If by chance you ever wonder about the value of what you are doing, or the value of your subject, I can recommend to you a short book by Iris Murdoch: The Sovereignty of Good. It was first published a few decades back. I've just discovered it thanks to a friend. It contains three short essays. If you have a background in philosophy (as she does), you might follow, better than I, her critique of existential moral philosophy. What I found exciting to read was her claim that Art and especially Literature as central to the development of the moral character and any notion of the Good. I have posted here, some quotes from the essays that should give you an idea of what to expect should to tackle the whole work.

Two Voices for Humanist Education

Delighted to find two more media voices in support of humanist education. Please visit the New York Times Opinion piece by David Brooks, who you might recognize from his appearance with Jim Lehrer on the PBS News Hour.

Then there is our own Rick Salutin, who began, on Saturday, a series about education and strikes similar notes about the destructive nature of Quality Management and measurement in education. Rick writes in part about Finland, some months after that country hit the news with its superlative educational results - and get this - without a testing and standardization regime. (The irony of this achievement being reported in terms of international test results is not lost on this reader, mind you.)

I'd just add that for a good introduction at least to how our current mess has evolved from perverse notions of "reason" after the enlightenment, do read John Ralston Saul's Voltaire's Bastards - and other of this works. He's onto the same cultural problem we are facing in schools.

Merit Pay??

Just in case you missed it, the Globe (Focus Section) of Feb. 6, 2010, did a good piece on merit pay, which has risen again after Barak Obama gave it a nod in the U.S. What I find interesting in this is that when the piece turns to the issue of who should decide on merit, the specter of test scores comes again.

The End of English

The End of English

Summary: Accountability lays the ideological groundwork for a challenge to the Humanist purposes of an education in English. Through its emphasis on measurement, testing, and information, it has transformed the value of English into data. The first stage in this transformation was the introduction of “standards” in the corporate model of the International Standards Organization (ISO) - statements of measurable results for each course of study. A natural concomitant was the creation of the Education Quality and Accountability Office and its regimen of testing to measure school achievement against these standards. Further progress in the diminution of English came as the new education corporation used tests to re-define literacy as a narrow band of skills and strategies, and supported it with enormous funding and resources. English teachers surrendered the term. During the period of reform in Ontario, our subject association, the Ontario Council of Teachers of English and Language Arts, collapsed, and the pressures of reform on local and provincial budgets also determined a huge loss in leadership positions for English across the province. There is an urgent need for us to revive democratic discussion of this new state of our subject, to re-assert our collective voice, and to reclaim the term “literacy” to mean competence in language that is inseparable from the construction of personal and cultural understanding.

English - for the 21st Century

Willard R. Daggett, Ed.D., President of the International Center for Leadership in Education, is recognized worldwide for his proven ability to move education systems towards more rigorous and relevant skills and knowledge for all students. He has assisted a number of states and hundreds of school districts with their school improvement initiatives, many in response to No Child Left Behind and its demanding adequate yearly progress (AYP) provisions. Dr. Daggett has also collaborated with education ministries in several countries and with the Council of Chief State School Officers, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Governors Association, and many other national organizations. The International Centre for Leadership in Education
And here's what Mr. Daggett had to say (Today's Students, Yesterday's Schooling) about English Instruction and its value in the 21st Century in an article in 1994, about the time Ontario education in English was about to face its biggest change in three decades.

Beating Testers at their Game

This anecdote reveals something interesting about the nature of testing and the way it construes literacy. It comes from the early days of Ontario's Literacy Test, but is perhaps the more astonishing considering that at the time the test (without the current course option) determined graduation. Laugh...and weep?

Elaine and the Literacy Test

A couple of years ago I spent about 20 hours with students at a local school who were most likely to fail the literacy test. Virtually all of them presented both ability and behavior problems, but as we progressed I felt perhaps half of them might succeed. Needless to say I focused on very pragmatic procedures.

Elaine was less cynical than most, but quiet and convinced she couldn't pass. She tried the strategies, and with encouragement seemed ready to give it her best shot. I was most anxious for her to succeed. But she didn't. Her score was 5 points off the pass mark, and the school was convinced it should appeal her result.

The appeal failed. It was my sense of what the whole ordeal had done to Elaine that prompted me to write this piece.