I’m still mulling over Susan Jacoby’s Op-Ed from yesterday’s New York Times: “One Classroom, From Sea to Shining Sea.”
Jacoby’s The Age of American Unreason is a brilliant book, but I’m very wary of her plans for a national school curriculum.
Oddly, this week actually I went to my first school board meeting in 16 years – have I mentioned here that Lake Region was branded as one of the ‘lowest-achieving’ in Maine?
I’m against removing the principal (and possibly half the staff) in that case.
I find issue with several parts of the process in that case – testing with the SAT (only reading and math), trending over only three years, the legality of charter schools in Maine … it’s a mess.
But more importantly, I think the teachers should teach what they want. Local issues, local heroes, local science – in eighth grade we made maple syrup (40 gallons of sap to one gallon of syrup) partly because there were maple trees on the Middle School property, and partly the teacher (who happened to be my father) knew that it was a fun learning activity.
Oh, wait, no – it was hands-on, designed for multiple intelligences to promote life-long learning.
(That’s the correct jargon, right?)
Either way, now, 20 years later, I’m still looking forward to Maine Maple Sunday in two weeks.
But then there’s the flip-side: the crap in Texas with the board of education changing history, literally re-writing the books.
In that case I’m all for federal standards.
See my quandary?
Tags: education, history, NY Times, Portland Press Herald