In his final chapter of Readicide Mr. Gallagher discusses how the American educational system is moving away from its creative spirit which has made if an economic world leader for almost a century. Mr. Gallagher postulates that the overemphasis on standardized testing is leading to the decline of creativity among our youth. To bolster his argument he analyzes the educational systems of a number of emerging countries like: China, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. These nations, Mr. Gallagher asserts, are moving away from the standardized testing model and, "started education reforms aimed at fostering more creativity and innovative thinking among their citizens." The chapter goes on to say that all is not yet lost. If schools concentrate on the 50/50 approach to teaching young readers, the tide of readicide can be curtailed before it overwhelms our educational system.
The assertion Mr. Gallagher presents in this chapter seems full of holes. He uses a lot of subjective reasoning without backing his claims up with any real facts or figures. I think it is incorrect to make a connection between American creative hegemony on the world stage to a decline in comprehensive reading skills among our youth. Culturally American has always prided itself on its innovative spirit and competitiveness. I do not think that this is any less true today that it was fifty years ago. American history is full of creative innovators who did not receive today what we would call a "formal education" (Henry Ford, Bill Gates, the Wright brothers etc.), and yet these individual's creative sprit was never curtailed by their lack of a formal education. They are and will forever remain among the most important innovators of our time. Having said this, I still agree with Mr. Gallagher original hypothesis that America's overemphasis on testing is contributing to the decline in comprehensive reading skills among our youth, and that this is a trend that must be reversed to save a generation of young readers.
First off, I want to say congradulations. Your one of the first blogs I have read that have seriously critiqued Ghallagher. I agree that we are just as innovative as americans in previous generations, however, I think our focus(innovative spirit) has tuned out largely to school in America. For example, Students often suprise me at the lengths they go to to skip clas or cheat, where they could have much more easily payed attention and performed well.
ReplyDeleteWow, I've never thought about it like that. You made a valid point when you said that America has alot of creative innovators who did not receive a formal education. You're absolutely right, maybe America is overemphasizing standarized testing. Question is now how do we fix this problem?
ReplyDeleteWell hello there Artemis...I mean Mr. Quilliams, at least we can agree on the over testing situation going on these days. The problem is when you tell the 'general population' this they think that teachers are just being lazy. I mean that's what many people would have you believe. Now that you are in the trenches you have seen this first hand, you know it is true. Only people with kids in school and teachers realize this, when teachers try to right this wrong we are all just union oriented babies, we want more for doing nothing. Some teachers may be this way but most of us run around like crazy all day and barely have time to eat a pack of crackers for lunch. We are too busy working to whine about getting paid too little. If this does continue more educated qualified teachers will go elsewhere. It is sad. We have to try to educate the population we live amongst even if we are sending our children to FPD or Stratford. It would be unwise not to do this no matter what all you 'mud people' say!
ReplyDeletei tend to agree with the notion that over testing is killing creativity, after all if everything is standardized than nothing is different. in addition to killing creativity it must also be considered that we are simply giving the students too many tests. in an attempt to find out what is happening in our schools we have set out to gather more data on the problem and have ended up making the problem worse.
ReplyDelete