From a substack article complaining about student reading skills:
= = = = = START QUOTE:
A professor at Stevens Institute of Technology says that she and her colleagues discuss the problem regularly, agreeing that they can’t assume students will do the readings. But if they simply go over in class what students should have read, it’s not clear what purpose is being served. While she has long believed in meeting her students where they are, she says that “if she meets them any further down, she’ll feel like a cruise director organizing games of shuffleboard.”
= = = = = END QUOTE.
Maybe you should follow the path set down by the FOUNDER of Stevens, who was a leader in the Magic Lantern movement that turned science into pleasant entertainment. Stevens was a pioneer in visual science 150 years ago.
Here’s a typical article by Henry Morton, the first president of Stevens, showing how to run a visible chemical experiment. From the 1877 Sciopticon Manual, with several Morton articles on different scientific subjects.
= = = = = START MORTON:
In addition to the use of the magic lantern in its original office of exhibiting pictures, it will admit of a great variety of applications which enable the operator to produce countless variations in the effects developed, by which an endless variety and constant novelty can be secured.
For this purpose there is needed in the first placed the simple apparatus shown in our woodcut, consisting of a small tank, made by securing two plates of glass, about 4 x 5 inches, with four clamps, against a strip of rubber about one inch thick, bent into the three sides of a rectangle.
Experiment 1st. Pour in a little solution of sulphateof copper, and mix it well with the water of the tank, then with the pipette run in , with more or less force, some diluted ammonia, pausing from time to time to observe the progress of the effect. On the screen can be observed the gathering of a tempest of black stormclouds, which twirl around in violent commotion, as if urged by a tornado of wind, but as the action continues, these clouds will melt away, and leave the entire field of a serene and beautiful sky-blue.
Now throwing in some diluted sulphuric acid, the same changes can be reproduced, and so on alternately for a number of times. Then when the tank is clear, with an excess of acid, let fall a few drops of a solution of ferrocyanide of potassium from a small pipette, and rich red curdled clouds of ferrocyanide of copper will form with a beautiful appearance.
= = = = = END MORTON.
Here’s a quick rendering of how it might have looked in a typical Scientific Lantern setup. (I’m not trying to reproduce the proper effect, just using an available pattern.)
Students ALWAYS learn better when all of their senses and muscles are involved. If they can’t or won’t read complex texts, teach them with complex visual inputs and complex PARTICIPATION. Today’s students are experts at handling complex visual inputs and outputs.
THIS IS NOT WOKE, it’s just GOOD LEARNING. If you keep trying to make them learn in the way that Chinese learn best, you’ll end up with nothing but Chinese students graduating.
Polistra's Mill 