The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Secondary school students in New Zealand have recently finished sitting their end of year external examinations. One of those papers was a Level 3 History exam, in which final year students were asked to respond to this quote from Julius Caesar: “Events of importance are the result of trivial causes”.
After the exam, 1300 students signed a petition asking that markers not downgrade their answers if they hadn’t understood the meaning of the word ‘trivial’. The gist of their argument was that ‘trivial’ is not a word that seventeen and eighteen-year-old English speakers in 2018 can be expected to know, and therefore, for fairness, a definition should have been included in the exam paper.
I’m not sure which part of this story breaks my heart more: the fact that so many young people are so lingustically impoverished that they don’t know what ‘trivial’ means; the fact that faced with this mystery they have such poor resources for working out the meaning through context; or the fact that the official response by Graeme Bell, chairperson of the NZ History Teachers’ Association, was to agree with the students. “Whoopsie,” he said, “our bad.” Well, actually, he said this:
The exam was not testing comprehension, so it was unfair to make that part of the assessment.”
The exam was not testing comprehension? Excuse me? What on earth was it testing then? What could possibly matter more to our future than comprehending the meaning of statements made by people whose actions changed the course of history? Listen up, kids, I find myself wanting to shout. Words matter, and qualifying words, like ‘trivial’ and ‘important’, matter very much. Without them, Caesar’s quote turns into a statement about the laws of physics: Events are the result of causes.Discuss. The scope of the examination question is reduced and, accordingly, what we expect from an answer also shrinks. A whole way of thinking is at risk here, all the inquisitive, reflective habits of mind that are supported by language generally and, with special potency, by the reading brain.
It’s by immersion in stories, rhyme and song that children absorb words and the structure of language. It’s a process that sets the foundation for flexibility, creativity, critical finesse, good communication, empathy, resourcefulness and resilience. So how have a significant number of students got to the age of seventeen without absorbing the word ‘trivial’? And, perhaps worse, without the tools to unpack the meaning of Ceasar’s quote, which is a beautiful seesaw of a sentence in which the word ‘trivial’ (attached to the word ’causes’) counterbalances the word ‘importance’ (attached to the word ‘events’)? Research indicates that the answer might lie in the rise of screen-based communication and the corresponding demise of both face-to-face conversation and the habit of reading books.
Researchers like Maryanne Wolf are reporting that the ubiquitous use of touchscreens and computers has resulted in a mental style of ‘cognitive impatience’, which interferes with the ability to read long complex texts. Close reading has been replaced by skim reading, with profound consquences, warns Wolf, for the way human beings can think. She points to several recent studies showing that comprehension drops when people read on screens. Interestingly, this includes the ‘digital native’ generation (comprising, for example, the students who sat the Level 3 History paper), despite the fact that members of this cohort believe themselves to be better at screen-based reading. When tested, they too demonstrated better comprehension of texts they read in print, compared to texts they read on screens.
Does this finding mean that we should, as Graeme Bell suggests, apologise for putting an unfamiliar word in front of students, promising never to do such an unfair thing again? Or do we have a responsibility to insist that even in a world where kids are constantly being told that only the STEM subjects really matter – indeed, especially in that world – a wide vocabulary, rich with qualitative words, is incredibly important to humanity’s future. I think the latter.
A month or two ago, well before I heard of the history students’ struggle with the wording of Caesar’s quote, I was seated at a restaurant near a large table around which was gathered an extended family celebrating a birthday. There were about eight children present, ranging from a toddler to a couple of boys about ten years old. Once the main course had been eaten, these children were encouraged to leave the communal table. They sat in a row on a nearby window sill. Each one had a tablet and stared into it, swiping the screen frequently. They didn’t talk. No one talked to them. A trivial observation? Discuss.
Sue Wootton is co-editor of Corpus.
Sources:
Wolf, Maryanne. Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. London: Icon. 2008.
Wolf, Maryanne. Reader Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World. Harper. 2018.
This is the best article I’ve read in a long time and it supports a fear a lot of us have for the younger generation – the gradual demise of the ability to think, to work things out, for themselves. I’m going to share this with friends who mark university papers and ask them, yes, to …discuss.
v.v.good, thanks, Sue!
Let’s replace machines with books and talking.
Could we have a Ban Tech Hour – say, between 6 and 7 pm
or just before bedtime, when everyone has to read or talk.
Preferably both. Read and share what you’re reading.
Absolutely agree, Sue. Thanks for this.
I find it troubling that the students used their energy and resources to create and share the petition instead of questioning and/or addressing the gaps in their comprehension and language skills. Or is the message that we can now create petitions to remove responsibility to know anything more than we already do or want to know? I wish I’d known about that for 6th form maths.
