Student Self Evaluation Of Abilities Related To Horses: Fill & Download for Free

An internal locus of control… but also the opportunity to develop one.This may sound… well, let’s call it a little Ron Swanson-ish.Fig. 1: Me, as I write this answer.When I was teaching, I noticed something about my students that got worse as I taught, and as I continue to work with young people in activities such as coaching mock trial, or even the youngest students taking the bar, I continue to see it.When they encounter difficulty, they just… quit. They just shut down and wait for someone to fix it for them. They also have no sense of responsibility to avoid difficulty.I noticed more and more as I was teaching that my students almost always had the latest and greatest pieces of technology. They had the newest smartphone immediately after it came out.And within a week, the screen would invariably be broken.Technology provided by the district often met the same fate. By two months into school, their devices were just destroyed. Scratched to all hell, cracked screens, dented bodies… half the time, they were ruined to the point of non-functioning before spring break.And then the students would ask for extensions on homework because their computers didn’t work.I started to ask the students about this to understand what was going on. One student shrugged and said that her dad would just pay for it. If she broke her phone, he’d just get her a new one. If her school computer got trashed, someone else paid for it. If she didn’t have a piece of technology to do her work, I was expected to give her additional time.It wasn’t her problem. She had no stake in her actions.I thought she was an outlier at first. But more and more, I saw the same behavior and got the same response: well, someone else will fix it. Someone else paid for it. Someone else would pay for the damages. And if it didn’t work anymore, someone else would come along to make it better.There were no personal consequences to their actions. And as a result, they never learned responsibility or stewardship.And because they didn’t have those foundational life skills, they had no ability to cope with difficulty and work around it. They had no ability to persevere through adversity.This showed up in their schoolwork. If they hit even the slightest roadblock, they would just… quit. They’d just sit there and stare at the wall or beg my attention. There was no sense of self-help or personal agency or creativity to solve problems. If the answer was not provided or readily apparent, they were just… lost.I expected this, if somewhat disappointedly, from high school freshmen, who are lost little babes in the wilderness at the best of times.I did not expect this from first-year law students, or worse, from recently graduated law students studying for the bar exam.All of this stems from a lack of any internal locus of control.*Invokes old man voice*When I was a kid…Fig. 2: Actual photograph of me, on the left, explaining what life was like when I was a child.Seriously, when I was a kid, I didn’t have an allowance, and we didn’t get money to do chores or things. We didn’t have a “reward board.” We didn’t have a chore schedule.We did chores in our household solely because it was the duty to the family to do stuff. We helped when the deck needed to get built or the addition on the house was constructed. We took the organic garbage to the compost pile. We vacuumed and dusted. We mowed the lawn. We biked (or, if we were lucky, rode in the car with Mom) the ten miles to Grandma and Grandpa’s with the Coleman cooler jug to get whole, unpasteurized milk straight from the bulk tank, and we were expected to throw down lime on the barn alley or drop down some corn silage or bedding or whatever else needed to be done while we were there.We did it when either asked, or when it needed to be done (and we were expected to notice when it did).We also didn’t go to bed hungry or without a roof over our heads. We were clean and well-fed and reasonably well-dressed.That was just kind of the informal, unspoken bargain between my parents and the three of us kids.And when we wanted something, really really wanted something, our parents would talk to us about it. Why did we want it? What would we do with it? And most importantly: how would we take care of it?If something broke because we were careless with it, that was it. There was no free replacement. We were stuck with the broken thing. Or, we had to fix it.I got a go-kart at one point. It was a home-built contraption that a relative had made and his kids had outgrown it. It had an ancient Briggs and Stratton engine on it that used oil almost as fast as gasoline. I had to check the oil constantly or risk running it dry and cracking the block.And one day, that’s exactly what happened.Dad and I took the whole engine apart, and he showed me exactly what happened with it. (I ended up taking the whole thing to the county fair and got a merit award for not only explaining the workings of the internal combustion engine, but exactly how one failed from lack of oil, not that I knew from any personal experience, cough, cough.)After repeated attempts to patch the block (which Dad knew would fail, but made me go through it anyway,) Dad finally relented and gave me $20 to bike to a junkyard about 25 miles away and find what parts I needed to fix it, including a new crankcase and block. We talked it over: what parts off the old one were still good? What did I need to look for in replacement parts?I got on my bike at 6am to get to the junkyard when it opened, dug through mountains of scrapped machines for hours until I found a matching engine in decent shape, tore it apart with the tools in the toolbox I had strapped to the back of my bike, extracted the bits I needed, haggled with the yardmaster, carefully strapped all my hard-won parts to the bike along with the tool bag, biked home, and spent the next several days reconstructing the engine and attempting to make it run.I think I was ten? Maybe twelve?Dad didn’t go with me. He didn’t buy me the parts or a new engine or fix it for me. Hell, he didn’t even drive me to the junkyard. Good lord, what parent would let their child bike twenty-five miles on their own to a junkyard these days with nothing but a twenty dollar bill and a stern lecture that any borrowed tools from Dad’s workbench better be returned unbroken? If my dad tried that today, someone would probably have called Child Protective Services.If I needed help, I could always ask my parents for it. But I was expected to be resourceful and persistent in attempting to remedy my problems on my own. I was