Hi Carol, I picked the book up and couldn't put it down...Check out the
Mosaic Archives for a discussion on this book a couple of weeks ago...I
think this is such an important conversation...reading educators need
to fight against the abduction of our practices and pedagogy by CEOs
who view students and a passing test scores as products of schooling
....we should be teaching children to be...I paraphrase Deborah
Meiers..."a well-educated person has a mindfulness and thoughtfulness
about the world around him/her. They know how to read the world. And an
enormous number of our children are not being educated to have that
view of themselves." Just decoding and answering multiple choice
questions about a paragraph in a standardized test is not reading and
comprehension! Check it out....
Check out this videoclip ...Thu, Jun 25, 2009 --
RED6656002_2009R_53830: Deborah Meier on Obama Education Policy
http://www.pbs.org/merrow/tv/trust/interviews.html
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/21/schools
-----Original Message-----
From: Carol Lau <c...@ca.rr.com>
To: 'Mosaic: A Reading Comprehension Strategies Email Group'
<mosaic@literacyworkshop.org>
Sent: Wed, Jul 1, 2009 10:59 pm
Subject: Re: [MOSAIC] Learning Denied
I just read Learning Denied (1991) by Denny Taylor. Taylor, an
educator/researcher, documents a family's struggles with a school
district.
While this is not a recent publication, I think in some ways, things
have
gotten worse. I am a second grade teacher and I see the weight put on
standardized test scores, focusing on what a child/teacher/school
cannot do
instead of what he/they can do. With the new emphasis on systematic
phonics
and the reduction of learning to a list of subskills,
everyone--teachers,
students, schools, districts--get measured and compared by arbitrary
markers. Real estate values are based on school test scores and
student/teacher/school success is seen through a narrow lens. I
couldn't
help but rant a bit after reading this book tonight. Educators are
caught
in the legalistic web right along with families. Anyone else read this?
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