Picking up a meme from progressivehistorians.com:What one book on education do you think Obama should read? Kozol's Savage Inequalities is an easy out, but probably doesn't get at what I'd really like him to know that he doesn't already know. Consider readability, clarity of the argument made, etc. He's not a scholar, he's a busy candidate (or, likely, president). Please explain why you arrived at this choice. Entries will be judged by the coherence of their justifications :). I have to think about this myse...
The Purpose of Small Schools
This is cross-posted from Bridging Differences with the explicit permission of Deborah Meier. That is a site worth monitoring. And I thought this might be of interest. - tkDear Diane,A lot of questions. I’d love to know more about your answers, too. But part of the problem is that there are lots of different things called charters—even the charter laws differ dramatically in different states and the schools even more so. Not all are small, and many are no more, and sometimes maybe less, self-governing than the average regular public school. Vouchers are, of course, a straightforward proposal...
Games and social foundations classes?
I've been pondering how to engage students in an asynchronous class this fall, and I'm going to take a turn trying a game (that I've audaciously named Strata because, well, it starts out with a straightforward stratification focus). I may well fall flat on my face, but there's a deeper question: what are the possibilities for using games or simulations in social foundations classes? My interest here is in generating discussion about the game (and the meta-gameplay I'll plan for partway through the semester), but there are other purposes that could be served by such activities. We create a simulated...
Key Thinkers Lost to Education?
An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education explores how key scholars from a range of fields have been essentially written out of their history:How is it that Freud is not taught in psychology departments, Marx is not taught in economics, and Hegel is hardly taught in philosophy? Instead these masters of Western thought are taught in fields far from their own. Nowadays Freud is found in literature departments, Marx in film studies, and Hegel in German. But have they migrated, or have they been expelled? Perhaps the home fields of Freud, Marx, and Hegel have turned arid. Perhaps those disciplines...
Small School Movement
I haven't posted in ages, but thought I would see if I could get a debate going on the merits of the small school movement. I recently visited a small school in Brooklyn that really impressed me. All of the seniors in a school that almost exclusively serves low-income Black and Latino/as applied to college and the majority were accepted (in some cases to great schools like Brandeis and UNC Chapel Hill). Most passed the New York Regeants tests in math and English and an increasing number in the harder science subjects. The teachers all appeared dedicated to the mission of ensuring that their students...
THE RESEARCH TRIANGLE. SORT OF.
As a student of education policy, my foremost personal goal is to keep my teacher sensibility and credibility from permanently draining away. Reading research reports, with their inevitable earnest calls for still more research, authoritative policy claims and suggestions, one understands that the base of the research-policy-practice triangle is practice, the apex being the conjunction of research and policy. Practice is a kind of collection pan (or audition stage) for ideas generated by scholarly investigation and clever policy-making. Teachers serve as both subjects and objects of reform,...
Do You Have an Opening for a Social Studies Teacher in Your School?
[NY Daily News] Students at a South Bronx middle school have pulled off a stunning boycott against standardized testing.More than 160 students in six different classes at Intermediate School 318 in the South Bronx - virtually the entire eighth grade - refused to take last Wednesday's three-hour practice exam for next month's statewide social studies test.Instead, the students handed in blank exams.Then they submitted signed petitions with a list of grievances to school Principal Maria Lopez and the Department of Education."We've had a whole bunch of these diagnostic tests all year," Tatiana Nelson,...
Considering Social Justice and Project Based Learning
This is a slightly modified version of a "book review" I did at Daily Kos. IT is an essay largely about one book, and while it is LONG, I think it relevant to also post it hereSpectacular Things Happen Along the WayPlease bear with me. I have to explain. Partially as a result of my visibility ad Daily Kos, I often get asked to write about books, particularly on education. Sometimes they show up at home or at school without notice. Even if they are good books, often it is not relevant to write about them here.Also, people who try to turn the material from doctoral dissertations into books...
Thoughts from a journal editor
Crossposted from Social IssuesAs editor of Education and Culture, the journal of the Dewey Society, I write a brief note with each issue, usually offering a few ideas of my own while briefly discussing the articles. I went back recently and reread the notes from the first two issues I edited, 20(2) and 21(1), from about 3 years ago.In the first I discuss what I see as my hopes for a journal sponsored by the John Dewey Society:When I wrote the JDS board about taking over the journal, I gave a rationale that read, in part, that [My] interests are broadly Deweyan. Though I have read and studied Dewey’s...
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