My new SSR book arrived via Amazon today, The Energy to Teach by Donald Graves. Though it was published over a decade ago, the last paragraph in the first section is just as true today. Graves is illustrating the joys and pains of teaching when he concludes:
At times you will be second-guessed by parents, administrators, and pundits who have never taught. Laws will be passed that try to govern the teaching transactions you make with children. You will observe that the volume of rhetoric by the experts is directly related to the distance the speaker is from the classroom.
In that passage you can picture Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, Race to the Top, the Missouri law forbidding student and teacher discussion via Facebook, Paul Vallas' "Teacher-proof" curriculum in New Orleans . . .
The more things change, well you know . . .
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