I liked this editorial/book review, as it stresses things that I find important about teaching (I’ve never read any of Newkirk’s books…I guess I need to). To wit,

What teachers need is each other. We need to be sharing and discussing student work, bolstering and supporting each other through the inevitable failures, collaborating in manageable small communities, inviting each other into our classrooms. We need to witness daily the great teaching that is already going on inside our buildings.

This idea of co-creation is the hoped-for change that will sustain me through the years beyond 2010: that teachers may one day wrest control of their work from others. If it happens, it will happen by bits and pieces, but it is the most important “good idea” I cling to in this time of very bad ones.

From Zoe Heller’s vicious 2003 novel, What Was She Thinking:

Such do-gooding fantasies are not uncommon in comprehensive schools these days. Many of the younger teachers harbour secret hopes of “making a difference.” They have all seen the American films in which lovely young women tame inner-city thugs with recitations of Dylan Thomas. They, too, want to conquer their little charges’ hearts with poetry and compassion. When I was at teacher training college, there was none of this sort of thing. My fellow students and I never thought of raising self-esteem or making dreams come true. Our expectations did not go beyond guiding our prospective pupils thorugh the three Rs and providing them with some pointers on personal hygiene. Perhaps we were lacking in idealism. But, then, it strikes me as not coincidental that, in the same period that pedagogical ambitions have become so inflated and grandiose, the standards of basic literacy and numeracy have radically declined. We might not have fretted much about our children’s souls in the old days, but we did send them out into the world knowing how to do long division.

Having read The Road last year, and having just finished Far North, I’ve been increasingly fearful as I read Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future . While McKibben does try and point out some of the ways that the world is not ending, the combination of globalization and agricultural specialization highlights the tenuous nature of our so-called advanced civilization…if the food in most American houses has traveled 1,500 miles to get there, what happens if this distribution network breaks? Maybe it’ll be less about 28 Days or the Machines than a Grapes of Wrath Style Dustbowl.

Happy thoughts on the night before everyone goes back to school.

I watched these books fly off the shelves at Colin’s book fair but hadn’t had a chance to read them yet. My nephew had two of them that I read in rapid succession this week…awesome stuff. Reminded me of this New Yorker article about the purpose of children’s literature, where Elizabeth Kolbert offers a split between permissive vs. protectionist visions of children’s literature. These books are on the far side of permissive — not unlike Calvin and Hobbes — I feel like I’d have to read them with my kids to ensure that some of the jokes or activities weren’t attempted.

(How do you acknowledge the hilarity of your kids’ comments without encouraging inappropriate language?)