Letters to a Serious Education President

FM-Sarason.qxd 11/3/2005 3:30 PM Page i Praise for Letters to a Serious Education President “Letters to a Serious Education President provides sound advice for what it would take to provide all students in the United States with a high quality education. There is wisdom and profound insights about how to improve public education in these letters, and, of course, Sarason offers lots of common sense.” —Pedro Noguera, Professor The Steinhardt School of Education, New York University “Sarason is a master of the use of cases and stories...what comes out is his voice, emotion, commitment, and desire to make a difference.” —Theodore Creighton, Executive Director National Council of Professors of Educational Administration; Professor, Sam Houston State University “Letters to a Serious Education President underscores the brilliance of Sarason’s observations about what is and continues to be missing in how we conceptualize and hence implement school- ing in our society....Indeed, Sarason is calling for a different education—one that enlivens the curiosity and lifelong learning of all children and their teachers.” —Rhona Weinstein, Professor, University of California, Berkeley “After decades of thought and study, Seymour Sarason has uncovered the most critical barriers to meaningful educational reform. In this book, he uses a novel device—letters to the President of the United States—to describe what it takes for reform to make a real difference where it matters most—in the typical classroom. Let’s hope that not only the current President will read this book, but also all who are affected by and care about our schools.” —Cary Cherniss, Professor, Rutgers University “A brilliantly written treatise...Professor Sarason provides a most insightful glimpse into the inner workings of the political/public policy process, skillfully reflecting the quiet musings of a master observer.” —Patrick H. DeLeon Former Assistant to U.S. Senator Daniel K. Inouye “Seymour Sarason has graced us with a jewel of a book that includes the central themes in his lifetime of teaching and writing.” —Ann Lieberman, Professor and Co-Director National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching, Teachers College, Columbia University “The timing of this book could not be more fortuitous; the challenge could not be better framed; and the need to learn how to educate our children—all children—could not be more urgent. Policymakers, take heed.” —Keith Geiger, Former President, National Education Association FM-Sarason.qxd 11/3/2005 3:30 PM Page ii In Appreciation of May 22, 1943 and September 2, 1954 FM-Sarason.qxd 11/3/2005 3:30 PM Page iii FM-Sarason.qxd 11/3/2005 3:30 PM Page iv Copyright © 2006 by Corwin Press All rights reserved. When forms and sample documents are included, their use is authorized only by educators, local school sites, and/or noncommercial entities who have purchased the book. Except for that usage, no part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information: Corwin Press A Sage Publications Company 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 www.corwinpress.com Sage Publications Ltd. 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP United Kingdom Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd. B-42, Panchsheel Enclave Post Box 4109 New Delhi 110 017 India Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sarason, Seymour Bernard, 1919– Letters to a serious education president / Seymour B. Sarason.— 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-4129-2649-1 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-4129-2650-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Education—Aims and objectives—United States. 2. Educational change—United States. 3. Education and state—United States. I. Title. LA217.2.S27 2006 370.973—dc22 2005026779 This book is printed on acid-free paper. 050607080910987654321 Acquisitions Editor: Elizabeth Brenkus Editorial Assistants: Candice L. Ling and Desirée Enayati Production Editor: Jenn Reese Copy Editor: Catherine Chilton Typesetter: C&M Digitals (P) Ltd. Proofreader: Scott Oney Cover Designer: Michael Dubowe FM-Sarason.qxd 11/3/2005 3:30 PM Page v Contents Foreword vii Andy Hargreaves Acknowledgments xi About the Author xiii Introduction to the Second Edition 1 The Letters 25 FM-Sarason.qxd 11/3/2005 3:30 PM Page vi FM-Sarason.qxd 11/3/2005 3:30 PM Page vii Foreword t is an honor and a privilege to be asked to write the foreword to I a book authored by a living legend of educational thought; one who is still writing prolifically in his eighties. Seymour Sarason is undoubtedly one of the world’s leading thinkers and writers on the culture of the school and its relationship to educational change. The large number of books Seymour Sarason has written over his pro- fessional lifetime—the most important of them since his fiftieth year—encompass