The Degree Of Defensiveness In Education Is Telling
More critics of our education systems in the English-speaking Western World — US, UK, NZ, Australia, Canada — have received pressures to stop exposing the harms being done. This defensiveness itself is growing which indicates that exposing truth is having an effect.
In Canada our latest relevant headline says: “Aboriginal students face ‘racism of low expectations’ in BC schools.” (Nov 25, ’15)
The very act of teaching, or should it be more accurate to say “misteaching”, is under scrutiny and those who protect shabby practice are also under the glass.
Increasingly it is the teaching of reading and the unresolved issues of the 100 years Reading Wars that bedevil us still. The READING FIRST movements of the past need to be revived as never before. Our children and increasing populations of refugees need the tools of insight by which to lead capable lives in our democracies.
There is definitely a viewpoint that is now crystallizing about the unacceptable gap between research and truth and the public’s knowledge about the ills and incongruities in our education systems.
It’s significant that even in the successful KIPP charter school locales the parents will use private phonics tutoring services for their children in order to keep up.
It is important to keep educating the public about what “teaching” should be and what it’s not. The recent article by Bruce Deitrick Price (Why Kids Can’t Read) in The American Thinker has generated 100s of comments worth reading and passing on. To paraphrase Shakespeare, we must be able to withstand the “slings and arrows” as we take up arms “against a sea of troubles”.
Those threats of being sued for libel and “cease and desist” letters are indeed badges of honor in our current education wars.
[pub ECC on Why Kids Can’t Read thread, 27 Nov, 2016]