions were not as clear and transparent as we thought they
were; maybe for philosophers, but not for the kids in primary school. So,
what we are doing now in refreshing the syllabus is making these leading
questions clearer and as unambiguous as possible:
Claim (C) Janez is a Slovenian citizen.
(How can you support this claim?)
With what can you support …
Datum (D) Janez was born in Slovenia.
(Why do you think this datum/
argument can act as a support
for this claim?)
Warrant (W) People born in Slovenia will generally by Slovenian
citizens.
b) the activities intended to achieve these goals demanded sitting
down, reading the examples and analysing them, while pupils nowadays –
as one of the teachers who have been teaching rhetoric for the last 15 years
can comment – “don’t like to read and write that much anymore”. And
that is the basic problem with almost all the activities that did not work:
the need to read, to analyse/assess/think about what was read and write
down the conclusions/impressions. Kids, pupils, even students just do not
want to read and write anymore. Which is the major problem for future
education, closely connected to the spread of digital devices in schools.
Reading and Writing as a Problem
(In Contemporary Education)
Every year – and I have been teaching rhetoric at the university level for
almost 20 years –, I start my lectures by asking the students (young people
around 20 years of age): Do you read? What do you read?
In the beginning, around 2000, very few students reported read-
ing books, some of them were occasionally reading newspapers and mag-
azines, most of them were watching TV. In the course of years that fol-
lowed, books were the first to disappear from their reading horizon, soon
after that newspapers and magazines followed, and in the last 3 or 4 years
even TV. And when I ask them nowadays, “So, what do you read? Where
do you get your information from?”, they reply: “Oh, from time to time,
we look things up on the internet.”
From time to time they look things up on the internet … And thus,
we are slowly but definitely moving from a “read and write” to the “browse
and swipe” civilisation.
152
leading questions were not as clear and transparent as we thought they
were; maybe for philosophers, but not for the kids in primary school. So,
what we are doing now in refreshing the syllabus is making these leading
questions clearer and as unambiguous as possible:
Claim (C) Janez is a Slovenian citizen.
(How can you support this claim?)
With what can you support …
Datum (D) Janez was born in Slovenia.
(Why do you think this datum/
argument can act as a support
for this claim?)
Warrant (W) People born in Slovenia will generally by Slovenian
citizens.
b) the activities intended to achieve these goals demanded sitting
down, reading the examples and analysing them, while pupils nowadays –
as one of the teachers who have been teaching rhetoric for the last 15 years
can comment – “don’t like to read and write that much anymore”. And
that is the basic problem with almost all the activities that did not work:
the need to read, to analyse/assess/think about what was read and write
down the conclusions/impressions. Kids, pupils, even students just do not
want to read and write anymore. Which is the major problem for future
education, closely connected to the spread of digital devices in schools.
Reading and Writing as a Problem
(In Contemporary Education)
Every year – and I have been teaching rhetoric at the university level for
almost 20 years –, I start my lectures by asking the students (young people
around 20 years of age): Do you read? What do you read?
In the beginning, around 2000, very few students reported read-
ing books, some of them were occasionally reading newspapers and mag-
azines, most of them were watching TV. In the course of years that fol-
lowed, books were the first to disappear from their reading horizon, soon
after that newspapers and magazines followed, and in the last 3 or 4 years
even TV. And when I ask them nowadays, “So, what do you read? Where
do you get your information from?”, they reply: “Oh, from time to time,
we look things up on the internet.”
From time to time they look things up on the internet … And thus,
we are slowly but definitely moving from a “read and write” to the “browse
and swipe” civilisation.
152
