Customer Reviews

Horace's Compromise

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you're going to be a high school teacher, this book could be a useful tool. First published in 1984, Sizer takes an in-depth look at American high schools. He not only points out strengths and weaknesses, but offers a course of action for how we can make our schools work the best for each individual student. The only problem I really had with the book was that the statistics were outdated but through reading in my Education class, I've found that most of them hold true. It was easy to read and I found the chapters about the average days of students and teachers very telling.

Theodore Sizer accurately portrays high schools in the shape they are in today. He praises where it's due and as is more often the case, addresses areas of concern. However, he doesn't merely throw stones, more importantly he offers solutions. What he is talking about is real restructuring, not simply reorganizing. We need to think carefully about how our schools are designed and do a better job of fitting them to our students' needs. Sizer offers actual interviews with students, teachers, administrators, all the stakeholders in education today. This book could only be written by a man who truly loves kids and schools, yet agonizes over all the wasted opportunities. Sizer wants what we all want, to be more effective in the classrooms. This book is challenging, frustrating, and sometimes joyous, basically what a typical high school teacher feels every day in the front lines of the classroom. A must read for every teacher, regardless of beginner or veteran. It has something for everybody.

Outstanding, I found this book very easy to read. While reading the book, my high school days were revisited several times. I found myself thinking "did this guy visit my school?" I know he didn't but, I found many similarities the author depicts to my days in high school. I think this book would be a helpful tool to any person interested in teaching high school students. Not only does Sizer address the shortcoming, he also suggest some resolutions to the problems. I would definitely recommend this book to education majors.

Since the other reviewers won't tell you what Horace's compromise is, I will. Every high school teacher sooner or later comes to the place where the most important career decision has to be made. Put in the positive sense, the question is: how far are you willing to live for your ideals, i.e., truly educate your students, and keep your standards at the highest levels, in other words, standards you are comfortable with? Put in the negative: how far can you continue to hold respectable standards for student achievement and still survive on the job? Today's high school presents an enormously challenging environment. Very simply, adminstrators and students wield entirely too much power in the classroom, power which has been taken from the teacher. It's not for no reason at all that every pedagogic training institution shows its prospective teachers "The Crucible" (By the way, the term is "classroom hell" - and regardless of what they say, teaching pundit advice aside, it comes to most every teacher - the only difference being in degree).

Walter Annenberg, a media mogul whose controversial dealings made him one of the richest men in the world (he purchased the last Van Gogh ever auctioned), in the late 1980's, funded the education department at Brown University with the largest grant ever awarded to an academic institution in America. Say what you will about Ted Sizer. He succeeded where most academics fail miserably. He procured enough money to research education for many, many lifetimes. The first fruits of this research are embodied in the trilogy which begins with Horace's Compromise.

I think Annenberg was probably somewhat disappointed. Like many aged, reactionary richies, he attributed most of our nation's woes to our troubled educational system - and this putative disaster - the source of all evil - on bad, incompetent teaching, particularly in our public high schools. In fact, this very sentiment was echoed by controversial retired fed chief, Alan Greenspan, in his recent memoir, THE AGE OF TURBULANCE.

I do not agree with these assessments. In some instances, the teacher may be at fault - and certainly the ills of the schools of Victorian England as graphically depicted in the tormented pages of the most influential educational reformer in history - Charles Dickens - may be laid at the feet of bad teachers. And they were. But the day when the teacher had the last word in either discipline or curriculum, or almost anything else, are long gone - as far gone, in fact, as the brutal alma maters of David Copperfield and Oliver Twist. The bulk of the onus for the solution to today's problems resides with administrators and, frankly, overworked and underpaid parents, who are often treated with a measure of the disrespect experienced by many teachers in the classroom.

