Dear WinkWorld Readers,
The peak into my book-in-process continues. Briefly, I have given you a glimpse into Chapter 1 (literacy), Chapter 2 (stories), and Chapter 3 (literacy stories). In Chapter 4, I take on standards with stories about the dreadful effects of such mandated and controlled teaching and learning. We live in an age when the policy-makers want to standardized students. As some of you know, I started teaching 50 years ago, and I have yet to meet a “standard” student. Look at your own children–I am guessing that they, too, are unique individuals.
Not only do we have policy-makers h*ll-bent on standardization, but we also have corporate ‘reformists,’ claiming to be experts, whose goal it is to corporatize public education and make money on it. Always follow the money. Thomas Jefferson and his beliefs in free public education must surely be rolling over in his grave.
Please note that the policy-makers and the corporate education folks have one thing in common: They are far away from the classroom, both in miles and in years. The closer you are to actual kids in classrooms, the better you understand teaching, learning, and students. The farther you are from a classroom, the less you understand about teaching, learning. and students.
I will open this chapter with a story about the big ideas of teaching and learning which ebb and flow through the decades.
After this, I will bring in a few of the grass-roots warriors, who continue to speak truth to power: Thank you, Diane Ravitch, Ken Goodman, Steve Krashen–I really should not even begin this list, as there are so many scholars and teachers today who are daily contributing to the struggle to save public education.
Following this, I will have a couple of stories, which hopefully capture how kids and teachers suffer under these mandated outside influences.
Please note the Katie Knox illustration which will be in this chapter.
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