TEACHING READING AND CHILDREN: READING PROGRAMS AS “COSTUME PARTIES”
Well into my 30s and during my doctoral program, I was finally afforded the opportunity to read carefully the work of John Dewey. This late scholarship on my part is an indictment of teacher certification, but it is also a window into the historical and current misinformation about the state of reading and the teaching of reading in U.S. schools.
Dewey, the Father of Progressive Education, I discovered, believed that we do not need to teach reading; Dewey noted that reading just happened, basing this claim on his own inability to recall having been taught to read.
The first time I came across this—considering I was then and remain primarily a teacher of English—I was puzzled that Dewey could be so wrong about reading and so compelling* about education in general.
With time, however, I realized that my initial rejection of Dewey’s belief about reading sprang from my perspective as a teacher: Teachers are predisposed to seeing themselves as change agents, as causational in the learning of others.
As an avid reader and writer, if I am honest, my perspective on reading isn’t all that different from Dewey’s. It is likely that Dewey and I experienced similar conditions of privilege that allowed something like a natural learning
10-12-13 Radical Scholarship
Radical Scholarship: Common Core in the Real World: Destroying Literacy through Standardization (Again) | the becoming radicalCommon Core in the Real World: Destroying Literacy through Standardization (Again) | the becoming radical1 by P. L. Thomas / 2d OCT 09The Central Issue at the Heart of America's Growing Education GapThe Central Issue at the Heart of America's Growing Education Gap2 by P. L.