subjects as diverse and interconnected as school culture, teacher education, the role of the arts in teaching and learning, educational handicap and deficiency (as it was once known), counseling, careers and aging, and educational change and reform. As a psychologist, historian, and public intellectual, Sarason’s con- tribution as an analyst and activist in the world of educational change and reform has been persistent and profound. Environmentalist Henry David Thoreau once remarked that “reformers are the greatest bores of all.” Sarason brings to this world of reform and reformers a critical yet accessible perspective that urges them to understand the peculiar culture of the school and its people; that admonishes them for having no sense of or willingness to learn from history; and that appeals to them to acknowledge the capacity of people (learners and teachers alike) to change and improve themselves if they are provided with the right con- ditions and encouragement. Seymour Sarason has written that teaching is in some ways like performance art. It is therefore fitting, perhaps, that in this book, he should distill his ideas and engage them with the present reform environment through the dramatic device of a set of “letters” to the President of the United States at the beginning of the 21st century. This “dialogue,” or Sarason’s side of it, is preceded by one of the most cogent and articulate critiques of the No Child Left Behind legislation that has yet been published. vii FM-Sarason.qxd 11/3/2005 3:30 PM Page viii viii—— Letters to a Serious Education President As I write this, I am in the midst of a speaking tour of the United Kingdom. In that country, politicians have been obsessed with their own reform agenda, subjecting schools to the necessity of meeting short-term achievement targets in literacy and math, and imposing prescribed programs of mandated and micromanaged instruction in these subjects for one hour each per day. After apparent early suc- cesses, these reform efforts (from which the United States has bor- rowed heavily) have turned out to be not only disappointing but severely damaging as a consequence. After just a few short years, the seeming improvements in results reached a plateau when the system began to run out of quick-fix tricks. Large-scale research studies indicated that the improvements were deceptive, many of them resulting from the test items being made progressively easier over the years. And the latest research by the government’s own inspec- tion agency, OFSTED, shows that competence in writing and children’s basic pleasure in reading, is being sacrificed on the altar of ever-rising scores in just the measured technical skills of reading literacy. No Child Left Behind, Sarason contends, only engages with measured achievement and testing and does not have even the most rudimentary grasp of children’s learning. It calls for and insists on having more highly qualified teachers but does not get to grips with what quality teaching truly requires. It is an act full of answers that has no way of prompting classrooms to become places where inquis- itive children can ask more intelligent questions. The proponents of No Child Left Behind, Sarason argues, are impervious to criticism, immune to involvement of the profession, unwilling to evaluate their own efforts, and destined to experience only disappointment and failure. While the ensuing letters are addressed to a hypothetical President of the United States, Sarason’s introduction to them berates a real one—“the first president of the twenty-first century”—as some- one who was “never in doubt that he had all the answers.” Sarason’s letters instead engage Socratically with a putative “learning President,” a President who needs to act but also wants to learn and to know, a President who has as many questions as answers, a President whose White House is the nation’s first and best classroom— disciplined and authoritative, but also concerned to treat all its people with care and justice, in a way that seeks their involvement, respects FM-Sarason.qxd 11/3/2005 3:30 PM Page ix Foreword—— ix their contributions, and expects the very best of them, never presum- ing that the presidential teacher is the omniscient possessor of all the solutions. The letters themselves have messages that seem radical in the current context, yet epitomize the essence of common sense—let children ask more questions; teach writing as well as reading; connect learning and literacy to the words that children actually want to learn; put children’s learning before curriculum content; understand that there are limits to what schools can accomplish and that they cannot change society all by themselves; avoid mandating pedagogy; recap- ture the great social visions of post–World War II history; and don’t become overly fixated on the results of standardized tests.

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