“What does ‘allegiance’ mean?” the New Teacher asked, hand over her heart. In this classic and chilling tale about an elementary school classroom in post-war occupied America, James Clavell brings to light the vulnerability of children and the power educators have to shape and change young minds. Originally written in the Cold War era, Clavell’s extraordinary and enduringly relevant allegory on the impressionability of the human mind is still read in schools around the globe today, and is a call to every person to keep questioning and keep learning.
The untold story of the root cause of America's education crisis--and the seemingly endless cycle of multigenerational poverty. It was only after years within the education reform movement that Natalie Wexler stumbled across a hidden explanation for our country's frustrating lack of progress when it comes to providing every child with a quality education. The problem wasn't one of the usual scapegoats: lazy teachers, shoddy facilities, lack of accountability. It was something no one was talking about: the elementary school curriculum's intense focus on decontextualized reading comprehension "skills" at the expense of actual knowledge. In the tradition of Dale Russakoff's The Prize and Dana Goldstein's The Teacher Wars, Wexler brings together history, research, and compelling characters to pull back the curtain on this fundamental flaw in our education system--one that fellow reformers, journalists, and policymakers have long overlooked, and of which the general public, including many parents, remains unaware. But The Knowledge Gap isn't just a story of what schools have gotten so wrong--it also follows innovative educators who are in the process of shedding their deeply ingrained habits, and describes the rewards that have come along: students who are not only excited to learn but are also acquiring the knowledge and vocabulary that will enable them to succeed. If we truly want to fix our education system and unlock the potential of our neediest children, we have no choice but to pay attention.
Exploring a realm of film often dismissed as campy or contrived, this book traces the history of classroom educational films from the silent era through the 1980s, when film finally began to lose ground to video-based and digital media. It profiles 35 individual academic filmmakers who played a role in bringing these roughly 100,000 16mm films to classrooms across North America, paying particular attention to auteur John Barnes and his largely neglected body of work. Other topics include the production companies contributing to the growth and development of the academic film genre; the complex history of post-Sputnik, federally-funded educational initiatives which influenced the growth of the academic film genre; and the denouement of the genre in classrooms and its resurgence on the Internet.
The Flickering Mind, by National Magazine Award winner Todd Oppenheimer, is a landmark account of the failure of technology to improve our schools and a call for renewed emphasis on what really works. American education faces an unusual moment of crisis. For decades, our schools have been beaten down by a series of curriculum fads, empty crusades for reform, and stingy funding. Now education and political leaders have offered their biggest and most expensive promise ever—the miracle of computers and the Internet—at a cost of approximately $70 billion just during the decade of the 1990s. Computer technology has become so prevalent that it is transforming nearly every corner of the academic world, from our efforts to close the gap between rich and poor, to our hopes for school reform, to our basic methods of developing the human imagination. Technology is also recasting the relationships that schools strike with the business community, changing public beliefs about the demands of tomorrow’s working world, and reframing the nation’s systems for researching, testing, and evaluating achievement. All this change has led to a culture of the flickering mind, and a generation teetering between two possible futures. In one, youngsters have a chance to become confident masters of the tools of their day, to better address the problems of tomorrow. Alternatively, they can become victims of commercial novelties and narrow measures of ability, underscored by misplaced faith in standardized testing. At this point, America’s students can’t even make a fair choice. They are an increasingly distracted lot. Their ability to reason, to listen, to feel empathy, is quite literally flickering. Computers and their attendant technologies did not cause all these problems, but they are quietly accelerating them. In this authoritative and impassioned account of the state of education in America, Todd Oppenheimer shows why it does not have to be this way. Oppenheimer visited dozens of schools nationwide—public and private, urban and rural—to present the compelling tales that frame this book. He consulted with experts, read volumes of studies, and came to strong and persuasive conclusions: that the essentials of learning have been gradually forgotten and that they matter much more than the novelties of technology. He argues that every time we computerize a science class or shut down a music program to pay for new hardware, we lose sight of what our priority should be: “enlightened basics.” Broad in scope and investigative in treatment, The Flickering Mind will not only contribute to a vital public conversation about what our schools can and should be—it will define the debate.
Films about education provide many of the most popular interpretations of what teaching and learning mean in schools. An analysis of this medium reveals much about the historical, cultural, political, and philosophical dimensions of education. Timely and engaging, this book fills a gap for scholarly and informed public commentary on the portrayal of education in film, offering a wide range of conceptual and interpretive perspectives. Teaching, Learning, and Schooling in Film explores several key questions, including: What does it mean to be a good teacher? How do these good teachers instruct? When is and what makes teaching complex? What constitutes learning? Do educational reforms work? The book’s interdisciplinary group of contributors answers these important questions in essays highlighting Hollywood, independent, and documentary films. Prospective and practicing teachers will engage with the thought-provoking educational issues raised in this book and gain insight into the complexities of teaching and learning portrayed in film.
Finding, funding, and using the right films and video equipment can be challenging for history teachers. Did you know that... The movie Prince of Egypt was banned in Egypt? In the movie Troy, ancient Trojans are shown using llamas that could only be found in the New World at that time? Oliver Stone s movie JFK was so controversial that he wrote a whole book defending it? The movie 300 is based on a comic book and not meant to show historical reality at all? No one in the West has ever made a major motion picture featuring the life of Vladimir Lenin? Showing movies in the dark can damage your eyesight? Showing the wrong movie could get you fired or slapped with a heavy fine? There are ways to obtain free educational films? There are some great books and websites that allow you to learn about the objectionable content and historical accuracy of a film before you show it to your students? This book helps you get good films that are free from bias, anachronisms, or objectionable content. There are many great tips on how to use films more effectively in your classroom and interesting assignments to go with them.
This book demonstrates the positive impact of using film and audiovisual material in the language classroom. The chapters are evidence-based and address different levels and contexts of learning around the world. They demonstrate the benefits of using moving images and films to develop intercultural awareness and promote multilingualism, and suggest Audiovisual Translation (AVT) activities and projects to enhance language learning. The book will be a valuable continuing professional development resource for language teachers and those involved in curriculum development, as well as bringing the latest research, theory and pedagogical techniques to teacher training courses.
