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"Holden won over the young, especially the 1960s generation who saw themselves in the disaffected preppy, according to the cultural critic Morris Dickstein. "The skepticism, the belief in the purity of the soul against the tawdry, trashy culture plays very well in the counterculture and post-counterculture generation," said Mr. Dickstein, who teaches at the Graduate Center of the University of the City of New York. Today, "I wouldn't say we have a more gullible youth culture, but it may be more of a joining or togetherness culture." The culture is also more competitive. These days, teenagers seem more interested in getting into Harvard than in flunking out of Pencey Prep. Young people, with their compulsive text-messaging and hyperactive pop culture metabolism, are more enchanted by wide-eyed, quidditch-playing Harry Potter of Hogwarts than by the smirking manager of Pencey's fencing team (who was lame enough to lose the team's equipment on the subway, after all). Today's pop culture heroes, it seems, are the nerds who conquer the world - like Harry - not the beautiful losers who reject it."

"Language merely reflects our way of trying to make sense of the world. - Frank Smith Frank Smith (1982) says 'writing touches every part of our lives'. One of the first reasons we write is because it is a tool for communication in culture. It gives us the ability the share information over time and space with multiple individuals (explaining, recounting & opinion). It can also be used as a permanent record or as a statement e.g. in history, geography  & science genres. The third cultural aspect for writing is artistry (narrative and poetry). Finally, there is also the personal aspect to writing. Writing allows us all to reflect, express our perceptions of self, to socially dream or to be critical (memoir). By writing, we find out what we know; what we think. Ultimately though, writing is a means for us to express ourselves in the world, make sense of the world or impose ourselves upon it. The question now is why do children write at school? For these purposes? - Not often. There is a massive discrepancy between the writing done in the real-world and that of the classroom. Donald Graves says 'all children want to write'. It is just a case of allowing them to write about the things they are interested in. As Frank Smith says, 'all children can write if they can speak it.' If they can talk about it, they can write it down. The transmission of narrow decontextualized writing skills; that English is just a formal system to be learnt. The insistence on task-orientated writing. The insistence on teacher-chosen writing tasks. The insistence on the use of external stimulus (literature units, film-clips, topic-writing) at the expense of children's knowledge, interests, loves, talents and idiosyncrasies. The formal rather than functional teaching of grammar. These examples embody the 'commonsense' assumptions which claim an authority which is supposedly natural and unshakable. Writing in classrooms at present isn't seen by children as important

"This collection offers middle and high school teachers multiple ways into the idea of "creating a culture of argument" in their classrooms. In other words, it offers advice and support for why it is important to give students many opportunities to practice argument writing, and lots of practical and material support for how to do that."

"What can teachers learn from the workplace culture of companies like Google? A new paper suggests that one way to improve students' happiness and performance is to revamp the classroom to look more like one of the United States' top companies.  Heather Staker, an adjunct researcher for the Christensen Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that focuses on innovation, authored a white paper that gives teachers a guide to creating higher-performing, happier classrooms in seven steps. The 81-page "playbook for teachers" includes three case studies-a mixed-income public school, a low-income charter school, and an independent affluent school-that show how teachers from all backgrounds and of all grade levels can make their classrooms look more like the highest-ranked workplaces."

Melissa Mongi, did you write this? "The secret is improv games. I call them warm-ups and play them once a week at the beginning of class. Many students tell me that warm-ups are the best part of their day."

"The upshot for schools is clear: honor codes work, Ariely said, provided that students write them out and talk about them. Codes signed at the start of the year and tucked away in an administrator's office will flop, however; the same holds true for one-off lectures on moral behavior. To reduce cheating, the honor codes need to be woven into the school's culture, a recurrent nudge that honesty matters. Now closing in on the end of the school year, Tammi is hopeful that students at Fieldston will grow to see the new academic integrity board as educational rather than disciplinary, and will come to welcome the restorative justice philosophy that serves as its foundation. "Being academically honest helps them," Tammi said. To say nothing of the rest of us. "Every time we cheat, we break a little bit of trust in society," Ariely said."

