EducationNews.org

Small schools vs. large schools?
Small classes vs. larger classes?
Central organization vs. decentralized organization?
Charter schools vs. neighborhood public schools?

All these controversies reflect a misguided understanding of the educational mission.Research is mixed on all of the above questions.The organization of school districts should be orderly, expectations clear, official testing done once in the fall and once in the spring, (teachers can do their own spot checks as needed), constant changes should be kept to a minimum, and principals should be allowed to lead and teachers to teach.Central administration should be supportive, not threatening.All this should be a given.

WHAT IS IMPORTANT IS WHAT IS TAUGHT.Everything comes down to a good curriculum -- that and a qualified teacher.All else is unimportant.What happens to the eager kindergarten and first-grade children who arrive in schools expecting to learn?By fourth grade they are bored out of their skulls by the vapid, empty curriculum.They have been asked to write only about themselves and about which they know.School should be full of new knowledge, not a boring repetition of expressing one's inner emotions.

To start, most children, privileged and unprivileged, need a structured, sequential, phonics-based reading, writing and spelling program, and a structured math program that teaches addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.Students and teachers need readers and textbooks, one for each child in various subjects.With these kinds of programs and tools, teachers can take hold and deliver in their own competent way.The variety of books now used, with not every child having the same one, should be used in the classroom and school libraries for spare reading time or research.

Dr. Jeanne S. Chall, the great Harvard researcher, in her book, The Reading Crisis - Why Poor Children Fall Behind, wrote, "The needs of low-income children are not essentially different from those of children from middle-class homes."

Every child responds to a wonderfully rich program of history, geography, science and the arts.Give children real things to learn and they will absorb new knowledge avidly.Students in inner-city schools respond exactly as student in privileged schools do to studies of knights in armor, castles, the construction of cathedrals, and stained glass-making.They also thrill to Greek myths and the adventures of Odysseus.Introducing them to early civilizations of 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) also opens up worlds to them and gives them an understanding of the deep and rich culture of the Middle East.

Students don't care if they learn these things in a tiny school or a large school.What they want is to be exposed to real knowledge and new ideas with which to furnish their minds.

That is what teachers want to give them, too.

Sandra Priest Rose, a founding trustee of Reading Reform Foundation of New York, is a reading consultant. Email:mailto:info@readingreformny.org

Published September 10, 2007