Your editorial page usage of the NSD’s “addressing” new learning standards is filled with cliches.

Just take the English class suggestions.

It suggests “greater” emphasis on reading and writing while not noting greater than what. It narrows the focus of theoretically doing so by saying do it “around informational texts in areas such as history, social studies, science and technical subjects.” In other words recognize the recognizing-word-reading of these areas while suggesting do less probing of intent and theme in literature? It adds to that point by saying more time must be spent in nonfiction texts.

Of course recognizing word reading is learned in grammar school, and recognizing how the best writers of all time have conveyed their insights to life requires careful reading and learned insight into the various means used by the writers to make their points is done in secondary and college level classes. But maybe that is now too demanding and we must maintain a high graduation level.

And then the superintendent says writing should have more supporting evidence. If you don’t learn how to find supporting evidence in great fiction, how are you going to use it in the six or seven extended expository essays that should be required of every student, especially in the 11th and 12th grades? “Careful reading” is more necessary in great fiction works than in non-fiction works.

Students have to understand that a message is conveyed in a more complex way in Shakespeare than in a mechanics manual. But the superintendent apparently doesn’t understand that.

The rest of his points about “sequential building,” “rigor and conceptual understanding,” and “deep understanding” thus appear as clichés.

That makes suspect the district’s statement of “demanding more” of its students.

Richard Pelto, Kenmore