"At EL Education, we believe that this is best done consciously and intentionally. We are unafraid to say that teachers and schools shape student character. We specify what we believe they should work towards: students who are not just effective learners, but also ethical people, and active contributors to a better world. We believe that this is supported when educators elevate student voice and leadership and model a schoolwide culture of respect, compassion, honesty, integrity, and kindness. In times of crisis, small-scale or large, this also means modeling courage in standing up for those values, and standing against racism, injustice, acts of hate, and the undermining of public education. One unheralded but powerful possibility is this: giving students real material to engage with and supporting them to do work that matters to them. This is what helps students become ethical adults who contribute to a better world. In EL Education schools, this deeper learning is the daily fare of classrooms. And, it's what empowers them to engage in civil debate. If students are fearful about what may happen to them or their loved ones, we can help them research what has actually been said or proposed, and what is possible according to the U.S. Constitution as it has so far been interpreted. We can help them respond in ways that build their own agency: writing letters, like students at World of Inquiry, or making videos and organizing actions like the Melrose Leadership Academy Peace and Kindness March."

"What are the roots and legacy of minstrelsy and the Scottsboro Trials? How can stereotypes be used not only to reinforce a bias, but also to satirize that very bias? In this lesson, students learn about the minstrel tradition, consider how it echoes through stereotypes of African-Americans today and explore the legacy of black stereotypes and the Scottsboro Trials in popular culture, history and literature."

"Working within an answers-based education system, and in a culture where questioning may be seen as a sign of weakness, teachers must go out of their way to create conditions conducive to inquiry. Here are some suggestions (based on input from question-friendly teachers, schools, programs, and organizations) on how to encourage more questioning in the classroom and hopefully, beyond it."

This is the list that Kathy Dittirch sent out. Some interesting pairings here. "The classics tend to dominate English teachers' plans, and throughout grade school, high school and college you're often stuck reading the same ol' tomes off the same ol' lists. So, let's fix that. The writers at HuffPost Culture teamed up to create an alternative back-to-school reading list, in which books like The Giver and Heart of Darkness are replaced with works like On Such A Full Sea and The World and Me."

Great article about the role language and word use have on thinking. Changing words and their use can change the world!

American Passages: A Literary Survey provides professional development and classroom materials to enhance the study of American Literature in its cultural context. It is organized into 16 Units; each exploring canonical and re-discovered texts, and presenting the material through an Instructor Guide, a 30-minute documentary video series, literary texts and an integrated Study Guide

Interesting information about the testing culture our politicians and education corpratists use to critique our "failing" system.

Will discusses the shift to teachers as lead learners and schools as cultures of inquiry.

Other than a mention of the need to "evaluate information from multiple oral, visual, or multimodal sources," there is no specific reference in the common standards to critical analysis and production of film, television, advertising, radio, news, music, popular culture, video games, media remixes, and so on. Nor is there explicit attention on fostering critical analysis of media messages and representations. A 1999 national survey of state standards found elements of media literacy in almost every state's teaching standards. As states adopt the common-core standards, the result may actually be a reduced focus on media and literacy instruction formally contained in state standards. We therefore recommend four ways to address the common standards' limited focus on media/digital literacies:

"Last September we introduced a new lesson-plan format called Text to Text, in which we pair two texts that we think "speak" to each other in interesting ways, then pose questions and suggest a few activities for students to bring the writings together. One of the excerpts we use is always from The New York Times - sometimes pulled from that week's headlines, and other times from the archives. The other excerpt generally comes from an often-taught literary, historical, cultural, scientific or mathematical text. Our goal: to help students see a classic work through a new lens, or to think about how and why a text still matters."

"Scroll through the 301 prompts below that touch on every aspect of contemporary life - from politics to sports, culture, education and technology - and see which ones most inspire you to take a stand. Each question comes from our daily Student Opinion feature, and each provides links to free Times resources for finding more information."

"so much depends upon a red cup filled with coffee or holiday latte fixins.  But does it really? Rutherford's William Carlos Williams started his famous 1923 poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" in a similar fashion, yet a recent controversy swirling around one particular red cup is either a non-issue unworthy of verse or a revealing commentary on modern culture, depending upon who you ask."

"English and education professor Gerald Graff (2003) writes that "argument literacy" is fundamental to being educated. The university is largely an "argument culture," Graff contends; therefore, K-12 schools should "teach the conflicts" so that students are adept at understanding and engaging in argument (both oral and written) when they enter college. He claims that because argument is not standard in most school curricula, only 20 percent of those who enter college are prepared in this respect"