A school teacher was on his way to a new teaching appointment in a far-away land, and he’d been traveling on foot all the way, and was getting quite exhausted from his journey, when unexpectedly he came to a river that he had to cross.  As there was no bridge in sight, he hired a...Read More

Anyone who has been in American education for more than a generation understands that educational trends come in waves.  Progressive education gives way to back to basics which yields to open education which in term is supplanted by cultural literacy, high stakes testing and standards-based instruction.  And so it goes. Somewhere in there, around about...Read More

Several years ago, I wrote a book for elementary and middle school students entitled You’re Smarter Than You Think: A Kid’s Guide to Multiple Intelligences(published by Free Spirit Publishing).  Since it came out, I have received letters from young readers responding to their experience of reading the book.  Just this month, I received a packet...Read More

A New York Times article that appeared April 12, 2013 reported that a high school teacher in Albany, New York recently gave an assignment to students asking them, presumably as a lesson on the Holocaust, to write a persuasive essay arguing from the Nazi point of view that Jews were the source of their problems.  The assignment...Read More

It’s wonderful to see all the protests around the country against standardized testing.  At Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington, teachers are refusing to administer the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP).  In Texas, hundreds of school districts have passed a resolution saying standardized tests  are ”strangling” public schools.  The National Resolution on High Stakes Testing,...Read More