Thank you Sue for this excellent piece, reinforcing the importance of reading (alone and aloud) and of everyday social interaction face-to-face rather than via tech devices.
I was very surprised when I heard that students did not understand the word trivial and started to wonder what else was passing them by….and why.
I especially enjoyed your description of the seesaw sentence!
I remember waaay back to seventh form in one of my humanities classes at Queens – history or social studies or something – and our teacher was horrified that many of the students didn’t know the word “apathy”…speaks for itself! Interesting discussion, Sue – hard to believe that students wouldn’t know such words. Jessie
Hi Maggie, I too have no problem with the fact that language evolves constantly, is context-dependent and culturally-mediated. In my opinion it’s not so much the students’ unfamiliarity with a specific word that is the issue here; my concerns are more to do with what happens when children don’t acquire a rich inner resource of words and stories and consequently have very little to draw on when faced with a challenge like this. Now that some evidence is emerging about what the recent rapid changes in reading culture mean for comprehending complex texts (and for anxiety levels – but that’s for another day!), we should be thinking through what we like about the changes, and what we don’t. – Sue
An excellent piece, Sue, and I’d like to have all my grandchildren read it. I’d also like to see the rest of the history paper, to see what heights of ‘comprehension’ the other questions might have required of these young people. I presume they complained only about the one question?
Researchers like Maryanne Wolf are reporting that the ubiquitous use of touchscreens and computers has resulted in a mental style of ‘cognitive impatience’, which interferes with the ability to read long complex texts. Close reading has been replaced by skim reading, with profound consquences, warns Wolf, for the way human beings can think. She points to several recent studies showing that comprehension drops when people read on screens. Interestingly, this includes the ‘digital native’ generation (comprising, for example, the students who sat the Level 3 History paper), despite the fact that members of this cohort believe themselves to be better at screen-based reading. When tested, they too demonstrated better comprehension of texts they read in print, compared to texts they read on screens.
This is the best article I’ve read in a long time and it supports a fear a lot of us have for the younger generation – the gradual demise of the ability to think, to work things out, for themselves. I’m going to share this with friends who mark university papers and ask them, yes, to …discuss.
v.v.good, thanks, Sue!
Let’s replace machines with books and talking.
Could we have a Ban Tech Hour – say, between 6 and 7 pm
or just before bedtime, when everyone has to read or talk.
Preferably both. Read and share what you’re reading.
Excellent, thank you Sue.
Excellent piece, Sue. It would be interesting to see that whole exam paper, to know how much ‘comprehension’ was required by its other questions.
Absolutely agree, Sue. Thanks for this.
I find it troubling that the students used their energy and resources to create and share the petition instead of questioning and/or addressing the gaps in their comprehension and language skills. Or is the message that we can now create petitions to remove responsibility to know anything more than we already do or want to know? I wish I’d known about that for 6th form maths.
Excellent, thanks Sue, very thought-provoking.
Thank you Sue for this excellent piece, reinforcing the importance of reading (alone and aloud) and of everyday social interaction face-to-face rather than via tech devices.
I was very surprised when I heard that students did not understand the word trivial and started to wonder what else was passing them by….and why.
I especially enjoyed your description of the seesaw sentence!
I remember waaay back to seventh form in one of my humanities classes at Queens – history or social studies or something – and our teacher was horrified that many of the students didn’t know the word “apathy”…speaks for itself! Interesting discussion, Sue – hard to believe that students wouldn’t know such words. Jessie
The modern world never ceases to amaze me! Really interesting article.
Great job Sue, love your passionate response…
Hello Sue. I felt exactly like you. I thought, why couldn’t they use context to grasp the meaning. But then, I read this piece on The Spinoff by Bernard Beckett which gave me food for thought (to quote a cliche). https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/19-11-2018/a-petty-matter-why-its-ok-that-teens-dont-know-what-trivial-means/
Hi Maggie, I too have no problem with the fact that language evolves constantly, is context-dependent and culturally-mediated. In my opinion it’s not so much the students’ unfamiliarity with a specific word that is the issue here; my concerns are more to do with what happens when children don’t acquire a rich inner resource of words and stories and consequently have very little to draw on when faced with a challenge like this. Now that some evidence is emerging about what the recent rapid changes in reading culture mean for comprehending complex texts (and for anxiety levels – but that’s for another day!), we should be thinking through what we like about the changes, and what we don’t. – Sue
OMG it’s appalling…how much smaller can the trivia generation’s minds become?!
An excellent piece, Sue, and I’d like to have all my grandchildren read it. I’d also like to see the rest of the history paper, to see what heights of ‘comprehension’ the other questions might have required of these young people. I presume they complained only about the one question?