Books
Ratte, John
Books: THE ANERICAN HIGH SCHOOL W HAT is the American school? What should it be? Is it the "institute for individual and community development" Mortimer Adler mockingly projected, in...
...R Chestnut Hill, MA 02167...
...Similarly, many of the numer_9 ical indicators of performance had begun to show an improvement at the very moment national attention began to focus on the crisis in the schools...
...But even the more modest proposals for reform -- notably the sensible and Americans to learn not only the "new basics" for which the Presidential commissioners called in A Nation At Risk, but learn how to learn, and how to continue to learnas adults...
...Community education," he writes, "becomes not just schools opening up their facilities and extending their resources, but an ecosystem of institutions and agencies conscious of their responsibility for developing the knowledge, values, skills, and habits of a free people...
...It is too early to tell...
...They are synthetic and pragmatic in their suggestions that a mixture of teaching strategies and materials is best, and that judgments about what goes into the mixture, and in what proportions, ought to be left to the people in the schools...
...Money is required to produce the teaching equipment and texts teachers and students need...
...His mythical Horace Smith -- the archetypal good teacher compromising with a system which places inordinate demands on his mind and heart, to say nothing of his time -- is the figure around whom move students, principals, superintendents, in a dance Sizer would radically simplify in order to make it better...
...A PLACE CALLED SCHOOL PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE John I. Goodlad McGraw.Hill, $18.95, 396 pp...
...For all I know there are already a number of schools adopting the complex and precise "Four-Year Program" Boyer and his associates have proposed, indeed, much of the formal change called for in the more schematic reports -- principally by the Presidential CommiSsion which authored A Nation At Risk -- is already underway, and was underway even before the reports began to appear...
...HIGH SCHOOL A REPORT ON SECONDARY EDUCATION IN AMERICA Ernest L. Boyer Harper & Row, $15, 363 pp...
...Here the prospect is both hopeful and challenging...
...In 1984, the answer is, more or less, yes...
...Is it likely that much noticeable change in what schools in general, and high schools in particular, teach will come from these books and reports...
...John Ratte hibitions" which will rigorously test acaderiaic learning before the diploma is granted...
...Permanent Institute Faculty...
...Even those who would pare back the high school to the traditional academic task proposed for it in 1893 by the "Committee of Ten" acknowledge that in the intervening years the high school has been shaped by the progressive movement, the industrialization of American society, racial integration, and transformations in family life into a social institution seen by its users as required to "solve the social problems of the community," and often not "on the side...
...Schools in the Chicago and Atlanta systems have been designated as Paideia Project schools by school superintendents who were members of the Paideia group...
...These recent studies and books also agree, however, on the need to move back to Adler's goal, the heart of the school, "the provision of intellectual training...
...Boyer too wants more "coaching" (focused on skills), more Socratic dialogue, and less of the frontof-the-classroom-teaching-by-telling...
...yet the reader is constantly surprised by the inspiring combination of deep love for students and schools and trenchant, even radical, proposals for change...
...It is not damning with faint praise to say that Ernest Boyer's book is remarkably clear and well written for a commission study report...
...That "at mtia [niurrsitg Doctoral Study of the Development of Christian Theology within the Cultural History of Western Civilization An ecumenical program with possibilities for interdisciplinary study in the history of art, literature, and philosophy Information also available on Master's and Professional Programs Write: Department of Theological Studies, BOX C Saint Louis University, Saint Louis, Missouri 63108 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . m 20 April 1984:245 BOSTON COLLEGE " Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry Already A Tradition in preparing and renewing Christians for Ministry offers Summer Courses June 25 - August 3 Two week courses for credit or audit, for continuing education or/l degree (M.A., M.Ed., Ph.D) Summer 1984 Faculty Gregory Baum (Sociology), Margaret Brenn~n (Spirituality), Walter Brueggemann (OT), Francine Cardman (Church History) Michael Cavanagh (Psychology), Bernard Cooke (Sacraments), Regis Duffy (Liturgy), Thomas Groome* (Religious Ed...
...All present a variant of what Boyer calls "a single track for all...
