Recitation and Report

I found it really interesting on page 64 how Barbara Finkelstein was only able to find three sorts of teachers in the 1880's: "Intellectual overseer", "Drillmaster", and "Interpreter of Culture." The first one made students memorize material and then punished them for errors. The second one led their students through their lessons in unison. The last one, which it was mentioned she found hardly any of, explained ideas and material. The last one still does not even sound that great to me. It's sad that most students were taught either by being forced to memorize things or by being led in recitation. How boring and pointless!

On page 69, the author talked about how teachers sorted their students by race, gender, class, achievement, etc. All of the things they chose to sort students by are things we would never even think of doing to our students today. The author said that this helped contribute to social inequalities. However, that part does seem sort of relevant to today. There are so many studies that talk about how minorities and those who are economically disadvantaged do worse in school, but many teachers/districts do nothing to help this because they listen to these studies and thus, expect less from those students, as well as fail to challenge them. When no one believes in these supposedly academically disinclined students, why should they believe in themselves?

Only the most wealthy, usually white and male, students made it to graduation because they were the ones with families that could afford the materials and services necessary for the students to excel in school. That just seems so unfair. But again, it's not so far off. Our schools today are punished financially for not excelling on standardized tests, taking away funding. How is less funding supposed to help these students in already disadvantaged districts to do better in school? My first instinct reading these things was to be shocked, but then I really thought about it and some of it seems too familiar. It's not as serious and drastic as it was then, but we do still have a weird race/wealth/success cycle going.