High School Pressure

Maureen Downey of  Atlantic-Journal Constitution has an article here describing how too much pressure is being put on children in high school:

As a high school English teacher for 35 years, and the mother of three children, I enjoyed this column and agreed with most of it.  I only have one addition:  Schools can lower student stress, and increase their skill level, by giving them more choice in what and how they learn.

How to Help the Middle Class

On CNN David Frum has an article here suggesting that one of the best ways to shore up the middle class is to shore up the institution of marriage.

Yes, shoring up marriage will help the middle class;  shoring up education will help it even more.   Having less education correlates with every social ill, from going to prison, to not being married.

 Schools need to make the development of a love of reading an absolute priority.  Avid readers read better, write better, concentrate better, and do better in all of their subjects, across the board.

 Schools are now making the teaching of skills their priority.  Policy makers seem to have no idea how children really learn.  Flood the classrooms with books;  let children have choice n their reading material.  Skills will take care of themselves, and the middle class will thrive.

Embracing Life

The National Review Online here had an opinion piece about abortion, urging everyone to have respect for the sanctity of life.
 

I have a hard time crediting the sincerity of people completely opposed to any kind of abortion (even with rape/life of mother exception) when these same people are adamant about cutting school budgets and social services. The last figure I saw for abortions of Down Syndrome fetuses was ninety percent. Were all these children born, it would impact almost every school budget in the country.

Put in place services for these children, and then I will listen more carefully when you talk about "embracing life."

The Right Kind of Choice

An Editorial in the Chicago Tribune here emphasized how many inner-city Chicago families were trying to get scholarships to attend the school of their choice.

Important choice comes for kids when schools (public, private, or charter) open up their curricula and start giving students a real choice in how they learn.  For example, in my 37 years of teaching high school English, I found that when I allowed my students to choose most of their reading—rather than dragging them through books they found too difficult or too boring—the amount of reading they did, as well as their reading scores, soared.

Avid readers read better, write better, concentrate better, and do better in all of their subjects, across the board.   I’ve taught in public, private, and parochial schools, and none of them made developing a love of reading a priority. 

The Little House Books

The New York Times Motherlode blog has an interesting article today here about the blindness of the girl, Mary, in the Little House books.  In the book, her blindness is attributed to scarlet fever, but researchers now think it was probably viral meningoenciphalitis.  That's important because so many children, over the years, became very frightened of having scarlet fever:

You know, what’s so interesting to me is how this shows the power of children’s books.  So many of us read that series and remember being so distressed and frightened at Mary’s blindness.  And I remember so vividly Anne Shirley’s trials and successes growing up (puffed sleeves!), and Betsy and Tacy’s adventures.

Books help teach me to feel empathy for children whose lives were very different from mine.  Are video games and movies doing that today?  I don’t think so.  I wish schools were better at developing a love of reading in children.

              

Parents Who Love Reading, Kids Who Don't

The Updated and Revised edition of Parents Who Love Reading, Kids Who Don't:  How It Happens and What You Can Do About It is now available as an e-book on Amazon.   I'm giving it to Amazon exclusively for ninety days, so I can offer it as a free download for five days.  If you don't have a Kindle you can still download the Kindle app for your computer, and read it there.  In ninety days I'll put it up on all of the other e-book sites.

Teachers and Policy Makers

The New York Times Opinionator column has a piece here describing the disconnect between policy makers and teachers.  I think it's excellent:

I taught in public, private, and parochial schools for 37 years.  Education all comes down to motivating students to want to learn, and putting teachers in a situation where they can be innovative and exciting.

 What do policy makers know about accomplishing this?  Nothing.