Friday
May 11, 2007
Golden Apple Fellow, author, teacher, and professor Greg Michie explores what is left unsaid when mainstream media covers education in “Elephants in the Room,” a new article for Rethinking Schools.
He concludes with a call to action:
[We] need to pay close attention to the silences in popular accounts of urban education, and to seek out public spaces where we can tell counter-narratives: op-ed pages, letters to the editor, community or city council meetings, blogs, online discussion boards. There’s not just an elephant in the room—there’s a herd. As often and as conspicuously as possible, we need to wave our arms, point each one out, and call it by name.
Blogs? Online discussion boards? I sense a great opportunity for TEN members…
Labels: Conversations
Posted by Teaching Excellence Network on May 17, 2007 11:49 AM
Richard Lee Colvin, director of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Teachers College wrote a nice analytic piece on this in 2004:
“In general, what I don’t see in education writing is the authoritativeness that comes from having a vast amount of knowledge. Lacking that firm base of knowledge, many stories seem naïve and built on the fragile architecture of pat, superficial quotes from educators or critics...Such stories reduce the complexities of schooling to a he-said, she-said conflict that skates along the surface of the issue. They do nothing to further the public’s understanding or create pressure for improvement.”
Full article HERE.
