Well, you all know that I’m a little leary of data and statistics from last class and here is the book that caused that scepticism. I’m not sure if this is one of the titles you offered up in class last week when I mentioned it Professor Sample.
The Manafactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s Public Schools by David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle the book came out as a sort of response to the 1983 “A Nation at Risk” report.
So, now for the statistics – Teacher dropout rates http://www.districtadministration.com/pulse/commentpost.aspx?news=no&postid=49603 kind of interesting to see that a higher percetage of teachers “drop out” of the profession than students, but with all the contradictions that we have highlighted between our readings and our (often forced) practice not surprising.
I am completely on board with Graff’s assertion that we should use students ability to argue conversationally to teach agumentative writing. Unfortunately, the point about summarizing possible objections is not (or at least in my experience) not the easiest thing for students to do. I think a better approach would be to find students who have differing views on a subject and let them argue. Then use this experience as a type of prewriting. What I’ve found is that students need to have this type of emotional encounter in order to help develop their logical commentary.
As far as the talk about using templates – I think they are very good for struggling students and for giving an idea to all students what the teacher hopes will be created through the assignment, but it should be emphasized that students shouldn’t limit themselves to just the templates and be encouraged to move beyond just the confines of the template. Regardless, you’ll have those students who will always attempt to do the bare minimum and this is when the grading on an ability scale come into play. No matter how ‘unfair’ students and parents may say it is, if you know a student is capable of doing more they should be graded harder – it is our duty to push them to do their best and if a student is capable of more and we only grade them on the lowest of standards – are we really doing them any favors?
The point in Graff’s book that made me laugh out loud was the 1 st sentence of chapter 11 on Hidden Intellectualism – 3 semi-colon and 1 colon – yeah, my students wouldn’t be intimidated by a sentence. Truthfully, I’m a little intimidated by this sentence. Yet, in the chapter he talks about valuing street smarts – I don’t see too many people writing a sentence like this to explain the drawbacks to using a carberator as compared to fuel injection. I fully value street smarts; however, the educational system in which we raise our children does not. Programs that value these talents and smarts are being cut in order to pay the testing companies for prep materials to prepare students to take the tests purchased from the same testing companies.
Does anyone else see a proble with the fact that we don’t make anything in America anymore? Or with the fact that people like Graff who have ‘pie in the sky'(not content, but practicality within our current system) ideas about education haven’t actually been in a K-12 classroom for years if ever?
Yes. As I alluded to in the end of my post, I, too, was turned off by Graff’s distance from "real world" experience. I’m not any more familiar with a K-12 classroom, but it’s clear Graff is talking from a perspective entrenched in university life and ideals of intellectualism that often seem somewhat less than tangible.
I do not have the book in front of me so I cannot quote Graff, but he says he thinks students are capable of certain reading and writing levels that most kids are just not capable of. Either lack of motivation or skill means they simply are not performing at the level Graff says they can. In that way, I think Graff’s picture of public education is out of touch with reality.
I thought it was interesting that my husband and I were out to dinner Friday night and he mentioned the trumped up crisis in the Nation at Risk report and then I read you post to see others have made the same claim. He believes the producers of the report were trying to create a crisis, convince people that the public school system was in a state of collapse, so they could step in and save the day with their solutions including vouchers and the rest. I responded that I did not think the report could be all wrong since the state of public schools is pretty bad, to which he said it is not a systemic problem, it is an urban problem in areas where the funds are not available to meet the needs. He compared the relatively low property values in Prince William County to Fairfax county, where they can generate 5 times as much money by imposing a 3% tax rate, and the state does not step in to equalize the funding.