Countdown Paper:
The Shame of the Nation Chapters 7 and 12
5 Big Picture Sentences
In these two chapters, Kozol seems to be almost qualifying his previous expression of disdain for the American education system. He, of course, still writes with the purpose of exposing the dichotomy of white and black in education, but in these chapters, he mentions a few big exceptions: schools he calls “the treasured places.” These are places in which teachers are qualified and knowledgeable human beings, and treat their students as such. They take time to create relationships, investigate, and “do certain things with the children for no other reason than to make the classroom happy.” Writing about schools where childhood still exists seems to be Kozol’s way of giving hope for the future, but he is careful to say that it rests in the hands of teachers, “the lowliest of bureaucrats.”
4 Key Passages
pg. 163 “There is no misery index for the children of apartheid education. There ought to be; we measure almost every other aspect of the lives they lead in school… You do not find the answers to these questions in reports about achievement levels, scientific methods of accountability, or structural revisions in the modes of governance. Documents like these don’t speak of happiness.”
pg. 287 “… but in their temperaments and in their moral disposition many also stand outside that box, because they are aware of its existence, and this sense of double-vision, being part of something and aware of what it is at the same time, regenerates the energy they bring with them each morning to the very little place in which they use what gifts they have to make the schoolday good and whole and sometimes beautiful for children.”
pg. 297 “Longings of the heart, not merely mercenary motivations, are at stake in this career.”
pg. 299 “Teachers and principals should not permit the beautiful profession they have chosen to be redefined by those who know far less than they about the hearts of children.”
3 Key Terms
“barracks classroom” – the old, rundown trailers across and down the street from the main campus of an Oklahoma elementary school which serve over 350 students
“multiple intelligences” – theory created by Howard Gardner, which “emphasized the interrelationship of art and science with arithmetic and reading and the other elements of elementary school instruction”
“continuous” school year – the year-round calendar created to stagger the population of schoolchildren so that at any point, only ¾ of the children were in school
2 Connections
On page 297, Kozol talks about the connections that some teachers sometimes are able to create with their students. He says that sometimes they become so “beautifully connected” that the teacher asks to “loop” with them for another year. This reminds me of the movie Freedom Writers. It also makes me think of an inner-city school I visited called Yellowstone Academy in which teachers automatically “loop” with their student for one extra year. I think this is actually probably a good idea in tough schools like this in which it takes time to establish your credibility and create trust with students.
The teacher who mentioned doing things in the class just for the purpose of making the classroom “happy” made me laugh. My family has always made fun of my desire to make everything pretty and happy. They like to call it “study pretty.” My dad said once that if I was in charge of some sort of mission dropping supplies over a war-torn area, I would distribute gingham file folders and purple notepads and polka dotted pencils, not food and water. I don’t know about that exactly, but I do really love making my surroundings and my work supplies lovely.
1 Question
My question is much like Obie’s, who said, “Come on now! Like – hello? We live in a rich country? Like the richest country in the world? Hello?” Now that we know, what are we going to do about it?
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
education today
one thing that is working in education today:
we are learning more about how children learn - the brain and cognitive development - and applying that new research to how we teach children
one thing that is not working in education today:
the high-stakes testing system put in place by NCLB really just emphasizes and further damages the things which it was put in place to fix
we are learning more about how children learn - the brain and cognitive development - and applying that new research to how we teach children
one thing that is not working in education today:
the high-stakes testing system put in place by NCLB really just emphasizes and further damages the things which it was put in place to fix
shame of the nation
This is my first countdown paper; it covers the first six chapters of Jonathan
Kozol's The Shame of the Nation.
Countdown Paper:
The Shame of the Nation Chapters 1 – 6
5 Big Picture Sentences
The first six chapters of this text have focused on the inequalities that exist in America today. Kozol said that his goal in writing this book was to “unlock the chains” that separated children from the American mainstream. His research is particularly interesting and poignant because he has visited schools all over the country and formed lasting friendships with many students in order to write this book, and because he himself taught in segregated schools when he was a young man. Kozol has discussed the disparities in physical school buildings, programs offered, curriculum taught, parent fundraising, and availability of quality preschools and other special schools. For the most part, I agree with Kozol’s philosophy, even though at times the issues he raises seem dramatic or overwhelming.
4 Key Passages
pg. 36 - 37 “Few teachers that I know who work with kids in inner-city schools question whether this self-doubt is real – nor whether, especially among pre-teens and adolescents, and particularly boys, this sense of doubt is reinforced by pressure from those of their peers who have succumbed already to the cynicism that is commonly a cover-up for fear… rarely in suburban schools where the potential of most children is assumed… They tell us we are in a world where hope must be constructed therapeutically because so much of it has been destroyed by the conditions of internment in which we have placed these children.”
pg. 43 “When minority parents ask for something better for their kids, she says, ‘the assumption is that these are parents who can be discounted. These are kids that we don’t value.”
pg. 48 “’Inequality is not an intentional thing…’”
pg. 84 - 85 “…they can at least provide the artificial community afforded by a set of scripted lessons that leave little to the competence of teachers and can be delivered by a person who has never studied education and has no familiarity with the developmental needs of children… So a curriculum that was imposed, in part, to compensate for staffing needs of schools that had a hard time in recruiting teachers ends up by driving out precisely those well-educated men and women whom school systems have worked so hard to attract into these neighborhoods.”
