Reform dvocte nd founder of the Essentil Schools Movement Red the following text nd give the title to it then copy out the min ides from the text
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- Essential Schools
Ted Sizer(1932 –2009)
Education-reform advocate and founder of the Essential Schools Movement
Read the following text and give the title to it, then copy out the main ideas from the text.
Sizer's own vision of changing schools emerged from the Study of High Schools that he undertook in the 1980s with several colleagues from HarvardUniversity and elsewhere. In 1984 they published their findings from A Study of High Schools, a five year investigation of teaching, learning, and school history that resulted in the publication of three books: Sizer's Horace's Compromise (1984), The Shopping Mall High School (1985) and The Last Little Citadel (1986).
Sizer found that, despite their differences in location and demography, American high schools, by and large, were remarkably similar and, quite simply, inadequate. He concluded that the typical American high school - with a huge array of unrelated courses taught in short, fragmented periods by teachers who face 150 students a day - promoted apathy and intellectual lethargy, and that the lesson such schools succeeded in teaching best, perhaps, was that school is deadly dull and has little to do with becoming a productive citizen or an educated human being.
Sizer maintains that, above all, schools must have a clear vision of what they want to accomplish, that is, what kind of person they want to send into the world. School reforms based on cor porate and government concerns about economic competition in the world are not necessarily based on the best interests of the student.
Sizer has a clear image of the kind of human being he thinks schools should strive to develop. Most of all, this person is a "thoughtful" human being, an individual with an informed, balanced, and responsibly skeptical approach to life. This person has strong intellectual skills and healthy intellectual habits. These include a keen analyti cal ability, a broad perspective, communication skills, and the capacity to see an issue from an other person's point of view, as well as imagina tion and a sense of commitment to the world. Dependability, practicality, courage, a sense of humor, a sense of social justice, and aesthetic sensitivity are also important. But as an aim of education, the quality of thoughtfulness is para mount.
Sizer asserts that to realize these objectives, the educational system must change radi cally - in organization, pedagogy, and curricu lum. To this end, he makes a series of proposals:
- The size of the group of which a student is a member should be small. Ideally, a school should have no more than two hundred students. If it is larger, it should be broken down into "houses," "teams," or "schools within a school," each with its own group of students and teachers. Each student should be part of a yet smaller group andhave a faculty advisor.
- The number of students a teacher teaches should be reduced to a maximum of eighty.
This would allow teachers to get to know students better, to help them more effec tively in their studies, and to evaluate their work in a more reflective manner.
- The classroom model in which the teacher is the dispenser of information and the stu dent is the passive recipient should be re placed by a model in which the student is an active, self-directed learner and the teacher is a guide, facilitator, and inspirer. The teacher creates opportunities for the students to learn. Teachers must look on themselves as learners who are growing, de veloping, and creating along with the stu dents.
- Teachers should have both autonomy and responsibility in educating the children. The principal should be a coordinator and support person rather than an overseer.
- The curriculum should emphasize depth rather than breadth. In mainstream schools, students are rushed through a lot of content without time to reflect on it or to develop proper habits of mind. Rather, one important though limited topic should be studied deeply over a long period of time. For example, students might study the history of the United States and the ex perience of Americans in the world rather than the whole of world history.
- Grouping should be multi-age and, in terms of ability, heterogeneous. Thus teams and classes should include students from several age groups and with various levels of ability. There should be no track ing. Each student should have as much aca demic stimulation and challenge as possible.
- Cooperative and collaborative learning among students and group problem solving should be emphasized, rather than competition for grades and for class rank.
- Long-term, in-depth projects leading to ex hibitions should comprise most of the stu dent's work. Students choose a theme or topic or are presented with one and then do an interdisciplinary study that culmi nates in a public presentation or exhibition demonstrating the skills and abilities they have acquired.
- Students should be assessed on the basis of a portfolio-a collection of their written and artistic work, video and audio tapes, and other products of their activity in school. The portfolio should be the basis of promotion and graduation.
- Higher-order critical thinking skills such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation rather than lower-order skills such as memoriza tion should be emphasized.
- The decision-making power about what goes on in a certain school should be in vested as much as possible in that school. Teachers, school administrators, parents, and students should decide together what kind of school and what kind of curriculum they will have. District school boards, state supervisors, federal officials, and other dis tant administrators should only be sources of advice and help, not authorities who make decisions and then impose them from above. The community in which the school is located should be brought into the decision-making process so that it can support and nourish the school.
- There should be regular interaction with the community through field trips, com munity service, and student apprentice ships and internships.
- The school year should be lengthened from thirty-six to forty-two weeks. The school day should be lengthened to eight hours, to last from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm. Each house or team within a school should have control over its own schedule. Teachers should be allowed time for meetings and collabora tive planning.
When Sizer founded the Coalition of Essential Schools in 1984, nine "charter" schools commit ted themselves to this program of reform. The schools involved include inner-city, sub urban, and rural schools, public and private schools, and middle schools as well as high schools.
The Coalition’s central goal is to “… inspire schools to examine their priorities and redesign structures and institutional practices” (CES National, 2007, p.11). While there are approximately 1,000 CES affiliated schools, the Coalition does not offer a pre-packaged formula or checklist for how to reform a school. Instead, individual schools are urged to embrace common principles which guide this bottom–up approach to school change and honor the unique contextual elements that are part of any school community. This philosophy is best summed up by the phrase: “no two schools alike”.
Explain the following concepts from the text.
Intellectual lethargy, cor porate and government concerns, a keen analyti cal ability, a broad perspective, aesthetic sensitivity, dispenser of information, passive recipient, facilitator, overseer, heterogeneous, track ing, class rank, student apprentice ships and internships.
Make sentences with them.
Tell the class Ted Sizer's vision of schooling. Use the following synonyms:
He suggests / believes / charges / holds / offers / maintains / asserts / finds / concludes /has a clear image / asserts.
Answer the following questions. Discuss with your partner.
- What is metaphorical meaning of Sizer's book The Shopping Mall High School?
- Do you like the idea of mastering a limited number of essential skills and areas of knowledge rather than coverage of a large amount of material at school?
- Do disadvantaged students benefit from schools where advanced academic course work sets high expectations for all?
- Why do nontraditional students prefer an active role and generally fail to thrive in teacher-dominated classrooms?
- Do teachers like students who think “out of box”? Do classes need a revolutionary way of thinking?
- Are smaller schools more productive work places for both adults and students?
Look at the cartoons. What school problems do they raise? Match the following quotation to one of them.
“Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know that in a universe so full of wonders, they have managed to invent boredom.”-Terry Pratchett