Proverbs and Quotations:
“Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.” Horace Mann
The Problem:
Very recently (February, 2024) I listened to a report on the radio where it was claimed that very few students at all levels of education actually are able to read at or above grade level.
When I was teaching high school English in the 1990s I had no students among my eleventh and twelfth grade classes who read at or above grade level. My best students, perhaps two or three students out of a class of 35, could read at an eighth grade level at most.
The problem is still with us–it remains unsolved.
I devised a solution that worked for 80% of my students when I was given the freedom to teach my students using teaching materials I devised.
That freedom to utilize teacher expertise and experience to solve the problems of my own students disappeared, much to the loss of my students’ educational progress.
When I was forced to follow a mandated “new Bible,” a pacing chart which dictated what I was to teach each day from the assigned course textbook, I had no further opportunity to supplement or replace the required texts with texts which met the current ability and interest of my individual students. Sometimes I did find ways to circumvent this lock-step and very deadening curriculum requirement, but it was not easy. Rather, it was very expensive for me at my own out-of-pocket cost to produce better teaching materials than those provided by the Board of Education.
Some Examples Reflected in the Professional Literature:
In an article by Michael J. Young in the journal Language Arts, Volume 99, Number 2, November 2021, pages 113-125, titled “Not Allowed: Power and Practice in Literacy Teaching as Defined by the State,” there is featured as the opening vignette this report of a first grade teacher’s personal experience:
“I feel like we are testing kids to death. Every two weeks we have a reading assessment that we have to do with our students. We’re not allowed to read it to them, so they really struggle … there’s a lot of pressure…. I feel like we’re just pushing them away too fast, way too hard. And then I think that leads into the behaviors and things that we see. They aren’t allowed to be kids. We’ve taken that away from them. –Annie, first-grade teacher”
The opening sentence of the article reads:
“Annie’s concerns are tied to a challenge facing US elementary literacy education: third-grade reading laws” (page 113).
Another publication I receive through my NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) subscription is the Council Chronicle. The November, 2021 issue is titled “The Promise of Making a Difference.” An article by Trisha Collopy is titled “A Stress Test for American Democracy: Teaching Civic Reasoning and Engagement in a Time of Division,” pages 18-20. The article concludes under the heading “Fresh Challenges,” and states:
“While the COVID-19 pandemic was not on the horizon when the NAEd [National Academy of Education] began its work, Lee [Carol D. Lee] says it has added urgency to the conversation–and to the interdisciplinary nature of the work.
“To make sense of the pandemic requires an understanding of the science of viral mutations and vaccines; the math behind probability and trends; the literacy to sort credible news sources from disinformation; and a knowledge of the history of US vaccination campaigns, she says. “If you can’t engage in that kind of content alone, along with questions about the rights of the individual versus community good,” decisions can have devastating results, she says.
“As the culture wars over school curricula play out, Lee, Levine [Peter Levine], and Freedman [Sarah Warshauer Freedman] say the answer for educators is not to step back, but to step forward.
“The more teachers avoid these [difficult] topics, the less engaged in the civics space … young people will become,” Freedman says. “And the role of schools in a democracy, including English teachers, is to teach young people to grapple with these kinds of tensions.”
Lastly, from the NCTE journal English Education, also part of my NCTE subscription, Volume 53, Number 4, for July 2021, in an editorial by Melanie Shoffner titled “Leadership: Honestly, It’s Not for Everyone,” pages 248-253, wisely observes:
“How can teachers be empowered and agentic if they have little autonomy over their own curriculum? … how can educators at any level lead if their instructional practices and professional identity are constantly, and publicly, denigrated and devalued? When did leadership in education default to those with the smoothest smiles and the politic responses and the right connections instead of those who know what they’re doing, who are doing it for the right reasons?” (emphasis added)
My Comment:
Many educational leaders do not know what they are doing.
They have what I call the “Nabal Syndrome.”
1Sa 25:14 But one of the young men told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, saying, Behold, David sent messengers out of the wilderness to salute our master; and he railed on them.
1Sa 25:17 Now therefore know and consider what thou wilt do; for evil is determined against our master, and against all his household: for he is such a son of Belial, that a man cannot speak to him.
They are unwilling to acknowledge the expertise and success of the teachers who do know what they are doing. Good teachers go unrecognized and are not encouraged in or praised for the work they do. My students asked me, “Mr. Smith, how come you are never chosen as ‘Teacher of the Year’?”
The leaders and administrators are not open to constructive suggestions made by those who serve under them.
Contrast the attitude of King David:
1Sa 25:32 And David said to Abigail, Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, which sent thee this day to meet me:
1Sa 25:33 And blessed be thy advice, and blessed be thou, which hast kept me this day from coming to shed blood, and from avenging myself with mine own hand.
THE SOLUTION:
- Parents must take the initiative at home by reading to their child or children from the time they are infants until they are of an age where they no longer live in the household.
- Parents must engage in home schooling when possible or in home education which is always possible. Turn off the media. Disengage from excess participation in sports. Use the reading ladder concept to select three books of interest to or concern for your child: choose from the public library three non-fiction books on the same subject–one from the children’s library section for an easy to read book on an elementary level; one from the young adult section of the library for a more advanced level; and finally, one from the adult section for the most advanced level. Reading the books in this order of difficulty, your child will learn enough from the first level to successfully understand and learn from the middle level and will then be able to succeed in reading and understanding the adult level book. Your child will have grown in reading skill and subject knowledge as a result.
- To start the whole process, especially for reluctant and struggling readers, invest in the reading program I wrote and used for almost 40 years during my teaching career. The price for the book in printed form on Amazon is $20. The digital (Kindle format) edition is priced at $10. Search for it under the title, The Language Enrichment Program, or my name, Jerome Smith.