Sunday, October 31, 2010
Chapt 5
Gallager sums up the Readicide problem and brings up many practical solutions. He also explores the successful educational model used in Finland, the global educational leaders. Although Finnish schools do not have the level of cultural diversity or size of the US, their priority is on reading, comprehension, and reaching deeper cognitive processing, and not shallow coverage for standardized tests. Their focus on literacy is producing the best students in the world. Maybe we should be examining how the US can adapt this successful program into our failing educational system before our students and our nation slip from global competitor and superpower to a cautionary tail of internal social, and educational decay. I believe that shallow learning benefits no one. It hurts us on a international level by producing scores of graduates unable to compete in the increasingly high tech, and literate global economy. We are slipping, and will soon be surpassed if our schools continue to focus on shallow learning and ridiculous standardized testing routines. Penalizing schools for failing is also absurd. How counter productive can our government be when they withhold funding from schools who desperately need help with struggling students. I hope Washington sees the light, and changes these policies- soon.
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My opinion is we are not open enough with our students and that might be a reason they are struggling. In my placement the students are reading poetry and they are just so bored with it all, they can not understand why they are being forced to read this stuff. I explained to them that although they are required to know about these poems, they arent reading them because they have some great life lesson that will be used in the future. Instead, I said, that they are practicing their comprehension skills and that they are given difficult texts to test them. I said that the goal was to see how much they could understand about the text after they read it once, then twice and if necessary a third time. I think they felt challanged to see what they could know after just one reading. If we are more open about why the students are told to do things, they might achieve higher.
ReplyDeleteI agree that there are many demands on teachers. It requires a strong vision. What do students need to be successful in the new 21st century global economies?
ReplyDeleteI like that Ghallagher is finally coming full circle with his arguments. Its just as frightening as it is frustrating to feel helpless at times as an educator in the U.S. where we seem to major in some of the more minor aspects of education.
ReplyDeleteBecause teachers have been teaching the test for so long, students haven't had to think; they've been given the answers. The problem I see in my classroom isn't that the kids can't read the text; it's that they were never taught to think about it. Some of my students have figured out that I want them to think about what they are reading, some haven't. The progress I see is amazing though, because those that get it are helping the ones that haven't figured it out yet. It's great to see my classroom becomi ng a learning environment, not just a room full of bored students who don't care.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the US could benefit from trying to utilize some of the strategies the Finnish are using. However, I think we must be careful in implementing those strategies. We must remember that what works in one country with a specific set of students will not necessarily translate well for our students. It would be similar to what happened with the Texas Miracle.
ReplyDeleteAn additional comment on the poetry. I had an awesome teacher in high school that taught classic poetry at the same time as having us analyze song lyrics. The teacher was effectively using the 50/50 that Gallagher talks about without any knowledge of this practice. It was amazing how much we as students gained from analyzing song lyrics. We learned strategies for decomposing the classic poetry and we took away a greater, deeper understanding.
I agree that we should incorporate some of the ideas about education from others countries. We could benefit from some of Finland's ideas. Students in America have not been taught to think, they have been taught to regurgitate information for the sake of a test and most of the information the students forget by the next school year.
ReplyDeleteI agree 100% with you on this blog response. If we don't make significant changes in our education system we could fall behind the rest of the world. I also agree that we should look at the ideas Finland has found success in. I think it helps that these schools internationally aren't overwelmed with standardized testing, like the US schools are.
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