expected to determine and exhaust my self-help remedies before I received assistance. Dad would often make me think through the solution with minimal guidance. He would let me overlook a solution and make me realize it. I had to seriously work for everything.It wasn’t that our parents never gave us stuff. We always had things to play with. I had Lego sets and Erector sets and Capsela sets and all sorts of stuff. My sister had a horse. My toys may not always have been the latest and greatest, and often were secondhand, battered, homemade, and required constant repairs, but that’s what made it great, sometimes.That go-kart? I built a truck bed over the engine with scrap wood I got from a local construction project, and a trailer with some old wheelbarrow tires I convinced a neighbor to give me in exchange for mowing his lawn a few times. I used both to go back to the woods half a mile behind our house down the field lane and retrieve rocks from the field for the foundation that I dug by hand for a cabin I wanted to build, because that would be awesome, right?My parents instilled a sense of responsibility for my actions and my possessions. And if things were tough, I was expected to creatively work around the adversity. They’d always be there to help me if I needed it, but that help was expected to be a last resort after I had exhausted what was within my control.All of this instilled in me an internal locus of control.I was responsible for my situation. And I was responsible for getting myself out of it.The people around me, from my parents to my teachers, were always there to provide resources for me when I needed them. But they didn’t do anything for me. I had to struggle with it. I had to fail from time to time. I had to make mistakes and curse at things and try again and learn enough to succeed.This is what we are robbing young people of today.I increasingly see this in people 25 and younger. It’s starting to show up increasingly in the law students that I end up tutoring and mentoring.The idea that they have to actually work for something is almost a foreign concept to them. If the answer is not readily apparent, they just shut down. I’ll try to walk them through their resources and a process for using them, and they’ll get angry with me, because why am I not just giving them the answer?The old curmudgeon, the Ron Swanson in me, would just complain that kids today are soft and weak and their parents let them be that way.And that’s kind of half true.Because I also had the opportunity to develop that internal locus of control. I had resources at my disposal.I had access to a farm and a go-kart and a bike and scrap wood and nails and screws and tools and time and supportive parents.There’s no single factor to all this, but there’s a few I believe are contributing.ParentingParenting is part of it, I believe. And I get that. I have an infant son right now. It’s hard letting him cry sometimes. I think parents always want their kids to have all the stuff they never had. I really understand that impulse.There is some degree of “everyone gets a trophy” to it. Parents, and sometimes teachers, don’t want their kids to experience the sting of failure, and often end up doing too much for the kids. (For teachers, sometimes this is professional preservation: the principal walked in and said that if the student fails, you’re getting fired, and that leads to teachers who do the work for the kid to save themselves.)I do believe that children today are often given a false sense of achievement and self-esteem.In our quest to raise every child’s self-esteem and make them feel intrinsically worthy — itself a noble goal and a positive one — we have gone too far the other direction and rewarded even the most mediocre of achievements, often when the child himself or herself has barely contributed to the success.This creates a narrative of external control over their lives: I don’t have to do the work to be rewarded for success; someone else will fix it for me and I can take the credit. They never develop a sense of an ownership stake in their own lives.Kids are also smarter than we often give them credit for. They know when a victory is hollow. They can spot a fake. If they feel like the success isn’t earned because they had no real stake in it, or no real risk of failure, they know it’s not real.And if the success is not real, because there was never any real potential for failure, it doesn’t raise their self-esteem and sense of personal capability and agency. This attempt at positive parenting, then, ends up counterintuitively lowering their self-esteem and conception of their own agency.Generational DisconnectionGenerational disconnects are probably a part of it. My great-grandparents were in their prime during the Great Depression and World War II, and I was fortunate enough to have most of them alive when I was little. They taught me a lot of things, but one of the most important, in retrospect, was the idea of an internal locus of control. That’s not the words they used, but that was the concept. They had to develop that. It was either work through adversity or die in most instances. I learned how to hold the world together with spit, bubble gum, baling wire, and moxie.In my experience as an educator, I don’t seen children connecting with older adults with a strong sense of an internal locus of control anymore. Most of the Greatest Generation is gone.And the remaining older adults don’t have much of an internal locus of control.Boomers are probably one of the worst role models in this respect. It’s endlessly amusing and disheartening to me to watch Boomers complain about how kids today are spoiled and entitled, while they’re bitching to the cashier and demanding to redeem an expired coupon.Fig. 3: The “Karen.” When any person in retail sees this hairstyle walking towards customer service, they just sigh and page the manager.Technology and Critical ThinkingTechnology surely plays a role in it. I couldn’t Google or YouTube how to fix the go-kart engine twenty-five years ago. Children today do not know a world without constant access literally at one’s fingertips to the repository of the world’s knowledge. My generation saw that change occur. There is absolutely no concept of figuring things out when the answer to literally everything is presumed to be a search away. Hell, I’m guilty of asking Alexa how to do basic tasks sometimes.But this is not, on its face, the problem. I had the Clymer manuals and other resources all the time when I was a kid. I bought how-to books for a nickle or dime at the public library when they were getting rid of old stuff and I still