But, as a explanation of the dilemmas of teaching, I believe Horace's Compromise does better than it's critics claim. As to the solutions, how much better is the standard of success is a bit fuzzier. Sizer is a synthetic thinker - and his solutions come from many sources. Most importantly, he harks back to Rousseau's idea, as expressed in Emile, that student buy-in should be the central dynamic in teaching - and every teacher should advantage it. Well . . . unfortunately the diversity of classroom participation is much like Forrest Gump's mother's proverbial box of chocolates - especially in lower income communities. Catering to diversity, as has been the battle cry of virtually every attempt at educational reform over the past three decades, may not provide the classroom solution. Should we cast the Classical Canon and The Art of Memory to the winds in favor of student designed curricula? I think not. For better or worse, we learn in school the value of the cultural inheritance, what value there is in it. I guess that's why they call me Old School. But then, I'm only one reader. The fact is that we never can and never will be able get around the fact that learning entails pain. I don't feel that Sizer ever adequately comes to terms with this reality. But what does emerge, perhaps unwittingly, from his work, is the understanding that the burden of proof for the success or failure of the learning process, resides not with the teacher, but with the student. For that truth, we ought to recognize that Sizer has more than earned his money. See also: Edward B. Fiske, SMART KIDS, SMART SCHOOLS.

Theodore Sizer has cranked out a cottage industry's worth of books all focused on illuminating the absurdity of the current school system and offering a well-reasoned model for redesigning those schools to achieve the purposes for which they are funded. He is the voice of the "Coalition of Essential Schools" model for reform. Each book uses a fictitious "Horace" for dramatic dialogue, following "Horace's Compromise" which communicated Sizer's research findings in 1982. His very readable style, primarily narrative rich with anecdotes of the many schools he personally visited, established him as a popular and credible author. You don't have to have a graduate degree in education to understand him or to feel as if you, too, could be instrumental in change after you have red his books. One innovation I like is the inclusion of literature in the arts--a clear challenge to the College Board's traditional division of disciplines, and the plea to liberate schools from curriculum a mile wide and an inch deep: "less is more". A good companion author is John Goodlad.

This first of Sizer's Horace trilogy is a must read for those interented in high school reform. Based on years fo field research Sizer, through his composite teacher, describes how even the best intentiioned teachers are handcuffed in trying to meet all their studetns needs in our current educatinal system, even in the best of our comprehensive high schools. He analyzes the shortcomings and closes with a blueprint for restructuring. His later books take that blueprint into more detail. The writing is engaging and persuasive.

Even though the book was written in 1984, many of the dilemmas faced in the American high school haven't changed. Students still need more stimulation from teachers and curriculum. This book highlights some of the main themes that can be seen in most high schools even today.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to get into the teaching profession. A student in an introductory education class would be a good audience. This would give them a picture of high school from a non-student glance, which they often won't encounter until several semesters into their undergraduate career. This way they have a better idea of what to expect when they complete a practicum or student teaching experience.

Veteran teachers would also benefit from reading this book. It is easy to get caught up in curriculum and forget that there are teenagers in the room. Their needs are often forgotten. This book is a good reminder of "the other side of the story". This book was a good reminder of what is really going on in high school classrooms.

Anyone who works in a school, but may not have been in a classroom for a while should also read this book. Again, it is a good reminder of what teachers and students are experiencing on a daily basis.

This is a book that I will keep and p

This book gave good ideas for helping adolescents with various problems. To me, I have already been in most of the situations that are described in the book and it was boring to me. However, this book can help someone who wants to become a high school teacher. There are tips on how to get students attention and how to adress social issues in high schools. I liked the part about the girl who was bored in school and how she would not give her full attention. I was somewhat like that in high school.

Sizer has a talent for seeing high school as it really is to the teachers and students. His proposal to reform high school is drastic yet desperately needed.

As an education major, I found this book to very helpful and all and all fabulous. I reccomend it for all education majors but especially for those who are planning to teach High School. It was full of anecdote's and very easy to read. Sizer made me feel a part of what he was talking about. He really puts the problem with high school children, administration, and motivation into perspective.