The Hoosier House: Bobbs-Merrill and Its Predecessors, 1850-1985 (Dictionary of Literary Biography Series), Vol. 291 Book

I liked what I could understand. Liked - blah - Matt tells me no value judgements. Ok, I learned some interesting things about the monolithic nature of the educational culture in the United States. Cannot be moved, nudged, bumped, even an inch, into anything it is not already. Despite any research and any amount of effort or money most schools, most teachers continue to do what they have always done. And of a few of the accusations regarding what teachers do might be a bit over the top; like "teachers don't actually do any teaching."

This book was not terribly readable - too many references of names, dates, places, programs, boards, books, et al. In between the messy bits I could grab bits of information that made some sense to me.

It was particulary interesting to be reading it while in the midst of my own efforts to teach Caroline to read from the same book/program that I used (very successfully) with Jonah - Seigfried Engelmann's "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons". There are a few references to him in the history of the Open Court crusade to teach reading, but nothing that sites him as a real proponent of what the Caruses were trying to accomplish. Engelmann's Distar method is most certainly a phonics based program that has yielded a smooth and rich transition into full literative reading for my seven-year-old. I suppose the experience of teaching one child to read is very different from the concern of trying to create a usable program that will teach a nation of children to read.

For me, I am happy with our twenty minutes a day on my bed, with my little girl, watching her unmistakably gain both the decoding and comprehension skills necessary for life long reading. It feels reassuring not to have to hand her over to "the system", regardless of all its good intentions.