“[Teachers] told me their students don’t understand the difference between a country and a continent, or between a city and a state. One kid in an SAT pre class–one of the better students…was surprised by the term South America when he saw it on a map, apparently for the first time: How could it be called America if wasn’t in America?” (p.21).
Natalie Wexler covers education issues for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Forbes.com. Wexler shows that much of the average American school day is taken up with “process” rather than teaching knowledge. Reading is often taught through a regimen of repetition and drills. History is seldom taught (too controversial). Students graduate High School and find they have to take a year (or two!) of remedial classes at the College of their choice.
Wexler presents a convincing case that more “content” might help students get a true education. Doing spelling or math drills on a computer isn’t much of an advance over the old-fashioned worksheets. Actually learning multiplication tables instead of resorting to calculators would be useful. Learning cursive writing (which isn’t taught in our local schools anymore) instead of only printing would be a plus. And “teaching to the test” both fatigues teachers and students and steals motivation. Our students are falling behind most First World countries in education. That will result in a messy Future for all of us. What was your favorite subject when you went to school? GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Part 1 The Way We Teach Now: All You Need Is Skills
Chapter 1 The Water They’ve Been Swimming In 3
Chapter 2 A Problem Hiding in Plain Sight 24
Chapter 3 Everything Was Surprising and Novel 45
Chapter 4 The Reading Wars 64
Chapter 5 Unbalanced Literacy 82
Chapter 6 Billions for Education Reform, but Barely a Cent for Knowledge 104
Part 2 How We Got Here: The History Behind the Content-Free Curriculum
Chapter 7 Émile Meets the Common Core 129
Chapter 8 Politics and the Quest for Content 150
Part 3 How We Can Change: Creating and Delivering Content-Focused Curriculum
Chapter 9 The Common Core: New Life for Knowledge, or Another Nail in Its Coffin? 171
Chapter 10 No More Jackpot Standards 194
Chapter 11 Don’t Forget to Write 217
Chapter 12 Scaling Up: Can It Be Done? 243
Epilogue 260
Acknowledgments 265
Notes 271
Index 309
Of course my favourite subject was Math – so I later studied it and got my diploma (Master). But sciences were also interesting, languages in a limited way. At least English when I was 16 helped me to understand the texts of Rock music – but French and Latin?
We only read texts by men already ded fo several years and when I went to France for the first time I couldn’t even read the menu in a restaurant!
Wolf, my favorite subject was reading. I loved many of the books we read in Social Studies classes (mostly History) and the novels and short stories we read in English class.
Of course my favourite subject was Math – so I later studied it and got my diploma (Master). But sciences were also interesting, languages in a limited way. At least English when I was 16 helped me to understand the texts of Rock music – but French and Latin?
We only read texts by men already ded fo several years and when I went to France for the first time I couldn’t even read the menu in a restaurant!
PS:
The story reminds me of Isaac Asimov’s short story (I think it was in Nine tomorrows) about a future where all logic and maths is done by computer, people don’t even know basic arithmetics and then someone reinvents it.
My favorite subjects were English and history. English because we mostly got to read fiction which I was doing anyway. Although we occasionally had to wade through things like Silas Marner – no wonder a lot of kids were turned off of reading for pleasure.
My least favorite math which I found boring and public speaking which I dreaded so much I would get physically sick the night before class.
Steve, like you I favored English and History. I had no problem with Public Speaking (I actually made cookies for one class presentation…then served the cookies to the audience and the teacher. I scored an “A” on that stunt!).
No surprise—loved English, hated Math. I think I would have liked Math more if I’d been exposed to the underlying concepts. I used to love logic problems (“If the blue house has a fence and the yellow house has a swimming pool and the red house is not next to either of them, where is the purple house located?”), but we rarely did those.
Our school systems are f*cked up—and its a shame because all of the teachers I know are dedicated and hard-working, but between budgets, politics, administration, students who have been “socially promoted” so they can’t read on a 3rd-grade level by 10th grade, helicopter parents, meth-addict parents, kids being raised by grandparents and great-grandparents, teaching the test, being assessed on what your students should know on the last day of class but with no assessment for what they knew (or didn’t know) on the first, it’s a thankless job.
Deb, you’re right about teaching being a heart-breaking job in many schools. So many young students come to school hungry. The majority of students in Diane’s last 5th Grade class qualified for a “Free Breakfast” based on their parents’ income level. At the College, I had more freedom to teach the concepts I wanted to cover in my classes, I picked the textbooks, and I made up the exams. Since my retirement, all that has changed.
George, here they keep schools open all summer just to give kids free breakfasts (and sometimes lunch). If you come into school hungry in the morning, you are not going to be able to learn.
Jeff, exactly! Yet what is going on with the parents (or grandparents or aunts/uncles, etc.) who send these kids to school hungry???
Even when Jackie started in the ’70s, she had kids being raised by grandparents.
As far as teaching to the test goes, Jackie used to spend the last 24 hours before a test cramming all the knowledge the test would cover into her head, spit it back to the teacher, and immediately forget it all.
Jeff, I’m sure Jackie (and most elementary school teachers) would agree that the constant testing doesn’t help the students. It’s a bureaucratic control mechanism.
Unlike the rest of you (except Wolf), I loved Math. Also Chemistry in high school (because I had a great teacher), but I always liked History too. English, for the most part yes (except poetry), but I was in an advanced class in high school reading stuff I had no interest in at the time – Joyce, Thomas Mann, etc. But still, I have to echo Steve on SILAS MARNER. Gag me with a spoon.
Jeff, I actually reread SILAS MARNER a few years ago. Mawkish.
English and History, of course, And like Deb I might have enjoyed math more if it was presented differently. And if the teachers didn’t play to the male students.
Kevin had to memorize 145 Spanish words this weekend. Now is that anyway to have a kid enjoy learning a language.
Patti, Katie went to Barcelona, Spain for a summer to perfect her Spanish. She lived with a family that didn’t speak English so it was sink or swim!
I think education got “broken” when schools started passing students along to higher grades instead of holding them back until they had learned the core knowledge for that year. In high school, the fail happened when they tried to modernize the curriculum with concepts like pass-fail, student choice of core subjects, etc. In my high school, there were no trade classes, like auto shop, metal shop, wood shop, etc. so students with a bent toward that were out of luck. It was either the science-math “set” or the liberal arts “set”, with required course such as language and basic English mandated for all.
Rick, you’re right about all the causes you list for the dysfunction of our education system. Diane had a young girl in her Third Grade class with speech problems. The school had an excellent speech pathologist to help such students with articulation, phonological disorders, apraxia of speech, and dysarthria but the student’s parents refused to allow their daughter to get help. “We don’t want her labeled,” they told Diane.
My favorite subject was recess followed closely by lunch! Academically, history was the one I found most interesting and then English, depending on the teacher! I think schools went to hell when it became illegal for teachers to spank students! Once the little urchins knew they weren’t going to get the paddle all hell broke loose! And having drunken, drugged-up parents who could afford booze, cigarettes, and drugs but not the ingredients for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich made matters worse!
And get the hell off my lawn!
Bob, the children of America have paid a terrible price when their parents became addicted to opioids and crystal-meth.