Chapter 2 of Holding on To Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones

Chapter 2, titled "The Teacher as Schmidt" discusses that research and theory are taking over education mandates and should be used as a dialogic method to teaching, rather than an authoritarian method.  Teachers are called on to make judgement calls on a daily basis and deal with 25-30 studens at a time.  Teachers' goals are multiple and should be an ongoing series of microexperiments.  I feel that when teachers are not given any freedom to experiment, then teachers lose the desire to teach.

According to Neuman (2002), "Reading instruction must be based on sound research and not employ the latest fad in instruction."  However, the results of the interim study of the program Reading First show no reading comprehension gains than non-Reading First students.  Therefore, I believe that education should be based on a sound mixture of research based theories as well as the teacher's method of teaching and experimentation.

Holding On To Good Ideas In A Time of Bad Ones by : Thomas Newkirk

This is the book that I am reading for the semester in Language Arts 6-12 Methods course at FGCU.  After reading the first chapter, the curse of graphite means that if it can't be scored through a machine, then we don't hold the assessment accountable.  A lot of what we encounter as teachers is teaching to the standards and being held restricted as to how we teach, so that accountability is based on research rather than creativity.  Elwood P. Cubberly described schools being similar to factories in that we build our pupils according to laid down specifications.  Our students are the products and teachers are the machinery that transform the products.

In response to the first chapter, most teachers feel stressed due to the many objectives and material to use to cover these objectives.  Yet, we continue to lead teaching through the sameness of standardized testing.  With the more freedom we try to include in our teaching, the wider the discussion and debate can become as to our excellence in teaching.  I am looking forward to learning about the six literacy principles worth fighting for within the following chapters of this book.