Mind the Gap - 402: Session Two

1. Quote 1: “I argued that the public schools had not been devised by scheming capitalists to impose ‘social control’ on an unwilling proletariat or to reproduce social inequality.” (page 6)

In this quote Ravitch is responding to a group of leftist historians in the 1970s who claim that the public education system is organized to intentionally maintain a socio-economic caste system and oppress the poor. I agree with Ravitch that public education is a system that has the ability to liberate the poor and the disenfranchised.  However, it is clear that the education system is not succeeding at these goals. Schools in low-income areas are usually the lowest performing schools, making the quality of education worse in the schools where education can make the biggest difference. I do not believe the system is meant to intentionally keep poor people down, but we have allowed a system to exist that is failing to lift these people up.

Quote 2: “Testing had become a central preoccupation in the schools and was not just a measure but an end in itself.” (page 12) This statement gets to the heart of the problem with high stakes testing in our education system today. Most people would agree that it is important to assess student and teacher performance, but the focus on testing has overwhelmed so many other important aspects of education. We have lost sight of cultivating student learners, especially whole learners, by replacing them with student performers. If we educate our citizens that the end goal is more important than the process, we are eroding a society of critical thinkers.

2. I think Ravitch hits the nail on the head in her description of a well-educated person. To expand on her description, I think a well-educated person who has the ability to think critically about any given problem using both skills and knowledge accumulated throughout life. A well-educated person has the ability to see multiple perspectives and does not accept the status quo without due consideration of all perspectives. A well-educated person is someone who is continually striving to grow their knowledge and understanding.

3. I enjoyed our class discussion of the first two chapters of Ravitch. The part of the discussion that stands out to me was when we talked about teacher assessment. There seemed to be consensus that there needs to be some way to measure teacher performance. However, I think there was also agreement that exclusively using the high stakes testing method is not the best way to assess. Many people in class suggested different methods of assessment, but I was most intrigued by what Matt and Greg shared about the evaluation process at De La Salle. A regular evaluation by a committee made up of people representing different parts of the school seems like a fair and reasonable method. Such a committee could be informed by student evaluations, peer evaluations, principal evaluations, and the teacher's own self evaluation, in addition to test scores. This method allows for various types of information and gives the teacher more substantive feedback for improvement in the future.

4. Gap: CA SS 11.7.2 Explain U.S. and Allied wartime strategy, including the major battles of Midway, Normandy, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the Battle of the Bulge.

Resources

website - http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/turning-tide-europe-1942-1944

book - Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the Second World War by John Ellis

article - Allied Strategy in World War II: The Churchill Era, 1942-1943 by De Lamar Jensen

EDSITEment is a website hosted by We the People which is a program of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The website contains a plethora of lesson plans related to various periods of time in US History for teachers to use in their classroom. One EDSITEment lesson plan focuses specifically on the Allied strategies during World War Two. The lesson plan focuses on the agreement between the Allies to settle Europe by toppling Italy and Germany before they confront Japan. In their advancement on Europe, the Allies first decided to first attack Italy from north Africa, thinking that it would be the easiest of the Axis countries to defeat. From Italy, the Allies would move into the rest of Europe, overtaking Germany. Eventually, after Italy proved more difficult than originally thought, the Allies agreed to attack Germany from the west in France.

5. My Inquiry Question is: Would creating a thematic curriculum that replaces the traditional US History textbook with alternative resources create increased student engagement and learning?

One resource I found useful was a book called Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen. I read this book a few years ago and re-read portions of it as I began to consider my Inquiry Question. The book concludes that the traditional US History textbooks we use make the content boring and unappealing to students, and explores various reasons to explain why the textbooks are unsuccessful. This was an incredibly useful resource because it gave me a foundation for my research by providing a number of different avenues to pursue. Even more useful was that the book is very well sited and many of the references in the book are potential resources for my further exploration into the topic.

Another resource I found useful was an article from Educational Leadership called Out with Textbooks, In with Learning. This article focuses on the way that textbooks organize and provide information. The authors argue that textbooks are basically reference books that lack focus on big ideas and central concepts. This related to my interest in developing a theme based history class that I think will help students better engage with the content. Using themes or central concepts allows a student see progression and make connections, rather than have to decipher which facts from an avalanche of  facts are important.

Comments
Yadira Zapata - http://unahistoriadeunamaestra.blogspot.com/
Mike Rose - http://Mikejas.blogspot.com/
Andrew Eckloff - http://aeckloff.blogspot.com/