...Her adjectivally over-ripe "portraits" of six "good" schools are uneven in length, breadth, and depth of description...
...617-552-8440 . . . . . I _ . ~Regis College, the Jesuit Faculty o f - ~'~ Theology in the Toronto School of Theology, i offers two eight-month programs in theo-l logical study in the heart of downtown | Toronto for men and women experienced ! in ministry...
...First, support must come from the American public for this kind of education for all children...
...And above all, money is required to pay for the teaching of teachers, and to pay the teachers...
...For even if teachers all started their work at a salary of $50,000, and even if publishers could be guaranteed their profits by universal adoption of truly creative teaching matedais, and all parents required high standards and homework and participated eagerly in all the special programs their schools would provide to enable the deficient learner to learn, nevertheless, America's university scholars and our master high school teachers would still have to begin the task of deciding on the content of a curriculum which might offer this country the possibility of an educated and civic-minded citizenry...
...Maria Harris (Religious Ed...
...Most striking in the current surge of interest in schools in general, and in the high school in particular, is agreement on this point...
...Adler's writing has the same passionate certainty one can see in work spanning five decades...
...Is it the "institute for individual and community development" Mortimer Adler mockingly projected, in 1941, as the dream of the progressives: "a glorified school which would be all things to all men, regulating everything from the prenatal care of the child to his vocational preparation, and solving the social problems of the community on the side...
...THE GOOD HIGH SCHOOL PORTRAITS OF CHARACTER AND CULTURE Sara Lawrence Llghffoot Basic Books, $19.95, 399 pp...
...For further information, contact: Margaret Brennan, I.H.M., Coordinator Regis College 15 St...
...But if American citizens and parents believed this argument to be true (and political leaders could be found to make it so), they would provide the second requirement for decisive change --- money...
...Mary Street Toronto, Ontario Canada M4Y 2R5 - - ' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - | 1 . L I calls for the same quality of schooling for all...
...For free catalogue, call or write: institute of Religious Education & Pastoral Ministry, Boston College, Dept...
...And to end:" And indeed, education is as yet something more envisioned than practiced...
...If the_9 nation's high schools are to offer, and require, sound academic programs for all students, three things are necessary...
...Finally, all of th~ curricular components of these reports are energized by a democratic vision...
...Adler' s critics have tightly pointed out that schools do not so much mold society as mirror it...
...Michael O'Neill (Leadership), Fayette Breaux Veverka (Religious Ed...
...Hopeful because all the reports converge in proposing some kind of core curriculum for all students...
...Books: THE ANERICAN HIGH SCHOOL W HAT is the American school...
...Kathleen Hughes (Liturgy), Philip King* (OT), Claire Lowery* (Pastoral Ministry), George MacRae (New Test), Sally McFague (Systematics), Gabriel Moran (Religous Ed...
...Challenging because this convergence enables us to identify some deeper issues which must be addressed before the new academic program can be established in all our schools...
...It is typical of this experienced and deft politician of education that he should offer two versions of reform, one expressing what is do-able now, the other a near utopian vision of an education which embraces all aspects of civic life...
...Our citizenry as a whole is our ruling class...
...On the other hand, the books are in agreement on what they would purge from high schools -- most notably the proliferation of electives, "the trivialization of the curriculum," and the more limiting forms of tracking -- and in the Commonweal: 244 clear call for better teachers, pay, and professional development...
...Vignettes in all these books show the lecture to be the norm -- often the deadening norm -- in American schools...
...They all argue that every American youth is entitled to as much academic opportunity as the individual can claim to use and as much advancement as achievement warrants...
...Sydney & Robert McAfee Brown (Social Ethics), john & Denise Carmody (Systematics), Kathy & Jim McGinnis (Church...
...Every tub on its own botoptimistic overview of John Goodlad," tom," says Goodlad, emphasizing that former Dean of the Graduate School of Education at UCLA, and the comprehensive and detailed proposals offered by Ernest Boyer in the book which summarizes the work of the Carnegie Foundation's Special Commission for the Advancement of Teaching -- are at one with Adler and Sizer in calling for reforms which will better the chances of all young the major role in defining and implementing curricular change must be given to the principal and the school...
