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College ‘beach books’ are new, easy

September 19, 2011 By

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a 2010 book on a black cancer victim whose cells were used for medical research, is by far the most popular book assigned to new college students as “common summer reading,” concludes a survey by the National Association of Scholars.

Almost 90 percent of college chose books published since the start of 2000; only two selected books published before 1972. Only two books — one by Mark Twain and one by Aldous Huxley — could be considered classics.

It’s not just political correctness, says Peter Wood, president of NAS. “Colleges have lowered their expectations of what college students are capable of understanding.”

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‘Please sir, can I read some more’

August 24, 2011 By

As an eight-year-old in foster care, Kalimah Priforce read all the books in his  group home, some of them twice. Told it was “impossible” to get more books, he went on a hunger strike, he writes in “Please sir, can I read some more” on The Good Men Project.  Inspired by Peter Pan, Encyclopedia Brown, Huckleberry Finn, The Little Prince and Pippi Longstocking, he got more books and the right to visit a local library.

Reading exposed him to a wider world.

Thanks to Twain, Barrie, Dickens, Caroll, and so many more,  books gave my earliest dreams the push they needed to make the incredible journey from the confines of a Brooklyn group home to the learning labs of Silicon Valley — where I currently run an edtech startup. My life’s work is about giving every learning miracle its push.

A “hackademic,” Priforce started Qykno to develop career-exploration software.

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Rhee’s favorite education books

August 20, 2011 By

Michelle Rhee lists her five favorite education books in a Browser interview.  Number one is A Hope in the Unseen, Ron Suskind’s portrayal of Cedric Jennings, an honor student at a D.C. high school who struggled to succeed in the Ivy League.

Also on Rhee’s list:

Other People’s Children by Lisa Delpit

Why Boys Fail by Richard Whitmore

Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe

Special Interest by Terry Moe

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Favorite books

August 2, 2011 By

The National Association of Scholars’ blog is asking people to list their 10 favorite fiction and non-fiction books. My list is here.

I’m reading other people’s lists to find new books to read. Though I majored in English and read my way through the canon, I know there are holes in my reading.

We can’t teach students to love reading, writes Alan Jacobs, an author and English professor.

Education is and should be primarily about intellectual navigation, about—I scruple not to say it—skimming well, and reading carefully for information in order to upload content. Slow and patient reading, by contrast, properly belongs to our leisure hours.

Serious “deep attention” reading always has been and will be a minority pursuit, Jacobs argues.

 

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Ed books for the serious beach reader

July 19, 2011 By

Andrew Rotherham’s 7 Education Books to Take to the Beach:

Class Warfare by Steven Brill

It’s not a full history of the reform movement, but this is the most inside account of the last several years. As evidence, people are already buzzing about Class Warfare, which won’t be on shelves until mid-August, and wondering if Brill is on his way to becoming education’s Bob Woodward.

Sub Culture: Three Years in Education’s Dustiest Corners by Carolyn Bucior

The Faculty Lounges and Other Reasons Why You Won’t Get the College Education You Paid For by Naomi Schaefer Riley

The American Public School Teacher by Darrel Drury and Justin Baer

Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools by Terry Moe

The Failure of Environmental Education (and How We Can Fix It) by Charles Saylan and Daniel T. Blumstein

The Same Thing Over and Over by Frederick M. Hess

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Ritorno

May 28, 2011 By

Diana Senechal and Michael Lopez have done such a great job of blogging in my absence that some of you may be wishing me a longer vacation. But I’m back from Italy and reasonably de-jetlagged.

I like to read novels set in the places I visit — and my daughter gave me a Kindle for my birthday — so I started our trip with Edward Bulwer-Litton’s The Last Days of Pompeii, (evil priest of Isis tries to steal virgin from would-be husband) and Robert Harris’ Pompeii (aqueduct engineer rescues  evil developer’s virgin daughter). The first created a melodrama from the ruins of Pompeii. The second taught me a lot about aqueduct engineering.

Other than Rick Steves, who seems to be the guide of all American tourists in Italy, I didn’t read anything for Positano, which was stunning beautiful, and Cinqueterre, which resembled Positano.

