Letters to a Young Teacher

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2007

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Chapters 11-12

Chapter 13-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 9-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 9 Summary: “Aesthetic Merriment (‘Wiggly’ and ‘Wobbly’ and ‘Out!’)”

Francesca asks who is responsible for setting up education policy talks about the fun, excitement, and wonderment of children. Kozol writes that official documents do not use this language, even though the delight and joy of children is top of mind for teachers.

Kozol shares a story from a school visit where a teacher demonstrated an effective, engrossing, and playful method of keeping the classroom’s attention by having everybody imitate the flute section of an orchestra with their hands and voices. Good teachers should never be too inhibited to express themselves in the classroom like this. He shares another example of a classroom in which the teacher brought in a real caterpillar, using its growth and eventual transformation into a butterfly to teach biology.

Kozol is skeptical of education policy that primarily cares about how students will eventually fit into the national economy. Rather, he praises Francesca for refusing to push “children out of that age when many things are interesting and so much is new” (105). Kozol praises the “Tooth Line” that Francesca set up in her classroom, in which the students chart the progress of their loose teeth from “wiggly” to “wobbly” and finally to “out!” as an effective way to teach timelines through a whimsical activity that children respond to.

The author concludes this letter by decrying the US Department of Education’s efforts “to change the face of reading instruction across the United States from an art to a science” (108) and the general call to standardize all instruction. Kozol calls on teachers to “resist these policies” and to “use their ingenuity in every way they can to undermine the consequences of this pseudoscientific push for uniformity,” (108).

Chapter 10 Summary: “High-Stakes Tests and Other Modern Miseries”

Kozol discusses high-stakes testing, which creates stress and fear in public schools. A lot is at stake in the results of these tests: Low-performing public schools receive less funding. Preparing for standardized tests often begins as early as kindergarten. Children with less affluent parents tend to do worse on these tests, as rich parents are able to enroll children in expensive pre-K programs (for example, the New York “Baby Ivies” preschools cost upward of $22,000 for tuition).

Test results follow children the rest of their lives, in part because they determine the tracks students are placed in. Less talented teachers do better with test drilling as it requires little creativity or imagination. Often students are told that doing well on standardized tests is the single most important part of their education, but drilling for these tests is neither good for learning, nor results in long-term educational gains. Kozol argues that teachers who are opposed to high-stakes testing are not lazy but are simply demanding that tests be useful for learning and diagnostic of student needs. Kozol praises Francesca for sitting with a student one-on-one in a low-stress diagnostic test situation to find out how to better serve the student in the future.

Kozol also opposes mandatory phonics lessons, which some conservative commentators insist is the solution to many student learning problems. Kozol argues that phonics has its place but is not useful to all students in the same way. He promotes a healthy skepticism of “standards-writers and technicians of accountability” who claim to have expertise regarding how teachers should run their classrooms.

Nevertheless, Kozol concedes that teachers “have to balance some of their most deeply held convictions against the practical necessity of defending students from the punishments and stigma that the educational establishment sees all too willing to dole out to them” (129). He calls on teachers to make it clear to students that these tests are not the ultimate determinant of student intellect and worth.

Chapters 9-10 Analysis

Official policy is often divorced from the magic of children, the special alchemy that exists in classrooms led by good teachers, and the creative work teachers actually perform. Kozol argues that the point of school is not to fit students into the national economy as productive adults, but to expand their horizons and learn how to be excited by life. The example of the teacher who turns her young class into the flute section of an orchestra when things get unruly is the perfect example of the kinds of creative solution teachers come up with through experience that irrelevant policy suggestions never seem to capture.

The overemphasis on mandatory high-stakes testing in public schools is another example of policymakers missing the point and possibilities of childhood education. Kozol advises teachers to make it painstakingly clear to students that these tests do not define them, yet these teachers must still find ways to do right by their students and make sure they perform well on these tests that can define their future career prospects. Inequality creeps into test preparation as well: School funding is often tied to test results, forcing administrators to put undue attention on this part of education; moreover, affluent parents can afford expensive pre-kindergarten schooling that sets up their children for unfair advantages in test situations.