I.
My child and I hold hands on the way to school,
And when I leave him at the first-grade door
He cries a little but is brave; he does
Let go. My selfish tears remind me how
I cried before that door a life ago.
I may have had a hard time letting go.
Each fall the children must endure together
What every child also endures alone:
Learning the alphabet, the integers,
Three dozen bits and pieces of a stuff
So arbitrary, so peremptory,
That worlds invisible and visible
Bow down before it, as in Joseph's dream
The sheaves bowed down and then the stars bowed down
Before the dreaming of a little boy.
That dream got him such hatred of his brothers
As cost the greater part of life to mend,
And yet great kindness came of it in the end.
II.
A school is where they grind the grain of thought,
And grind the children who must mind the thought.
It may be those two grindings are but one,
As from the alphabet come Shakespeare's Plays,
As from the integers comes Euler's Law,
As from the whole, inseperably, the lives,
The shrunken lives that have not been set free
By law or by poetic phantasy.
But may they be. My child has disappeared
Behind the schoolroom door. And should I live
To see his coming forth, a life away,
I know my hope, but do not know its form
Nor hope to know it. May the fathers he finds
Among his teachers have a care of him
More than his father could. How that will look
I do not know, I do not need to know.
Even our tears belong to ritual.
But may great kindness come of it in the end.
Howard Nemerov
Showing posts with label back to school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label back to school. Show all posts
september, the first day of school
american classrooms
Catherine Wagner: American Classroom:
San Francisco Police Academy, Lecture Room, San Francisco, CA, 1983. Gelatin silver print, 20 x 24".
University of Texas, Speech and Hearing Institute, Houston, TX, 1985. Gelatin silver print, 20 x 24".
University of Virginia, Humanities Classroom, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1986. Gelatin silver print, 20 x 24".
Moss Landing Elementary School, 7th & 8th Grade Science Room, CA, 1984. Gelatin silver print, 20 x 24".
Discovered thanks to Old Chum.
this weekend
Photo of Jon R. Ashton, January 1943, from Square America. Happy weekend.
The modern world belongs to the half-educated, a rather difficult class, because they do not realize how little they know.William Ralph Inge
we're no 1(1)
Why, he asked, have we spent so much money on school reform in America and have so little to show for it in terms of scalable solutions that produce better student test scores? Maybe, he answered, it is not just because of bad teachers, weak principals or selfish unions.Thomas L. Friedman, quoting Robert Samuelson in the 9/11/2010 NYT.
“The larger cause of failure is almost unmentionable: shrunken student motivation,” wrote Samuelson. “Students, after all, have to do the work. If they aren’t motivated, even capable teachers may fail. Motivation comes from many sources: curiosity and ambition; parental expectations; the desire to get into a ‘good’ college; inspiring or intimidating teachers; peer pressure. The unstated assumption of much school ‘reform’ is that if students aren’t motivated, it’s mainly the fault of schools and teachers.” Wrong, he said. “Motivation is weak because more students (of all races and economic classes, let it be added) don’t like school, don’t work hard and don’t do well. In a 2008 survey of public high school teachers, 21 percent judged student absenteeism a serious problem; 29 percent cited ‘student apathy.’ ”
almost home free. almost.
This episode is one of my favorites of all time.
'She's a track one girl!'
'She's a track one girl!'
mr. reid's 8th grade class
The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have given his life.Ernest Renan, Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse, 1883.
Photo from here.
creating architects
The ultimate aim of education is to enable individuals to become the architects of their own education and through that process to continually reinvent themselves. I start with the assumption that in a certain significant sense, mind is not present at birth. Minds are invented when humans interact with the culture in and through which they live. Brains are biological. They are conferred at life's beginnings. Minds are cultural; and although there is not a sharp line between what is biological and what is cultural - they define each other - the overriding perspective I want to commend is that schools have something to significant to do with the invention of mind. The invention of mind in schools is promoted both by the opportunities located in the curriculum and by the school's wider culture. They are found in the forms of mediation through which the curriculum and schooling as a culture take place. In this sense, the curriculum is... a mind-altering device.Elliot W. Eisner
The important outcomes of schooling include not only the acquisition of new conceptual tools, refined sensibilities, a developed imagination, and new routines and techniques, but also new attitudes and dispositions. The disposition to continue to learn throughout life is perhaps one of the most important contributions that schools can make to an individual's development.
forest kindergarten
I'd like to go to this school. It reminds me of the way I grew up.
Photos by Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times.
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