Carnival of Education - High Expectations

In addition to linking to Sam Dyson’s great guest blog post (congrats, Sam!) from a few days ago, this week’s Carnival of Education highlights some of the best education writing on the web this week.

I was particularly interested in this piece from A Voice in the Wilderness.  The author’s friend, severely dyslexic, was incredibly successful in school despite his disability. But, unfortunately, when his master’s degree and other academic accomplishments landed him in jobs requiring lots of writing, he was tragically unsuccessful. This should never have happened argues the author:

The educational community failed my friend. We didn’t want him to feel bad about himself when he was in school, so we gave him a false view of his abilities. We decided that it was better for him to feel good about himself while in school and then be miserable for the rest of his life. We do this all the time.

For some reason, education has completely removed itself from the real world. Researchers and ivory tower professors are dictating what should be happening in schools. All children should study academics, they say. All children should attend college. Apparently, all children are the same. Guess what, they’re not.

This makes me wonder about the idea of having “high expectations for all students.” Can we have high expectations, but not necessarily the same expectations for all our students?  For instance, is it possible to be an excellent high school teacher who does not think all her students should go to college?

A related TEN blog post, referencing this great conversation on the Faculty Room blog.

Unrelated: my other favorite post from this week’s Carnival asks, “should teachers hide their beliefs?”

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