have some of them. (I have a really vintage 1970’s “how to make your own folding furniture out of scrap 2x4” book that is an awesome window into the clearly drug-induced fashion of that era.) The YouTube tutorials and craft blogs and even Quora are extensions of that.What has changed is the lack of critical evaluation of those resources and any ability to think past the first instructions that pop up on a Google search. When those fail, there is no reflective practice in many kids today to look for where it went wrong and fix it. They just… stop.Cultural Definition of SuccessThe definition of success as a culture has an impact, I believe. What is rewarded in culture right now is not healthy. Success is not defined by personal responsibility or intrinsic achievement outside of sports. What is rewarded is popularity.Now, this has always been true, to an extent. There has always been this tension between if nobody recognizes your success, is it real? That’s the question of internal vs. external loci of control.However, social media has fueled this in an extremely concerning manner toward external loci of control.Look at the very concept of the “social media influencer” as paying job. What the hell? The incentive structures on the internet promote this as “success.” It provides all the physical “reward sense” to the brain of actual achievement and human interaction and popularity in the most hollow way possible. Success becomes a purely external question because success is only “real” if everyone else agrees with it.What social reward is there for a kid today to bike to a junkyard to replace parts in a home-built go-kart contraption unless he could put it on Instagram for the world to “like”?Would it matter if the engine ran afterwards? Would it matter the means by which parts were procured? Probably not.I have to slap myself back to reality at times. It is so easy to worry about upvote to view ratios and follower counts and whether a popular answer got collapsed. It is so easy to seek the approval of my peers or the recognition of highly regarded people and to define my success by those entirely external measures.And added to that is the “always-on” nature of the internet and social media.When I was a kid, you’d have to be physically present to be bullied by someone. The worst they could do is try to call you at home, and you could just hang up. The spread of gossip was so much slower.Today? Social media is always connected. Smartphones make it even worse; push notifications with messages are constant. All day. All night. Ding. Ding. Ding.And the lives of kids when I was a kid were far less documented.Social media forces kids to be always on stage. There can never be a bad day, because their entire lives are documented. Cameras are everywhere. Screw up just once, and someone gets a video of it, and then puts it online? That’s you. Forever. There is no longer the forgivable or forgettable mistake.And worse is the lack of mental maturity to make good judgment calls, and the sheer magnitude of consequences of making a bad one. A teenage girl can utterly destroy her future with one bad choice to send a racy or nude picture of herself to a boy who promised he loved her.Twenty years ago, that required getting a camera, hoping the picture turned out, getting the film developed, and then physically giving the picture to someone. Disseminating that was equally laborious.Today? It takes seconds.But if she doesn’t, it takes seconds as well for her to be shamed by her peers. She can receive a constant barrage of harassing messages, anywhere. Any time.It’s little wonder to me that our youth are experiencing unprecedented mental health issues that especially include social anxiety and depression. There is no ability to disconnect and recharge, one’s entire life is on display nearly every moment, and it is documented for posterity for all to see, forever.An Utter Lack of OpportunityLastly, there is an increasing sentiment, not unjustified, that the world around them is rigged against them and it just doesn’t matter what they do. Why take personal responsibility and develop an internal locus of control when some spoiled rich shit will always take your spot no matter how hard you work for it?I’m one of the older Millenials. We were taught that you need to go to college to get a good job by a generation that paid as little as a tenth of what we did to do it. And let me tell you, we’re more than a little jaded and cynical about it.When my parents went to college, the inflation-adjusted minimum wage was $11.25 an hour compared to $6.25 when I went to college, and their tuition for the same four-year state school I attended was $200 per semester. When I started college, my first tuition bill was just shy of $1,000 a semester, and when I graduated, my last tuition bill was $3,250 a semester.So, my generation has graduated with crushing debt to an economy where, because everyone went to college, the starting minimum entry-level job requirements for a minimum-wage barista position are an MBA, six years experience, expertise in krav maga, and the dedication of their firstborn child as a human sacrifice.Housing prices have gone up 5–7% a year and wages have gone up 1–2% a year if we’re lucky, so where my parents could afford a mortgage for a decent 3-bed home in the ‘burbs on one slightly-more-than-minimum wage salary, the idea of home ownership for my generation even with dual incomes is damned near so far out of reach as to be almost farcical.But again, if you were lucky enough to be born silver spoon in mouth, none of that is a concern. And those people seem to get everything. They get into college without any of the stuff that we had to work for. They get jobs because of who their parents are. They get into government and get nominated to the bench and into the White House not because of any actual hard work.So, when we’re told “just work hard and you’ll make it!” it feels like a sick joke at times.The generation behind me? What must they think?It’s difficult to maintain an internal locus of control when there is objectively little control a person can actually have.But that’s also why you see a great deal of activism from my generation, particularly around wealth inequality and job opportunity.You see, what makes an internal locus of control possible is opportunity and resources.That go-kart and what I learned from it?It was made possible by parents who resourced me and deliberately withheld doing something for me to give me an opportunity to learn.There was every chance that I would have assembled that engine wrong and had it fail, potentially catastrophically. I almost