Revisiting Dewey

Best Practices for Educating the Whole Child Today

By (author) Daniel W. Stuckart, Jeffrey Glanz

Publication date:

16 November 2010

Length of book:

272 pages

Publisher

R&L Education

Dimensions:

240x162mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781607090281

Since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, high-stakes testing has become a ubiquitous feature of public school children's daily rituals. Reform advocates argue that testing leads to greater alignment of the curriculum with teaching and learning, teacher and student accountability, and in some cases, a preservation of our cultural heritage. Opponents contend that testing results in prolific cheating, higher drop-out rates, and a narrowing curriculum with emphases on teaching to the test. Moreover, some evidence suggests that a singular focus on passing the test at all costs leads to neglect in other areas including attending to students' spiritual and ethical needs as well as developing abilities to collaborate with others, communicate effectively, and innovatively solve problems. Nearly a century ago, Dewey proposed a philosophy of education addressing the needs of the whole student. He provided insights into the development of intelligence, the importance of socially useful skills, and the healthy growth of the individual. In the context of high-stakes testing and best practices, his insights may be more prescient than ever.
Revisiting Dewey is an admirable effort to place today's incoherent mess of federal education reform policies that mindlessly test poverty-struck children from the lower social classes with invalid tests, repeatedly failing students, then shoutingthat our excellent system of public education is failing. What nonsense! No mainstream research supports this nihilistic conclusion deliberately encouraged by the failed No Child Left Behind Law (2002). The authors correctly invoke the mind and democratic passion of John Dewey to make sense of the social destruction wrought by NCLB and an appeasing media. Only Dewey's comprehensive democratic theories and practice can cut through the jungle of punitive, unscientific, and teacher-destructive practicesof NCLB, all amazingly supported by President Obama's administration. Although readers may find items of disagreement in a book of this scope, it is clear to me that Revisiting Dewey will bring educators face-to-face with the Business Model ofdeceptive efficiency that uses invalid testing of our most needy citizens to induce a false failure of the world's most democratic public system of schools, the better to displace them with a for-profit-privatized-corporate system run by a trillion dollar