I was flattered when asked to review an advance copy of Your Child's Strengths by Jenifer Fox. I have started reading it. I wanted to get up my first impressions so if any of our readers wanted to meet Jenifer, they could before her book tour is over.
Jenifer argues that public schools do a poor job of educating children, because they don't go with the children's strengths. In some ways this sounds like unschooling.
Jenifer says that if teachers would find out what children are interested in and encourage them to chase their bliss, the children was be more engaged. Jenifer says one of the problems with public schools is they focus on children's weaknesses. Children are stressed because both teachers and parents are constantly evaluating and pointing out where each child doesn't "measure" up.
Jenifer says that if children don't understand why a particular subject is important, then they will tune out. "When children are not engaged in learning, they stop paying attention." (p. 13) She says that public schools do not want students to be active learners. "The majority of high school classrooms require that student absorb rather than interact with the information provided by the teacher." (p. 18)
Jenifer wants the students to be in the driver's seat, or at least be able to help with the navigation. "Parents and teachers are often clear about what they expect from children's schooling, whereas children are rarely given the opportunity to state what they hope to get out of it." (p. 25)
There are many points in the book which I agree with. Jenifer writes about several problems with standardization versus the power of individual instruction. Ever since I read The Lioness' post about The Golden Quote it has been very clear to me one of the reasons why homeschooling is so powerful, one-on-one tutoring rockets children through learning while public school's factory approach is a slow boat to China.
There are a few areas in which I disagree with Jenifer. Jenifer does not like tests. I think tests have a place. It is important to have a rough idea if a child is mastering a subject. Tests provide a fairly quick way to get a handle on the progress of a child. I'll acknowledge that NCLB may have gone overboard in testing children to death, but we test our children. We want to have some objective measurements to verify our own evaluation of our daughter's progress.
Jenifer does not like A Nation at Risk. She believes it was harmful to the education process. She writes about the report: "Despite the lack of data or evidence proving that America was actually falling behind in the world economy, the commission nevertheless zeroed in on the following areas as ones demanding national public attention, ..." (p. 30)
I have a copy of the book. It is thin, 116 pages. There is little "data" in the book, but it does reference dozens of other reports. The main focus of A Nation at Risk is that there has been a significant decline in public education in the decades before 1983. It seems wrong to claim that because there was no data in the book, that there wasn't a problem.
I think it is reasonable to enter into a dialog with teenagers and give them some freedom to find there bliss. I see little benefit trying to explain to a seven year old why learning math is worth while and hoping she accepts my explanation.
I'm not sure about the overall claim of the book, that public school are capable of working with a child's strengths. I am concerned that the bureaucratic organization we call public school is not capable of treating each child as an individual, all sixty million of them.
I'll continue to read the book and see if her approach has possibilities.
If you are interested in meeting Jenifer Fox go check out her Book Tour schedule. I think it would be interesting to hear her speak. (I did enjoy listen to Joanne Jacobs' when she did the kick off for her book Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea, and the School that Beat the Odds, here is my report on Joanne's kick off meeting.)
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Technorati tags: children, public school, public education, education
4 comments:
I'm glad to hear you liked Ms. Fox's book. Assuming my DH's work schedule permits him to watch the kids, I'm planning to go hear her speak at the Commonwealth Club in S.F. next week.
Sounds interesting, similar to a John Holt approach. However, I've never figured out what you do if your six year old's main interest is watching movies all day long. Not educational movies, just Disney all the time.
Sherry, you make a good point. I think there is a balance. Parenting means you guide your children while letting them explore a bit. They can choose somethings, but you don't give them total freedom.
Unfortunately, I had a daughter who attended the school Ms. Fox used for her book. While in theory, her book might be relevant, it is not applied. Ms. Fox herself took the thoughts of John Holt, Mel Levine and Marcus Buckingham to write her book. As a person, she is uninvolved in the school, made herself the president, therefore putting the school in at financial risk, and as a previous unschooler and homeschooler for years, this book is not different from anything else we already knew as homeschoolers. It is not worth the read. John Holt and Mel Levine are worth the read. Ms. Fox is not well-liked at the school she is at, and that says a lot about the person - the content of a book therefore becomes questionable when it was apparent to all the parents that her aim was financial, not educational.
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