got myself killed on that contraption a couple of times, from not paying attention to traffic on our rural road to the fact that it didn’t have a roll bar. I was given $20 and free rein to bike fifty miles round trip. If I’d have spent that $20 on something stupid along the way, I wouldn’t have had a working go-kart and I can guarantee you Dad wouldn’t have trusted me with more cash (that was also made quite clear in the aforementioned stern lecture).I was given an opportunity with consequences and a real stake in the outcome. My achievement was real. My failure would have been as well. Because of that, my success was real. And earned.In all my time teaching, I made it clear to my students that they would never receive from me unjustified praise. If they got it, they earned it. But I equally made it clear that I wasn’t going to withhold justified praise. If they earned it, they got it.I made sure they always had what they needed to succeed, and if it became apparent that I didn’t, I made sure to own that mistake and compensate them accordingly. There were no impossible tasks in my classroom, but there were always challenging ones.Young people today are too often given impossible tasks without the resources to take them on. Or, they are given tasks that are not challenging or they have no stake in the outcome, and rewarded in ways that are hollow and meaningless. They are not given true opportunity to overcome adversity through their own efforts and with appropriate resourcing.Some work through this to develop an internal locus of control, and when they find out just how little they can do with it, get pissed and take to the streets to fight for the opportunity and resources they should have.Fig. 4: The “entitled” generation’s dreams. But really, Karen, tell me again how a bit of avocado on toast from time to time is what’s holding me back.More often, however, they start to develop an external locus of control, rather than an internal one. They fall into depression and despair, and more and more of them just sit down and give up.And honestly?I believe that robs all of us of a future.Thanks for the A2A, Sean Kernan.

Why should I even bother to learn Literary Theory?On a pragmatic level, one must acknowledge that the world has increased in complexity of detail and in the scope and depth of knowledge needed to function in it. There is simply so much more to know that our parents did not. The views of our parents and grandparents concerning themselves, literature, and the arts are what academia would call dangerously quaint. They believed in what Lyotard termed Grand Narratives or commonly accepted belief systems and ideologies: truth, justice and the American way. Back in their day, men were men and women were women. Nowadays, the world has fractured along innumerable cultural and ideological fault lines. It follows from this that literature today cannot be read under the same uni-directional light of yesteryear. Literature must reflect the way that society sees itself. Psychology under Freud has dissected human behavior into so many shards that most students today cannot distinguish ego from superego from the id. Deconstructionists under Derrida have convinced most (but not all) in academia that meaning has no meaning and that there is no "there" there. Feminists under Cixous, Irigaray, and Kristeva have delved so deeply into what it means to be a woman that most men and many women are genuinely puzzled over what is or should be the nature of gender interaction. If students of today do not learn the language of yesterday, then they won't be able to communicate with their successors tomorrow.Is Literary Theory limited to books?Literary theory is definitely not limited to books. Consider postmodernism, as just one example where the strategies garnered in theory have been transplanted to film, art, architecture, politics, and in short just about every field of human endeavor.Can I ever reach a point when I can say, "I have learned enough to stop."It is entirely up to you whether you wish to put a conclusive stop to your formal and/or informal study of theory. However, since you are right now interested enough to read this book, it is more likely that you will wish to continue even if such study goes on intermittently. Besides, can anyone ever say honestly that he has learned enough to stop?What is the difference between Literary Theory and Literary Criticism?There is a vast chasm between the meanings of Literary Theory and Literary Criticism. One might think of Literary Criticism as centered in real-world answers to puzzling questions that always emanate from specific texts. Literary Criticism then has the practical goal of formulating questions and supplying answers. Matthew Arnold of the nineteenth century was a critic much esteemed in his day but theorists today tend to dismiss him and what they deem his overly quaint ideas as sexist, racist, imperialist, and many other "ists" as well. Arnold held that any literary critic worth his salt had to be impartial, unprejudiced, and disinterested. For a critic to be otherwise he held as an abomination. Theorists of today hold quite the contrary opinion. In the mind of Arnold criticism without a text to criticize was an anomaly. For today's theorists, the text as Arnold understood it simply does not exist as such. Further, the author as Arnold understood him does not exist either. What is left of the author, text, and reader trio is the reader, and in the world of theory today it is the reader who reigns supreme. If Literary Criticism is rooted in the practicality of uncovering meaning in a text, Literary Theory accuses Literary Criticism of an unreliability rooted in a pre-conditioned ideology that is so vaguely constructed as to be pointless. By contrast, a literary theorist concerns himself with the underlying framework of a reader's very thought processes which in turn impact on his values and aesthetic judgments. The focus here is on the assumptions of the reader and not on the details of the text. Ideally, all parts of a theory should be logical, well-defined and replicable by other disinterested theorists. A major issue that traditional literary critics have with literary theorists is the latter's misappropriation of the word "theory." In the parlance of a literary critic, a literary theory must be as just noted logical, well-defined, and replicable. However, literary theorists tend to use the word "theory" as a term that pays homage to poststructuralists like Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man. When a literary critic uses the word, he uses it to mean a general theory that has