3 Key Terms
resegregation – the regressive move towards separation based on race in neighborhoods and schools
“separate but equal” – the precedent set in Plessy v. Ferguson that was later struck down in Brown v. Board regarded the legality of having separate facilities for blacks and whites
school reform – “new vocabularies… new systems of incentive and new modes of castigation, which are termed “rewards and sanctions,” curriculum based on goals and standards chosen by the government, a “relentless emphasis on raising test scores, rigid policies of nonpromotion and nongradation, a new empiricism and the imposition of unusually detailed lists of named and numbered ‘outcomes’”, and “terminology that comes out of the world of industry and commerce”
2 Connections
On page 71, Kozol talks about how teachers in the “Success for All” program were discouraged from “verbal deviations or impromptu bits of conversation” because of their strict time schedule. While I was reading this, I was shocked because this is exactly the opposite of what I learned about how to have effective reading sessions with children in Early Learning Literacy. Children learn a story best when they interact with it, talk about it, and tear it apart and think about it. In fact, we learned that the story reading was really secondary to the conversation that came about because of the story.
Chapter 5, which spoke about the negative effects of standardized testing on the nation as a whole and on inner-city students in particular, reminded me a lot of the research paper I wrote last year about No Child Left Behind. I wrote a lot about NCLB’s ridiculous provision which shoved low-performing students from one failing school to another school with the expectation that they would do better at the now overcrowded and understaffed schools, so that discussion was familiar. Kozol also mentioned Rod Paige, and his articles were very useful since he was one of the main proponents of NCLB.
1 Question
In light of all of this overwhelming information about the realities of our broken-down system, how can we as educators do something about it?
Kozol's The Shame of the Nation.
Countdown Paper:
The Shame of the Nation Chapters 1 – 6
5 Big Picture Sentences
The first six chapters of this text have focused on the inequalities that exist in America today. Kozol said that his goal in writing this book was to “unlock the chains” that separated children from the American mainstream. His research is particularly interesting and poignant because he has visited schools all over the country and formed lasting friendships with many students in order to write this book, and because he himself taught in segregated schools when he was a young man. Kozol has discussed the disparities in physical school buildings, programs offered, curriculum taught, parent fundraising, and availability of quality preschools and other special schools. For the most part, I agree with Kozol’s philosophy, even though at times the issues he raises seem dramatic or overwhelming.
4 Key Passages
pg. 36 - 37 “Few teachers that I know who work with kids in inner-city schools question whether this self-doubt is real – nor whether, especially among pre-teens and adolescents, and particularly boys, this sense of doubt is reinforced by pressure from those of their peers who have succumbed already to the cynicism that is commonly a cover-up for fear… rarely in suburban schools where the potential of most children is assumed… They tell us we are in a world where hope must be constructed therapeutically because so much of it has been destroyed by the conditions of internment in which we have placed these children.”
pg. 43 “When minority parents ask for something better for their kids, she says, ‘the assumption is that these are parents who can be discounted. These are kids that we don’t value.”
pg. 48 “’Inequality is not an intentional thing…’”
pg. 84 - 85 “…they can at least provide the artificial community afforded by a set of scripted lessons that leave little to the competence of teachers and can be delivered by a person who has never studied education and has no familiarity with the developmental needs of children… So a curriculum that was imposed, in part, to compensate for staffing needs of schools that had a hard time in recruiting teachers ends up by driving out precisely those well-educated men and women whom school systems have worked so hard to attract into these neighborhoods.”
3 Key Terms
resegregation – the regressive move towards separation based on race in neighborhoods and schools
“separate but equal” – the precedent set in Plessy v. Ferguson that was later struck down in Brown v. Board regarded the legality of having separate facilities for blacks and whites
school reform – “new vocabularies… new systems of incentive and new modes of castigation, which are termed “rewards and sanctions,” curriculum based on goals and standards chosen by the government, a “relentless emphasis on raising test scores, rigid policies of nonpromotion and nongradation, a new empiricism and the imposition of unusually detailed lists of named and numbered ‘outcomes’”, and “terminology that comes out of the world of industry and commerce”
2 Connections
On page 71, Kozol talks about how teachers in the “Success for All” program were discouraged from “verbal deviations or impromptu bits of conversation” because of their strict time schedule. While I was reading this, I was shocked because this is exactly the opposite of what I learned about how to have effective reading sessions with children in Early Learning Literacy. Children learn a story best when they interact with it, talk about it, and tear it apart and think about it. In fact, we learned that the story reading was really secondary to the conversation that came about because of the story.
Chapter 5, which spoke about the negative effects of standardized testing on the nation as a whole and on inner-city students in particular, reminded me a lot of the research paper I wrote last year about No Child Left Behind. I wrote a lot about NCLB’s ridiculous provision which shoved low-performing students from one failing school to another school with the expectation that they would do better at the now overcrowded and understaffed schools, so that discussion was familiar. Kozol also mentioned Rod Paige, and his articles were very useful since he was one of the main proponents of NCLB.
1 Question
In light of all of this overwhelming information about the realities of our broken-down system, how can we as educators do something about it?
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