Fifty Two Fifty Two

Diane Ravitch has been visible in the area of education and politics for a long time. She started writing history in the 70′s and advising politicians in the 80′s. This book comes near the end of her career, and it allows her to cut loose on some of the policy ideas that have come before. Some of which she is somewhat responsible for as she promoted them. But looking back she offers a revised view of what she thinks of American education, and the reform movements toward improving schools. And she argues that we have lost our way from the purposes of education and the democratic ideals that we hold. She makes strong arguments against the rhetoric of standardized testing, “choice,” “accountability,” business management of schools, foundations, charter schools, and even Teach for America.  In the end, her recommendations are somewhat vague and allude to going back to ideas of core curriculum and coming to some sort of consensus. Hard for anyone to disagree really, but hard to imagine how we’d actually get there. I think in the end, she sort of says we need to stop trying so hard. Education is a hard thing to assess and maybe we’d be better off with a less stringent idea of assessment. One of the problems that she doesn’t have time for is the fact that education and society are so linked, and the problems of education and problems of society, a true solution will come when both of these change at the same time in the right direction. Definitely recommended reading for teachers, parents, and engaged citizens in public education.

You can read this book online on Google. It is mostly a book about teaching a writing class. But it is also a book about industrial society and how it shapes us, and how schooling and education is also a part of that system. Jensen’s first five rules of writing are: Don’t bore the reader, and he doesn’t. It is funny and a call to a better way of living for oneself, others and the planet. It is definitely the most thought provoking book I’ve read in a while, it is even making me reconsider my ideas of vocation and what it is I should be doing with the limited time I have on the planet. The subtext to this book is really quite philosophical, how can we live a meaningful life? And can we find authentic happiness? I highly recommend it.

The subtitle of this book is: How we are creating a generation of stressed out, materialistic, and miseducated students. That kind of sums it all up. This book is actually Pope’s dissertation for her doctorate at the University of Stanford. It reads better than it sounds.  But basically it is divided up into six chapters, five of which are research of five high school students (who are considered successful by school administrators and teachers), based on year-long observations and interviews. In the final chapter, Pope is able to conclude what the subtitle of the book suggests, that education in American public schools is more of a game than an activity of learning to be more fully human. Students learn early on that it is a system that has rewards and punishments and that “doing school,” is getting the grades to move on and become a social and cultural “success.” A good read, especially since I’m going to be writing my own dissertation in Education!

This book is one I assigned for my students in education at Pitt. The basic idea is that teachers and citizens should be concerned for schooling in America because students are not being taught how to be free and creative participants of democracy, which does not bode well for our future. Ayers recommend what most people in education do, moving away from standardized testing and labels, and toward real relationships and learning that encourages participation in society rather than conformity and resignation. And, yes, this is the Bill Ayers who is the “terrorist” that Obama was “palling around with.” I have actually met the man, and have a hard time getting the lines of thinking on this one; people can and do change over time right? Recommended for teachers mostly, public school teachers even more so. Here is a short video of a talk he gave that gets at some of these ideas.

This is a textbook for use in ethics classes (I am a TA for this class at Pitt).  It is aimed primarily at business and leaders, and is a great introduction to some of the basic ethical theories. Some of the good features are the case studies it uses, a focus on both leading and following, short movie recommendations to encourage ethical thinking in popular culture, and it avoids a lot of jargon.  On the downside (in my opinion), it is philosophy-lite and over uses many simplistic business and management theories to explain ethics. For an education class this works as there are not many ethics in education texts, but is more suited to the business, management, marketing, and communication fields. One of the goals of the book is to promote ethical thinking, and I think it achieves that. It asks a lot of questions and poses some ways to think about problems that are helpful to becoming and more ethically minded person.  It is finally up to the reader to try to put it into practice.

Hi, I’m Greg, a graduate student in education at The University of Pittsburgh. Taking the broad view of sociology and philosophy to try to discover both people’s belief and actions as they work out the purpose of education in their lives, work, schools, government, communities and society. I like to take a humanities approach, rather than crunching numbers. Which means taking into account history and culture in answering these questions.

I love to read and write (Mostly for Comment). You can see a profile and list of articles here. You can also follow me on Twitter. My blog is mostly an archive, but can be found here.

I rarely make New Year’s resolutions, mostly to avoid having to deal with the stress of failure, instead I attempt to rescue my integrity by just not resolving anything.  So, I am going to attempt this project.  I don’t have a set list of books I plan to read (although this amazon wishlist might give you some idea), but know that some will include books that I will read for classes I am in or am teaching.  I hope to attempt to read most of Douglas Coupland’s work, working backwards as I have read his three latest books, and his early novel, Life after God (I highly recommend). So I’ll see if I can complete the middle.  I also would like to continue to read Berry’s Port William Membership novels and stories, as I read and taught Remembering this past semester.  I mostly read non-fiction though and try to keep up with my discipline, while also dabbling in books that engage philosophy, sociology, culture, etc.

Here goes.  Hope the community will work as a sort of accountability group.  I am currently in Seth Godin’s Tribes, and plan to start Nel Noddings, Caring: a feminine approach to ethics and moral education in the next few days before the new year.