been judged trustworthy. When a literary theorist uses it, he means deconstructive tenets.Since Literary Theory relates to literature, how can I define literature?One might be forgiven for thinking that this is a straightforward question. Unfortunately, one would be wrong. Consider professors of literature. What would they give as a definition? After a lot of hemming and hawing, they would likely present such a wide variety of definitions, sub-definitions, arguments, counter-arguments and arcane phrases that the neophyte would surely be befuddled. I am no better than they are. In my defense I suggest that to define anything is always a lot more complex than one might think. And to define literature is especially cumbersome. I will begin by asking questions that may lead you to look at what you think is or is not literature in a new light.Can one equate a definition of literature with a function of literature? Does literature have a function, and if so what is it? Is literature meant to please? Or is it meant to instruct? Does literature need a reader to be literature? Most readers think of literature as words on a textual medium usually paper. Can literature exist without a physical medium? How can one distinguish between words taken at random from a phone book or a horse racing tout sheet from "traditional" literature? Could one justify using such words taken at random as a poem for example? Is an article from an encyclopedia literature? How about the lead article from a newspaper? Would that be literature?Despite the surface lack of seriousness of the preceding questions, they are not nitpicking issues. They are in fact quite serious. They collectively bring us back to a very basic pair of questions. What is literature? What is the function of literature? The reality is that these questions are interlocked. To look at one is to look at the other.One might begin by noting that literature often reflects life as the author sees it. This is called the mimetic view. Think of the author holding up literature as a mirror reflecting his vision of the intricacies of life. "Mimetic" means copy or duplicate. Another view is to think of literature's purpose. One purpose might be to teach or instruct the reader. This view is called didactic. A second purpose might be to delight or entertain. This view is called aesthetic. This debate over the mimetic, the didactic, and the aesthetic points of view has been ongoing for millennia and has not been definitively settled nor is it likely to be so. Complicating matters, theorists today have added a new wrinkle--the language of literature. By "language" such theorists eschew the mimetic, the didactic, and the aesthetic in favor of what they call the "literariness" of language. Their argument centers on the differences between the straightforward no-nonsense language of an encyclopedia article and the poetical language of metaphor, simile, personification, and the like. In their opinion, it is this "poetic" use of language that stamps literature as literature. Of course, one could argue (and one often does) that even an article from an encyclopedia might have touches of literariness; would these "touches" elevate a didactic article to the exalted status of literature?Take a note stuck on a refrigerator, for example: "I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast. Forgive me. They were delicious, so sweet and so cold." Is this note literature? Now look at it with a few minor modifications in punctuation and line spacing:I have eatenthe plumsthat were inthe iceboxand whichyou were probablysavingfor breakfastForgive methey were deliciousso sweetand so coldThis is a real poem by William Carlos Williams. Now it looks like a poem. The difference between the two is not the literariness of language but the appearance of poetic language. Literature seems to be some sort of melding of mimetic, didactic, aesthetic, and the literary use of language with physical appearance thrown in for good measure. Most readers have no problem with recognizing long texts as literature such as novels or plays. It is the shorter ones that prove troublesome.The term "Literary Theory" implies one theory only. Is this assumption correct?Although Literary Theory is written in the singular, it is incorrect to assume that it implies only one theory. Perhaps it would be more accurate if the term were written as Literary Theories. Most professors of literature use the singular as a generic study of a multiplicity of approaches which can be individualized as needed.Literary Theory is not something you learn. It is something you become aware of. What does this mean?As soon as a reader begins to interrogate a text, that reader already has formed definite opinions about what a text generally is and how that reader should relate to it. One does not usually verbalize consciously about the nature of these theories; one has subconsciously assimilated them over a long period of time. As that reader turns to what seems to be a bewildering labyrinth of confusing theories such as New Criticism, structuralism, deconstruction, or feminism, he (or she) discovers that he already knew the underlying principles but did not know that he knew. It is not that one is born with such knowledge; rather the various theories are based on already known life experiences that were heretofore not expressed formally.Since Literary Theory is so subjective, how can I know which particular one is right?In the case of choosing the right theory for a specific text, the word "right" is enormously subjective. What does "right" mean? One might begin by understanding that "right" and "wrong" do not occupy a Derridean polar binary like right/wrong with only a thin slash between them. Instead, one should envision a wide spectrum with shades of each every step of the way. Some texts do seem to lend themselves to one theory. For example, one might take Browning's "My Last Duchess" and immediately think of a feminist approach since the Duke has just killed his wife and is seeking to marry another suitably wealthy candidate. Or one might take a deconstructive argument to suggest that the Duchess deserved to die given the patriarchy then prevalent. Or one might even take an archetypal view to suggest that the Duke is the living embodiment of all such power-driven husbands who distrust their wives. There is no one "right" approach, but there are several, any of which might prove "right."Could I ever hope to become a literary theorist?As soon as you apply any of the concepts of Literary Theory to a text, you are--in a greatly reduced manner of speaking--already a literary theorist. One