I did throw in Alexandre Dumas’ The Borgias, even though it’s mostly set in Rome.  Very few virgins.

Then it was on to Florence and San Gimignano, for which I read E.M. Forster’s Where Angels Fear To Tread (virgin fails to get sexy Italian) set in a Tuscan hill town.

Foolishly, I tried to read a non-fiction book about Venice, but the detailed descriptions of the art — too many Madonnas, speaking of virgins — were more than I could take. I also gave up on a D.H. Lawrence book on Italy, which had more purple prose than Bulwer-Litton.

We did watch The Tourist, set in Venice, before leaving, as well as The American, set in an Italian hill town. Neither makes any sense, though The Tourist is livelier.

From Venice, we went to Lake Como. I read Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed (evil lord steals virgin from would-be husband), which is set nearby.  Allegedly, one of the greatest novels in Italian history, it includes an acerbic economic analysis of the Milan bread riots (the harvest failed, grain prices went way up, price controls failed, bakers got the blame), a harrowing description of the 1630 plague in Milan and a strong argument for forgiving people who don’t deserve it. The virgin gets her man.

At this point, I ran out of virgins and came home.

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British want kids to read 50 books a year

March 28, 2011 By

British students should read 50 books a year, says Education Secretary Michael Gove, after touring a KIPP charter in Harlem with a book-a-week goal.

In talking to students preparing for school exams, “something like 80 or 90 per cent were just reading one or two novels and overwhelmingly it was the case that it included Of Mice and Men.”

“We should be saying that our children should be reading 50 books a year, not just one or two for GCSE.”

I wonder why Of Mice and Men is ubiquitous in Britain. Well, it’s short.

For adults, The Telegraph suggests 50 books you must not read before you die.

In sixth grade, we filled out an index card for every book we read independently.  The minimum was one book a month. I read 183 books during the school year.  The teacher saved my stack of index cards to terrify future students.

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‘No frigate like a book’

October 18, 2010 By

Howard Jacobson, surprise winner of the Man Booker award for fiction, comes out against relevant reading in a Sunday Times interview.

I don’t think people are being taught how to read. I saw Michael Gove being attacked for saying that children should read Dryden. Well, children should. I read Dryden. I can still quote you Dryden. [He does so, at length.] The minute you give children books that are ‘relevant’ to them, you are depriving them of a real education. Reading is about discovering other lives than your own.”

Via Norm Geras, who recalls his teenage preference for books about escapes from German and Japanese POW camps.

I liked fantasy, adventure and historical fiction.  I read science fiction too. And biography and history. I loved Dickens. Books about girls who lived in boring suburbs were just about the only books I didn’t read.

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Summer reading (colleges hope)

September 25, 2010 By

Ninety-three percent of top universities assign a “common reading” to new college students, reports the National Association of Scholars in Back from the Beach: 100 New Books by Ashley Thorne.

President Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father, selected by Quinnipiac University and the University of Washington in 2009, was dropped in 2010.

§ The book with the biggest leap in popularity from June to September is Outcasts United, a story about a group of refugee boys from different countries in Africa and the Middle East who settle in Clarkston, Georgia and are discovered by a Jordanian woman who forms them into a soccer team.

§ Two other top books had a spike in popularity: This I Believe (and This I Believe II), the NPR-assembled anthology that was already the most frequently selected book for common reading; and Persepolis, a graphic novel (comic book) about a girl living in Iran during the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

The society/poverty/women category surged with a number of books exploring “social justice.”

Here’s the recommended reading list from NAS. Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop left me cold. O Pioneers! is a good feminist novel. I should read The Blithedale Romance.

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Summer reading

August 17, 2010 By

While teachers are going back to work, August is vacation time for policy analysts, says National Journal. The Education Experts’ question of the week: What education-related book are you reading or would you recommend?

I’ve been rereading Mary Renault: The Persian Boy (eunuch’s view of Alexander the Great), The King Must Die (Theseus) and The Bull From the Sea (more Theseus).

Alexander Russo is reading The Corner, about a drug-dealing corner in Baltimore. The writers went on to write the brilliant TV series, The Wire.

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