...Commonweal: 246...
...None of them sees panaceas for our weak schools -- to the degree they are portrayed as weak -- in nationwide curriculum innovations, new school structures, new ways of using time, or _9 .w ways of grouping students -- all initiatives which seemed to offer hope in earlier decades...
...Og SPIRITUAL INTEGRATION FOR MINISTRY THEOLOGICAL INTEGRATION FOR MINISTRY A four-part program of theological courses, A flexible program of theological courses, pastoral experience, life in community, and using theological reflection seminars as the spiritual direction, with theological reflection primary means of integrating theory and seminars, praxls...
...Paul's and Milton...
...It is not surprising that these books reflect, in structure and language and point of view, the previous as well as the current preoccupations of their authors...
...At Brown, Sizer will be directing the Essential Schools Project, hoping for some five to ten schools to join in an experiment at reform which will focus on the triangle of the teacher, the student, and the material to be taught and learned...
...Lightfoot found in abundance at St...
...Among these studies Sara Lawrence Lightfoot takes to the extreme the personal and anthropological approach...
...This generalization is true, I think, even for the more programmatic and structured curricular models presented by Boyer and Adler...
...Parents -who are also voters and tax-payers -must be persuaded that the argument made by Mortimer Adler is true: We are politically a classless society...
...HORACE'S C01qPR01qlSE THE I~ILEMMA OF THE AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL Theodore R. Slzer Houghton Mifflin, $16.95, 241 pp...
...Best in the book are her r descriptions of, and musing on, the role of the principal -- reminding us that leadership in the individual school is another major theme of the reform movement now underway in all the states...
...Vocational education, pre-collegiate courses, and everything else in the comprehensive high school is to be there in various sequences after all students have learned to read and write and think, and after some common core of ideas and facts has been transferred (or the attempt made) to all students...
...Those who condemn Adler's call for one-track academic training for all students as the" Peter Pan Proposal" (the title of a critical article in the Harvard Educational Review) will also look with limited enthusiasm on Theodore Sizer's call, in his book, Horace's Compromise, for a core curriculum and a high school which abandons age-grading, sports, vocational training, and other social services in order to prepare its students for "exTHE PAIDEIA PROPOSAL AN EDUCATIONAL MANIFESTO Mortimer J.Adler Macmillan, $2.95, 84 pp...
...PAIDEIA PROBLENS AND POSSIBILITIES A CONSIDERATION OF QUESTIONS RAISED BY THE PAIDEIA PROPOSAL Mortimer j. Adler Macmillan, $3.95, 113 pp...
...The books under discussion also mostly agree in their lists of subjects to be taught and learned...
...We should, therefore, be an educationally classless society...
...They all iiasist that improvements must come in individual schools...
...Sizer's experiences as a school head (Phillips Academy) and Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education are dominated by his historian's training, his detailed observations of the fifty-plus schools he visited, and a most felicitous and personal style...
...Yet another common characteristic can be noted: the studies do not force the reader or would-be reformer to make a choice between progressive and conservative pedagogical philosophies...
...Money is required to give every community the schools of order and minimal beauty Goodlad and Sizer regrettably report missing in their travels about the land, and which Ms...
...The third thing required is the definition of the content of the required academic program...
...The innermost meaning of social equality is: substantially the same quality of life for all...
...Adler himself, veteran of the debate for more than forty years, has restated in bold terms the 'essentialist' case in The Paideia Proposal, and has stuck to his vision even through the politically sensitive regrouping in response to criticism in the follow-up book Paideia: Problems and Possibilities...
...Adler's call may well be one for social reform, since inequities, however much they may be Preserved by electives, vocational education, and tracking, are not created by schools...
...Generalizing throughout and in a concluding group portrayal, she reveals common concerns for academic competition, cultural and racial diversity and integration, autonomy and dignity in the lives of teachers, and styles of leadership in two private, two suburban, and two urban high schools...
...Sizer and Adler devote the most time to what are, and what ought to be, the modes of learning in our schools...
...Goodlad's prose is denser...
Vol. 111 • April 1984 • No. 8