need not publish a text on theory from a mainstream publisher to be a theorist nor need one actually be working in the field as a Full Professor of English at Harvard to theorize. There is a vast range of being a theorist that spans the spectrum from taking your very first course in literature to being hailed as an internationally recognized expert in the field. You probably assume that working as a theorist counts only if you are closer to the expert side than the novice side. Ideally, you will want to continue your education with literature and theory until the distant future. Finish your college education with a degree. Then (if you can) continue with a graduate degree, and in the meantime you can write critical and theoretical essays and reviews for Amazon. You can get tons of experience crafting well-written reviews. You can also read scholarly journals to get an idea of what they publish and you can submit your own original writings. The question then is not limited to your ever becoming a theorist; it is whether you wish to continue to be one.I also read that modern Literary Theory has become politically radicalized. Is this true?It is true that to a certain extent theory has become politically radicalized. Given the advances in science, psychology, sociology, and other related disciplines it follows that the recognition of the complexities of the human psyche as postulated by Freud and Lacan have demolished the previously comforting notion of the Universality of Man. Human beings are now seen as infinitely more complex than they were in previous centuries. Further, the horrors of the two world wars have coarsened the previous notion that all human beings were essentially benevolent. Additionally, since much of the theorizing of the twentieth century had been written by members of the Radical Left, it follows that they would leave their stamp on their writings. Finally, the ratio of liberal hires to conservative hires at the college and university level in the United States favors the former by at least twenty to one.Doesn't the study of Literary Theory take me away from the study of literature?For most readers the reverse is true; the study of literary theory will enhance one's appreciation of literature. For those for whom it is not true, the most likely reason is that such readers have not been exposed to even a superficial understanding of theory. When one who is unacquainted with theory reads a text, one's enjoyment is limited to whatever one can extract from it. However, as soon as a reader has even a passing knowledge of various theories, that reader would then be in position to evaluate a text using a myriad of prisms. Though it is quite true that the language of theory seems top heavy with jargon and foreign phrases, the ability to navigate through this labyrinth of dense prose will eventually bring the reader back to the text. Besides in a cost versus benefit ratio the benefit of heightened comprehension will usually outweigh the cost of achieving that comprehension.Why is Literary Theory so feared?Those new to Literary Theory fear it because they likely have heard various horror stories about it. For those majoring in English, they often put it off until much later presumably to learn as much literature as possible first. For those non-English majors, potential students of theory must overcome this fear whether they enroll in a formal course on theory or begin a self-directed program of study. To be fair to legions of panic-stricken future students of theory one must grant their fears are often well-grounded. However, students everywhere in all disciplines eventually face and overcome even the most challenging of disciplines. But still, there are fears unique to theory over and above the generalized aversion to difficult courses shrouded in mystery. Literary Theory in the United States has the dubious distinction of being the only discipline in which much of the language used is not English. Foreign expressions abound, especially in French, German, and Greek. And if this were not bad enough, the majority of European theorists are read in translation. And in their own languages, their texts are written in a prose style that is very nearly opaque, with little in the way of concrete examples. Translation from one opaque European language to English relies heavily on the linguistic skills of the translator; the result is often a double bind. Theorists are also fond of using what seems like perfectly ordinary words in a totally new context. Examine what Lacan does to his use of "desire." Finally, over the last fifty years, theory has replaced criticism as the focus of most English departments. What this means is that instead of an emphasis on traditional approaches to texts (simile, metaphor, imagery, etc), transplanted theorists now insist that attention must be placed on the abstractness of a myriad of theories, none of whose principles are generally known to the typical undergraduate but all of which require extensive European-type exposure to eighteenth and nineteenth philosophers like Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. And how many American college students have even heard of them?

As per my opinion the teaching and learning may be on the following basis pls let me know whether I'm on the correct track.....21st century learning, or the “21st Century Skills” movement as it is commonly known1, refers to a growing global movement to redefine the goals of education, to transform how learning is practiced each day, and to expand the range of measures in student achievement, all in order to meet the new demands of the 21st Century.backgrounds, a variety of achievement levels, and different learning styles which will all affect their ability to acquire knowledge. Teachers need to move away from the traditional methods of teaching and bring into the classroom new and innovating approaches to teach the content and lifelong skills. It is important to utilize a variety of techniques for the children to build their own understanding through real world applications and interactions with their peers in group activities. “To be productive contributors to society in our 21st century, you need to be able to quickly learn the core content of a field of knowledge while also mastering a broad portfolio of essentials in learning, innovation, technology, and careers skills needed for work and life” (Trilling & Fadel, 2009, p16). Teachers need to prepare students for the jobs that have not yet been created, for the new products that have not yet been invented, and for the new skills to build towards creativity and innovation.Though