It was afterwards
It was afterwards that the teacher came up. She’d been teaching, she said, for twenty years in an inner city school. First she said that having all the tests associated with No Child Left Behind was like being “handcuffed.” For her and for her students. Then she added the stuff we’d talked about some that evening – about the role race plays in education – was “the elephant in the room.” It never got discussed in faculty meetings or curriculum workshops, but it was always there. And she added, “It isn’t race, you know, that’s really at work; it’s poverty.”
The guy who ended up an engineer spoke up during the reading. (It wasn’t really a reading at all. More a talk and conversation, April 2, at the RJ Julia bookstore in Madison, Connecticut.) He said he could still remember putting together model airplanes: the kind you made out of balsa wood and wrapped the wings in a fine cloth. It was the thing he cared most about age 8 or 9 (He looked to be 60 or 65 now) and was the direct beginning of his becoming an engineer, of his lifelong career.
My old friend in the first row wondered aloud how we could implement this sort of thing. If the thesis of How Lincoln Learned to Read had any validity – if people learn in all these different and exciting ways -- how can that be applied to the public school system? I think our small group agreed that we weren’t sure. That you had to start with an appreciation of how varied and astonishing learning was. And then see how it changed the way we think, teach, set up the thing called school.
Finally, it was after the discussion that the woman took the time to say that she got discouraged and wearied by all the arguments over testing, merit pay, failures and competitions. It was a great relief and a source of renewed energy to read a book that made her realize, again, how commonplace and astonishing learning can be.
How Lincoln Learned to Read couldn’t have gotten a better, communal review. And C-Span’s Book TV taped it so one of these nights it will be playing for all the insomniacs amongst us.
The guy who ended up an engineer spoke up during the reading. (It wasn’t really a reading at all. More a talk and conversation, April 2, at the RJ Julia bookstore in Madison, Connecticut.) He said he could still remember putting together model airplanes: the kind you made out of balsa wood and wrapped the wings in a fine cloth. It was the thing he cared most about age 8 or 9 (He looked to be 60 or 65 now) and was the direct beginning of his becoming an engineer, of his lifelong career.
My old friend in the first row wondered aloud how we could implement this sort of thing. If the thesis of How Lincoln Learned to Read had any validity – if people learn in all these different and exciting ways -- how can that be applied to the public school system? I think our small group agreed that we weren’t sure. That you had to start with an appreciation of how varied and astonishing learning was. And then see how it changed the way we think, teach, set up the thing called school.
Finally, it was after the discussion that the woman took the time to say that she got discouraged and wearied by all the arguments over testing, merit pay, failures and competitions. It was a great relief and a source of renewed energy to read a book that made her realize, again, how commonplace and astonishing learning can be.
How Lincoln Learned to Read couldn’t have gotten a better, communal review. And C-Span’s Book TV taped it so one of these nights it will be playing for all the insomniacs amongst us.
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