Ellen Carillo’s article on the methods in which students absorb knowledge from reading caught my interest very quickly. Not only because of the extensive research and evidence that is presented throughout this article but also because of my personal agreement that schools encourage students to just read the text for the sake of “knowing” and not for the sake of “understanding” the text presented to them.

She backs up this claim by displaying the “CCSS” ideology that “revere text” instead of being “inclined to question the texts (and the evidence therein) placed before them.” which in turn, not only potentially reduces the student’s opportunity to understand and empathize the text, but also discourages their interest in exploring what the text has to offer (and its legitimacy). This is due to the fact that this method reflects what most businesses want in their workers, they want someone who blindly accepts and (in their own way) “knows” the knowledge that was given to them at the expense of something like ones empathy towards literature, and their interest to question and analyze what’s presented to them. In the early parts of this article, Ellen Carillo uses President Trump’s counselor Kellyanne Conway as a real-world example of false information. Despite the solid evidence debunking the presidents lies on topics such as “voter fraud” and the size of his inauguration, his secretary tried to avoid the problem by saying that the administration was working from “alternative facts”. This is just one of many examples of fake news that is out in the world, and by following the idea that students should just “know text” there becoming more inclined to simply believe whatever they read. Without trying to immerse yourself into the information out there in the world, you could easily find yourself being fooled by things such as “alternative facts”

Another example of the negative effects that the CCSS methods of reading have on students was displayed in a large-scale study titled SAILS (Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills) which “tests students’ information literacy skills, including how well students access, locate, evaluate, understand, and use online information.”. The result that literacy expert Alice Honing pointed out was that “only 50 percent of about 6,400 high school, community college, and four-year college and university students were deemed to have the essential information literacy skills.”. More shockingly, one of the studies showed that all grades throughout high school seemed to have been more captivated by the Photograph in the ad that was given to them more than the text at hand, this led them to use the text as a form of solid evidence when asked to explain what they read. These studies show how uninterested students are at wanting to understand literacy even if it’s in their day to day life. They become disconnected from it altogether and try to avoid the text as much as possible instead of trying to at least empathize with it.

Me personally, through high school I’ve always experienced this style of reading. My teachers would encourage us to read the text (sometimes in short periods of time) and annotate key points, the class would successfully know everything they read however we never found ourselves interested in what we read, and it wouldn’t even take more than two weeks for us to forget what we read. My fellow alumni and I would even go as far as to follow the “google-knowledge” method which basically means to rely on the first source of information you find online as fact. Although it was reliable, it prevented us from being fully immersed in the topics. It never mattered to look into things during high school because I was never really given a reason to care. Recent events have to lead me to include myself more in the research that I do so that I can include myself into conversations without the risk of spreading misinformation, its that level of empathy towards the topic that led to analyze the text more. Although current reading methods aren’t flawed, I personally don’t recommend them, we should all try our best to understand everything we know so that we can all truly grow not only as students but as people.

We are people who use things such as the news as our main source of information and as such we have a responsibility to make sure that what we’re being taught is accurate, in order to do this we need to involve ourself in the text, analyze it, and hopefully empathize with it. Even  Ellen Carillo believes that with the current divide we are having, the last thing we should do is avoid understanding one another, and one powerful way to do so is to first understand the text you read.