there are timeless skills and knowledge important for success in any age (language literacy, problem solving and initiative for example), what was needed to be a skilled person in 19th century agrarian society (including brawn power and using horse power) differs dramatically from the expertise needed to be a well-educated and capable 21st century citizen (including brain power and using “hertz power” - computing and digital tools).Arising from a number of efforts across the globe to define the essential knowledge, skills and dispositions needed for our increasingly information driven and technologically powered societies2, 21st century learning proponents advocate an expanded set of educational goals, as in the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) learning framework3: The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is “a national organization that advocates for the integration of skills such as critical thinking, problem solving and communication into the teaching of core academic subjects such as English, reading or language arts, world languages, arts, mathematics, economics, science, geography, history, government, and civics” (2009, p. 9). P21 Leadership States: The following states build on educational plans and projects to improve and align education to 21st Century skills. Arizona Alabama Arkansas Alaska Hawaii Illinois Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana MONTGOMERY Nebraska CALIFORNIA New Jersey North CarOLINE SOUTH DAKOTA Ohio South Dakota Texas West Virginia WisconsinIn this model, the “rainbow” above represents the goals, standards, or intended outcomes of learning for 21st century students, and the “pools” below indicate the learning support systems that enable the goals to be met.Framework for 21st Century Learning The Framework for 21st Century Learning consists of core subjects and themes that revolve around three core skills: life and career skills, learning and innovation skills, and information media, and technology skills. These are the skills that students need in order to be successful in the 21st century. The core subjects include: English, Reading, Language Arts, World Languages, Arts, Mathematics, Economics, Science, Geography, History, and Government and Civics. In addition to the core subjects, schools must integrate the 21st century interdisciplinary themes in the daily instructional activities. The themes consist of global awareness, financial, economic, business, entrepreneurial literacy, civil literacy, health literacy, and environmental literacy. The “pools” underneath the rainbow represents the paradigmatic “shift towards supporting 21st century learning, understanding, and skills performance” (Trilling & Fadel, 2009, p. 120). The “pools” consist of standards and assessments, curriculum and instruction, professional development, and learning environment.The learning goals include traditional core subject knowledge areas (in green), such as social studies, math, science, language, etc.; interdisciplinary and contemporary thematic expertise (also in green), such as environmental, health, financial and civic literacy; and three sets of essential skills (in gold, purple and red), applied to the learning of content knowledge:The learning support systems represented by the pools below the rainbow, are the typical services and operations of an educational system: learning standards and assessments, curriculum and instruction, [[professional development, and lesson plans that are taught within the classroom.The The third category focuses on career and life skills. This includes flexibility, adaptability, initiative, self direction, communication, social and cross-cultural interaction, productivity and accountability, and leadership and responsibility. “The ability to work effectively and creatively with team members and classmates regardless of differences in culture and style is an essential 21st century life skill” (Trilling & Fadel, 2009, p. 80). Likewise, teachers need to prepare the students for a world beyond the classroom in order for them to become successful in all aspects of their lives. Also, leadership and responsibility “provides lots of opportunities to take responsibility and exercise leadership-skills important to future employers” (85). Teaching students responsibilities will strengthen their work ethic when they have a job or career. They will be prepared and be confident when they are seeking for job opportunities. It will continue to help them succeed in the job market and learn even more skills.21st Century Learning MethodsEqually important to 21st century learning is the application of learning science research and principles to learning methods and the design of learning activities, projects, assessments and environments. Principles of effective learning important to 21st century education practitioners include4:Authentic learning - learning from real world problems and questionsMental model building - using physical and virtual models to refine understandingInternal motivation - identifying and employing positive emotional connections in learningMulti-modal learning - applying multiple learning methods for diverse learning stylesSocial learning - using the power of social interaction to improve learning impactInternational learning - using the world around you to improve teaching and learning skills.A particularly effective learning method that incorporates these principles are group learning projects driven by an engaging, real-world questions or problems. These inquiry- and design-based, collaborative learning projects5 are a powerful learning method especially suited for building the essential 21st century skills-and-knowledge listed in the rainbow model above.Students in well-designed and managed learning projects often produce artifacts (reports, models, simulations, presentations, inventions, videos, etc.) that can be evaluated for both understanding of content knowledge and the proficiency level of a range of 21st century skills. Students’ collections of projects, often placed in structured electronic portfolios, can provide rich evidence for increasing competence and achievement over time.The Project Bicycle Frame and ComponentsOne learning method that incorporates 21st century themes and skills is the project learning bicycle. “Students in well-designed and managed learning projects produce artifacts-reports, presentations, videos, podcasts, models, simulations, inventions, etc.