Goodlad on School Reform: Are we ignoring lessons of the past 50 years?
Who is John Goodlad anyway? Here’s a rather good, general biography on answers.com.
My quick take: he’s an extraordinary educator who is the most remarkable combination of background, heart, and intellect. From the one-room school-house of his early career, to work as a principal, to prominence as a researcher, to leading educator of teachers, noted researcher, author; and more– there are few who bring to bear a long view forged from practice, research, and an ever searching mind.
On my suggested list of books to the right of this entry, is his classic: A Place Called School.
On Valerie Strauss’s terrific education column The Answer Sheet (Washington Post), she gives way to a three-part piece by on school reform by Goodlad: Are we ignoring lessons of the past 50 years?
It is, without question, essential reading. Put this on the top of that gigantic list of things you want to read, if you care about education in America.
Happy Memorial Day Weekend.
Click here for Part Two: Straight Talk about our Schools.
and here for Part Three: How to Help Our Schools
I suddenly awakened to the realization that we were tinkering, one more time, toward an ill-defined utopia.
I was dumbfounded. How could we so ignore the lessons of 50 years of failed school reform and the learning and strategies of those hundreds of innovative boutique projects, funded over these years by billions of dollars from philanthropic foundations, that excited and changed thousands of teachers nationwide?