K-12 Topic: Parents and Schools

10-second review: What do most Americans want in their schools? “Americans seem to want schools to be more or less like the schools they attended."

Source: Yagelski. English Education (July 2005), 267. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Comment: Interesting piece of information. What was it like when I went to school? Some of what I learned in school was interesting. But I encountered a lot of uninspiring teaching. Rote memorization. Read the chapter and answer a ton of questions at the end of the chapter. The smell of formaldehyde. Never being taught to write compositions or term papers. When I wrote my first composition in college, I didn’t know enough to provide a summary paragraph. Research papers would have probably been downers, though, with the emphasis on correct footnotes and bibliographies and without any emphasis on content.

What I missed the most about schooling was a sense of purpose. Why am I being taught this stuff? Diagramming. Diagramming and more diagramming. But I will never forget the [Christian] Brother Henry who read Shakespeare aloud to 50 boys who couldn’t care less about Shakespeare, but, as he read it, we cared. We were on the edge of our seats waiting to learn about how that pound of flesh was going to be taken. He is one of the reasons I became an English teacher. That and to try some different approaches including writing, spelling with trouble spots, vocabulary with roots, prefixes and suffixes, and literature as a way of understanding life. RayS.