Left Back : A Century of Failed School Reforms

Rating:
Summary: A good history of education in America
Review: This book does a good job of covering the last hundred years of the debate about education in America. A seemly simple question has been at the root of this debate: "What is the purpose of education?"

Through the 1800s for most teachers the answer was to teach children how to read, write, and do arithmetic. This was called the academic curriculum. By the late 1800s there was almost universal schooling.

Starting in the early 1900s, some education leaders thought it was best to prepare children for the job market, and especially once the IQ tests become popular, children were tested and slotted for a college track, or other tracks, as early at age six and seven. Some people pushed to improve self-esteem as the only real goal of education. Additionally many leaders of education started seeing schools as a place to "improve" society, and they wanted to go behind the backs of the parents and mold the children.

Over the years there has been a wide variety of programs, some of which have been a bit useful or effective, most have been destructive. For example in the 1920s and 1930s there was a push to be efficient in education, and that by figuring out where children would be working as adults and giving them only the education they would need, the schools could be good use of resources. There was a belief by some of the experts that students had little ability to transfer knowledge. As an extreme example of what this belief mean, just because students had been taught the basics of addition, they would have to learn from scratch the basics of subtraction. Because of this belief there was little interest in teaching children more than they really "needed" to know.

The questions people asked about the purpose of education are good questions to ask. It is helpful to know why children are going to schools. The author clearly feels that many of the leaders of education make big mistakes, and millions of children have suffered from an inadequate education. For example many people in the 1950s and 1960s felt that black children would grow up to have the menial jobs, so it was best to only teach them the basics; that it would be bad to try and force them to learn more than they would ever use.

And on the flip side, in the 1980s many experts felt that self-esteem was the only thing that matter, once children had good self-esteem, they would learn what they needed to know. So there were whole programs designed to help children have a strong positive self-image. Out of these schools came large numbers of children with little knowledge, but they felt good about themselves.

The author mentions program after program that were inflicted on children. The author goes over some of the various types of damage the children suffered. Then a group of education leaders would come up with a new program, lead another national movement, and a new group of children would suffer.

This is a good book for anyone who is trying to understand the current set of problems schools in our nation are facing. One of the fascinating things is how many of today's proposals have been tried in the past, and sometimes they have been tried several times.



Rating:
Summary: A BOOK FOR ALL INTERESTED IN EDUCATION
Review: WHAT A TERRIFIC BOOK! I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK FOR ALL THAT ARE INTERESTED IN SCHOOLS, THE EDUCATION OF THEIR CHILDREN AND FOR ALL TEACHERS THAT REALLY CARE. AS THE MOTHER OF SIX CHILDREN I FEEL THAT THIS BOOK BELONGS ON EVERY BOOKSHELF IN AMERICA. DIANE RAVITCH IS A SUPBURB WRITER WITH GREAT IDEAS AND A BRILLIANT MIND, WHO HAS ONLY THE BEST AT HEART FOR EVERY CHILD IN AMERICA. YOU CAN TELL SHE PUTS ALL OF HER OWN LEARNING EXPERIENCES INTO HER WRITINGS. SHE IS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT ABOUT CHILDREN BEING IN SCHOOL FOR ACADEMICS AND NOT TO BE SIDETRACKED BY THINGS THAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT AT HOME, CHURCH OR SYNAGOGUE.WE MUST KEEP OUR SCHOOLS OUT OF POLITICS AND LET OUR TEACHERS DO THEIR JOBS..I AM PROUD TO SAY THAT MY DAUGHTER IS A TEACHER AND HAS BEEN FOR ALMOST 20 YEARS AND I GAVE HER THIS BOOK AS A GIFT..AS NO ONE WANTS TO SEE ANY CHILD "LEFT BACK". AGAIN I WOULD RECOMEND ALL OF MY FRIENDS TO READ THIS AND YOU REALLY MIGHT LEARN SOMETHING,I DID.