Lost Lessons from 8YS

Gerald Bracey has a book coming out in March titled Getting Out of Education Hell: Moving Past 50 Years of failed Punish-the-Schools Reforms. In it, he writes of the eight year study done by the Progressive Education Association, and how the lessons pulled from it have been lost. To summarize:

1. Like politics, all education is local. Forget state and federal mandates.

2. Education in this nation is, or should be, more about living in a democracy, than about academic achievement.

3. Testing should be a means of learning about individuals, not separating and sorting them.

4. Evaluation should lead to improved curriculum, instruction and decision making, not to the punishment of teachers and administrators.

5. Teachers should teach students, not subjects or, at the very least, not subjects alone.

6. Principals must be democratically-oriented colleagues of teachers, not "bosses." [Principals who have been stupid enough to sign contracts requiring annual increases in test scores should renegotiate them immediately or find another job].

7. Students need to and enjoy taking some responsibility (being accountable) for what they learn (next).

8. Scientifically based education is an oxymoron. (See next lesson).

9. Flexibility and a willingness to change course, to do something different, are critical to the educational process.

10. "When ends are taken for granted and means dominate educational discourse.teachers will rarely be in control of their work, and the reasons given for taking one or another course of action will become increasingly bureaucratic and unsatisfying." This is widely known today as "defensive teaching."

Worthy of some thought.