12/1/2015BookFilter | Evernote Web https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#n=59d05cad-6629-4c30-9798-d527f67223ba&ses=4&sh=2&sds=5&1/4HomeTop Picks: All BooksThe Teacher Wars MoreThe Teacher Warsby Dana GoldsteinPrice: $26.95(Hardcover)Published: September 02, 2014Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)From the Publisher: In her groundbreaking history of 175years of American education, Dana Goldstein finds answersin the past to the controversies that plague our public schoolstoday.Teaching is a wildly contentious profession in America, oneattacked and admired in equal measure.</p><p> In The Teacher Wars, arich, lively, and unprecedented history of public school teaching,Dana Goldstein reveals that teachers have been similarlyembattled for nearly two centuries.</p><p> From the genteel founding ofthe common schools movement in the nineteenth century to theviolent inner-city teacher strikes of the 1960s and '70s, from thedispatching of Northeastern women to frontier schoolhouses to thefounding of Teach for America on the Princeton University campusin 1989, Goldstein shows that the same issues have continued tobedevil us: Who should teach? What should be…Rate This Book|Rate/ReviewAdd To BookshelfGet This Book Go to your preferred retailer, click to choose a format and you' ll be taken directly to their site whereyou can get this book.BookFilter12/1/2015BookFilter | Evernote Web https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#n=59d05cad-6629-4c30-9798-d527f67223ba&ses=4&sh=2&sds=5&2/4 Personalize / Add More ChoicesWhat We Say"The Teacher Wars" is two books in one.</p><p> Most of the book is a pretty lively history of teaching in the US and thecyclical panics that involve both demonizing teachers and expecting them to be superheroes who can lift entirecommunities out of poverty and onto the path of citizenship through inspiration and dedication and teaching (and fora price, too!).</p><p> Author Dana Goldstein goes chapter by chapter through the history of public schooling.</p><p> Each section'ssubject is rich enough for far more detailed coverage, so "The Teacher Wars" feels a little superficial.</p><p> Still, the overalleffect of the bulk of the book is informative, depressing and sadly amusing: again and again, we debate teaching,what to teach, who should teach, raise the idea of merit pay and of course testing testing testing as a cure-all.</p><p> It'salmost comical to see the purges that sweep through teaching again and again as the latest reform takes hold, fromthe mid-1800s to the early 1910s up to the present day.</p><p> Goldstein also does a thorough, dispassionate job of layingout the various fads, how so few are based on actual solid evidence and how so many are rushed into action beforethey've even been thoroughly tested, much less proven themselves.</p><p> From the wave of female teachers to thedebates between W.E.B.</p><p> Du Bois and Booker T.</p><p> Washington (the age-old argument between a grounding in theclassics versus vocational training) to unions and finally charters versus public schools, Goldstein covers it all.</p><p> Thebook feels even more rushed in the contemporary sections when she whisks from Teach For America to numerousideas incubating approaches on how to really fix teaching.</p><p> But it's ultimately quite optimistic.</p><p> Goldstein isstraightforward and grounded in enough evidence to show in various ways why testing has gone out of control, whyunions are not the demonic force of evil posited by some, why Teach For America has some positive insights to offerand on and on.</p><p> Her recommendations avoid a "This Is THE answer" approach so typical in this debate and you'regenuinely convinced by her arguments to agree and maybe even join a school board and help make it happen.</p><p> Notthe grand narrative teaching deserves, but absorbing on its own terms.</p><p> Oh, and if you want great teachers, pay thema great salary.</p><p> Now that's not so hard to understand, is it? -- Michael GiltzLessWhat Others SayA New York Times Notable Book of 2014"Ms.</p><p> Goldstein’s book is meticulously fair and disarmingly balanced, serving up historical commentary instead of asearing philippic ...</p><p> The book skips nimbly from history to on-the-ground reporting to policy prescription, never fallingon its face.</p><p> If I were still teaching, I’d leave my tattered copy by the sputtering Xerox machine.</p><p> I’d also recommend itto the average citizen who wants to know why Robert can’t read, and Allison can’t add."—New York Times"[A] lively account of the history of teaching ...</p><p> The Teacher Wars suggests that to improve our schools, we have tohelp teachers do their job the way higher-achieving nations do: by providing ​better preservice instruction, offeringnewcomers more support from well-trained mentors and opening up the “black box” classroom so teachers canobserve one another without fear and share ideas.</p><p> Stressing accountability, with no ideas for improving teaching,Goldstein says, is 'like the hope that buying a scale will result in losing weight.' Such books may be sounding theclosing bell on an era when the big ideas in school reform came from economists…More
