 |
|
Home > Resources
Doing School: How We are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students
Type: Horace Book Review
Author(s): Denise Clark Pope
Source: Horace. Vol.18, #3 Spring 2002
|
|
Denise Clark Pope has done what few of us would have the stamina to do--she's shadowed five students, morning to evening, throughout one year of their hectic high school lives. She earns their trust and confidence, and she shares their very sobering stories. These hard-working students--from various tracks and social groups, but all defined by their school as among the most successful–show Pope how they have learned to "do school," to manipulate the system to get good grades.
So what’s the problem with kids working hard to get good grades? If they are getting high marks, they must be learning something, right? Through the students’ own words and drawing on their day to day experiences, Doing School makes clear how little getting good grades has to do with learning. In fact, the kids see genuine engagement, passion, curiosity, and even personal integrity as distractions from their drive for grades.
Pope, a former English teacher, writes like a dream. If I were a middle or high school teacher or administrator, I’d use this as a text with my students to prompt an exploration of life at school and with colleagues to talk about creating a different kind of school culture. I’d send it home for parents to read. I know this book will not only shake up feelings of complacency, but will also help us move toward creating schools which do much better by our kids’ hearts and minds.
reviewed by Kathy Simon, Director of Research at CES National and author of Moral Questions in the Classroom, Yale University Press, 2001.
BUY THIS BOOK
This resource last updated: April 15, 2003
Database Information:
|
Source: Horace. Vol.18, #3 Spring 2002
Publication Year: 2002
Publisher: CES National
School Level: All
Issue: 18.3
|
|
|
