Recommended

Education Reconsidered: Beyond the Death of Critical Education

Thursday 16 September 2010

by: Stanley Aronowitz, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

A critical consideration of VAM

"Value-Added" Assessment: Tool for Improvement or Educational "Nuclear Option"?

Tuesday 14 September 2010

Considering Jefferson

"The less wealthy people,... by the bill for a general education, would be qualified to understand their rights, to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence their parts in self-government; and all this would be effected without the violation of a single natural right of any one individual citizen." --Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:73

"I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country, under such regulations as would secure their safe return in due time." --Thomas Jefferson to John Wyche, 1809. ME 12:282

"I think by far the most important bill in our whole code, is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness... The tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance." --Thomas Jefferson to George Wythe, 1786. ME 5:396

Considering Emerson

I invite you to read Emerson's The American Scholar, but at least, look at a few points and consider what they mean for how we committed to public education:

"In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking."

"Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this."

"Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence, the book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with the world and the soul. Hence, the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs of all degrees."

"Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst."

"Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office, — to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame. Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and our American colleges will recede in their public importance, whilst they grow richer every year."

Equity?

See the news article and study about how race impacts school suspensions.

Debate over single-gender classrooms. . .

The evidence and ideology are clashing concerning single-gender classrooms. . .

Read this BLOG POST at Schools Matter. . .

Groups/Topics

Group Members	Topic
Paige Davies Khadijah Burks Katie Cockrell Ashley Tucker	No Child Left Behind
Monique Ositelu Morgan Calhoun Lauren St. Louis Meredith Yingling	State Standards Compared
Kristen Layne Margaret DuBose Whitney Becker Hannah Smith	Art/Music Programs
Spencer Beamer Mollie Jenson Emily McClimon Jackie Wornom	Single Sex Classrooms
Caroline Lambert Tim Baumann Bethany Prince Hilary Dahl	Teaching Methods

Can you "read" the philosophies?

Thomas B. Fordham Institute

The Foundation for Educational Choice

Center on Education Policy

EPIC

NCSPE

AFT

NEA

What are the assumptions driving this essay?

Racialized Memories and Class Identities - Thinking About Glenn Beck's and Rush Limbaugh's America

Henry Giroux

+++++++++++++++

So are US schools really a failure because of progressive education?

Consider this article by Alfie Kohn. . .

Social Equality?

Consider:

The United States of Inequality

Introducing the Great Divergence

The Usual Suspects Are Innocent

Challenges to learning styles theories

See this article, which raises concerns about learning style theories (a topic we'll address 9/13/10)

Teacher Assignment

Look at Teaching Inequality

Recommended

A major debate in education is teacher accountability.

Read this BLOG and the subsequent comments (in which I participate) to see what people think and say about teachers.

To consider. . .

After our discussion of "Eleven," I sense some strong interest among the class about poverty and education. . .See this Op-Ed from George Will and the primary study he discusses from Barton and Coley. . .

You may also find Parsing the Achievement Gap II (Braton & Coley, 2009) valuable. . .

And see page 4 in the most current SAT data

EdWeek blog referencing my work on "miracle" schools

See this from Walt Gardner:

Role of Research in School Reform