A vigorous study of how school reform requires vigilance, collaboration, and a capacious definition of true learning.
Corporate reformers undermine public education.
Joining the debate about school reform that has erupted in recent books enthusiastically for and passionately against charter schools, the Common Core, and assessment by testing, Gabor (Chair, Business Journalism/Baruch Coll., CUNY; The Capitalist Philosophers: The Geniuses of Modern Business—Their Lives, Times, and Ideas, 2000, etc.) mounts a strong argument for “a well-designed, collaborative, trust-based approach” to change. Citing reform efforts in Massachusetts, Texas, Louisiana, and New York, the author takes aim at charter schools and the “handful of wealthy, unelected, mostly out-of-town organizations and benefactors” who champion them. In New Orleans, an already troubled public school system responded to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina by turning to charter schools without ever engaging parents or teachers. Most charters, such as the much-touted Sci Academy, focused on test preparation and instituted a no-excuses policy that caused many students to be suspended or drop out; the charters were staffed largely by inexperienced teachers, trained “in highly regimented routines” designed to foster “order and security.” Gabor criticizes the Common Core for favoring easily assessed subjects such as math and grammar, forcing schools to minimize civics and literature, two subjects that she believes are essential in a democracy. Moreover, rating and funding schools through their students’ test scores has fomented corruption and cheating among administrators and teachers, whose jobs may be vulnerable to test outcomes. The “testing mania,” Gabor asserts, “has dumbed down education.” Among successful reform efforts, the author profiles Manhattan’s Julia Richman High School, which adopted a small-school strategy of four schools within a larger complex. Teachers had decisive input, and the school established a trusted relationship with the teachers union. Similarly, at Central Park East, “open-classroom pedagogy and democratic governance” resulted in success. In Brockton, Massachusetts, the city’s benighted high school was revived through the efforts of a strong local leader who marshaled widespread community cooperation. In 2016, Massachusetts defeated a ballot initiative to lift the cap on charter schools.
A vigorous study of how school reform requires vigilance, collaboration, and a capacious definition of true learning.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62097-199-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An academic's meandering foray into the realms of the preliterate. Sanders (English and the History of Ideas/Pitzer College) fears for the fate of the printed word. Beginning with a history of literacy, he presents the ancient Greeks as the primary example of a people with a limited, verbal culture who flowered with their adaptation of the Semitic alphabet, which he contends not only allowed for superior intergenerational communication but also for the critical thinking that made Greek philosophy and ethics possible. Moving from human history to human development, the author posits that infants and people deprived of language cannot perceive in the abstract and are incapable of morality. He skates on thinner ice when he suggests that people stuck in verbal cultures, especially the functional illiterates of our inner cities, are a mindless, amoral mob. Here the humanities professor shows gaps in his hard and social science reading: Few of America's 70 million illiterates display the conscienceless violence of the sociopaths he fearfully describes. Displaying tinges of Eurocentrism when diagnosing the social problems of certain hyphenated Americans, Sanders also links illiteracy to feminism- -mothers not staying home to feed their children constant verbal stimulation. ``Among humans only women educate'' is a line that would resonate better were the author less obsessed with unproven theories about breast-feeding and the development of literacy. A volley fired at technology in general and computers specifically reads: ``Word processors have turned everyone into ghostwriters, so that technology...has sucked the very essence out of life.'' While TV and video games have pedagogic limitations, the author does not successfully demonstrate why trashy novels are better than classic films, why the confines of grammar are less stifling than the parameters of a video game, or why a TV show represents ``a shift from the human to the technical.'' A few pearls among the paranoia, but this flawed paean to literacy is as awkward as its title.
Pub Date: Oct. 27, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-41711-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Instructions on developing a base from which educational research can move forward.
A look at methodology, not monsoons.
This book’s somewhat-confusing title signals a bit about the obscurity of the subject. The focus here is on educational theory, where the words "culture" and "climate" have more to do with the defining the personality of an institution or organization than they do with sunny skies or rites of passage. The idea is that large institutions, like school systems, are kind of like planets–their atmospheres evolve over time, often despite the intentions of those running things, hence the term "climate." Trying to reform a school system without understanding its atmosphere is like trying to colonize a planet before one knows whether or not the environment can sustain human life. Organizational culture has been in the public consciousness for a long time, and Knapp and Harrigan address the customs that develop organically in the course of an institution’s life. This small volume is really a literature review, a compendium of current reading material for academics in the field of elementary education. The authors take four categories–culture, climate, gifted and rural–and examine the articles and papers in which these categories "interact," in terms of the culture and climate of rural schools and the ways they support or don’t support gifted students. In rural communities and schools, being gifted is viewed as something suspiciously elitist, and schools have poured more resources into developing programs for the physically and developmentally disabled than for gifted students. The book suggests reforms are in order, but not until exhaustive research has been conducted. This is not a layman’s overview, though it might be an interesting read for parents with gifted children languishing in rural schools.
Instructions on developing a base from which educational research can move forward.Pub Date: March 22, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4196-5488-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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