Math, Writing and Games in the Open Classroom

by Herbert R. Kohl

A teacher and author of other books, Herbert Kohl here gives many invaluable practical suggestions for teachers and parents on developing new and imaginative ways to teach. In addition to math and games, he gives valuable techniques to get children to write by encouraging them to rely on their own experiences and their own language to produce stories, fables and poetry. He also suggests that games can be very valuable in stimulating children's imagination and thinking so that they can better comprehend complex math concepts, strategy and probability theory. Over 150 illustrations. (From book back cover).

Genres: Education

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Educator best known for his advocacy of progressive alternative education and as the author of more than thirty books on education. He founded the 1960s Open School movement and is credited with coining the term "open classroom."

Reviews

[Laughinglioness · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered this wonderful little gem of a book called Math, Writing and Games in the Open Classroom by Herbert Kohl (1974). Kohl has such a frank way of describing his time in Harlem - I was drawn in by his sharing of his journey from the disastrous by-the-book teaching at the beginning to the brainstorm of asking the kids to write about themselves and their experiences. The way in which he is able to tease out what he was feeling and expecting from what actually happened makes his account so much more compelling in its honesty.

Kohl's book is clearly a deeply introspective prescription for what makes good teachers wherein he outlines a sort of hippocratic oath of teachers. Teaching 'by the book' was harming his ability to connect with the kids, and was essentially not only wasting everyone's time but was fundamentally damaging to the kids' sense of self. This isn't the sort of thing that is obvious, then or now, under the rubric of a standardized educational system and an intensely hierarchical structure of 'learning'.

[Tessa (Taylor's Version) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edit: If anyone knows Herbert R. Kohl's email....please let me know! I want to thank him personally.

One of my favorite books I've read this year. It may not be as exciting for everyone, but boy, was it for me! Kohl is clearly an extraordinary teacher who takes his students so seriously and was also so ahead of his time. At one point he mentioned teaching in New York public schools five years after desegregation, and when considering the equity and anti-racism in the work he was doing, I'm even more floored. The first part of the book is on teaching children writing and poetry, and I think any reader would find it beautiful. I was floored by the poetry the children wrote. I read one long, brilliant passage to my roommate and they remarked that it read like an early draft of "A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man," and I couldn't agree more.

The latter half of the book is a bit more inside baseball with many in depth and often pictorial instructions of games to play with children. This part was good as well, but accessed my teacher brain only, while the first part accessed art brain, life brain, the rest. One part of this half that really made me giggle was his list of possible game themes, where he very soberly says:

"Themes suggest games. It is easy to imagine games centered around any of the following subjects:

- founding a city
- borders and boundries
- bees
- pollution of a stream, a city, a park
- confrontation
- collective action
- dinosaurs
- rebuilding a devastated world
- the solar system
- discovering a new planet
- the meeting of two cultures that previously had no contact
- pigeons and people
- advertising a product in order to seduce people into buying what the don't need
- making it in a hierarchical system
- life in a mental institution
- life in prison
- war
- falling in love
- having children "

Isn't that something???