—as part of their projects work” (Trilling, 2010, p. 44). When carefully looked at the handle bars represent driving the project forward and the frame represents both the student and teacher cooperating to create a meaningful project. The gears represent the tools used in the project. For instance, the students may have used computers, websites, digital media or other forms of technology in their project. The wheels represent a continuing process of defining, planning, reviewing, and doing. Overall, “the goal is a rich learning experience that blends knowledge understanding, and solid performance on many of the 21st century skills” (101). Thus, it gives the students the opportunity to express themselves and think outside of the box while demonstrating their talents.An important new concept in education is that literacy is always changing, and with that you need to adapt to new methods of teaching. Instead of just teaching students how to read and write, you need to be sure they are literate in technology as well. Teaching students about technology should be part of the curriculum.A factor that displays 21st century skills within a classroom is to use a variety of hands on activities on many different subjects.Benefits of 21st Century SkillsSystematic integration 21st century skills and content benefits the students in the following areas: linguistically, socially, cognitively, and academically. Linguistically, students benefit by being able to learn lifelong skill in meaningful, authentic ways through challenging content. To further elaborate this point, "the content of each lesson must be taught simultaneously with the linguistic skills necessary for understanding it" (Cantoni-Harvey, 1987, p. 22; Snow et al., 1989, p. 202). Additionally, the integration of content and skills benefits students socially. “Language is learned most effectively for communication in meaningful, purposeful social and academic contexts. In real life, people use language to talk about what they know and what they want to know more about, not to talk about language itself” (Snow et al., 1989, p. 202). The students are able to communicate the content among their peers and be able to use it in their everyday lives. Also, the students benefit from the integration of 21st century skills and content cognitively by using reasoning and problem-solving skills to promote higher level thinking. “This will obtain to the extent that higher order thinking skills require more complex or elaborate language skills in more cognitively demanding tasks” (215). The use of higher order thinking will gain the students interest in the content when related to real life situations. This will enable them to think outside of the box and move up the latter in achieving higher levels of proficiency. Academically, most students’ will benefit from the integration of content and skills to survive in the world today. Students will gain a plethora of knowledge to understand and solve real-world situations using the 21st century skills.Teachers may design a curriculum around a themed-based approach in order to incorporate 21st century skills into the content areas. This will allow students personal interest is brought into the classroom while focusing on higher order thinking skills. Themes that may be used for a unit are political issues within the community, pollution, recycling, or even broader topics. “The theme must be very interesting to students and must allow a wide variety of language skills to be practiced, always in the service of communicating about theme” (Oxford, 2001, p. 4). By relating the content to real life situations the students will be engaged and motivated to learn and take action in their road to success. “By posing open-ended questions and posing intriguing problems engage children’s imaginations and help motivate them to explore, discover, create, and learn” (Trilling & Fadel, 2009, p. 94). By “applying skills like critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity to the content knowledge-increases motivation and improves learning outcomes” (50). The students will have the opportunity to express their viewpoints and take action in their own learning. “It deeply engages students in their learning, goes beyond memorization to meaningful understanding, and results in large learning gains for students with a wide range of learning styles and backgrounds” (Trilling & Fadel, 2009, p. 104).Teachers must utilize a variety of methods for the children to build their own understanding through real world applications interactions with their peers in many cooperative group activities. “Life is a multimedia event, and the meanings that we secure from life are not simply contained in text; they yield their content through a wide variety of forms” (Eisner, 2002, p. 154). The students need to have a deep understanding for the real world in order to become successful individuals and be more technologically enhanced.Students need to become more globally literate because many jobs are now more focused on those issues. Students need to know more about the world, think outside of the box, develop better people skills, and become smarter about selecting news sources. To do this it is important for teachers to keep up with the times and create a modern curriculum. One of the best ways to achieve global literacy is through communication, collaborative learning, research, and problem solving. Technology helps tremendously in these areas, so it is a great tool to use in the classroom. Not only that, but it will help the students to find more relevance in school as well.ChallengesAs educators shift from the traditional school methods of the lecturing and note taking, there is a need not to use technology as a means of supplemental education, but truly integrated. Simply stated: using a computer to take notes instead of using paper is no different. However, using software as a means to collect and analyze data would be one way to integrate technology into educational practices. Achieving a new balance of learning practice that supports an expanded set of learning goals and a broader definition of student success is a significant challenge to often change-resistant educational systems around the world. The interlocking support systems of education - standards, assessments, curriculum and instruction, professional development and learning environments - all have to shift together to provide a solid infrastructure for 21st century learning.Schools, districts, provinces, and entire national education systems are successfully moving toward a 21st century learning model, motivated by the need for an educated workforce and citizenry capable of meeting the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century with some work and a lot of effort from the government.