Customer Reviews

The Queen of Education: Rules for Making Schools Work (Jossey-Bass Education)

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Just a quick note to readers: The Queen of Education essay in this book is a satire. It wasn't meant to be taken seriously. It's purpose was to provoke thought. The edicts are far-fetched because our school systems are in a ridiculous state of disarray and many things could be addressed with common sense - but that isn't being done. If you remember Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal, he suggested that rich people eat the children of the poor. Surely he wasn't serious. Neither is the Queen. But I am serous about fixing our schools. This country throws billions of dollars at so many other things from foreign aid to space exploration. We need to spend some money, wisely, on our own education system.

Thanks for reading this disclaimer. I hope you find something in the book that speaks to you.

LouAnne

Louanne Johnson has my vote for Queen! The ideas in this book are logical, intelligent and humane. Why can't we create student-centered schools, as she suggests, instead of designing everything to make life easier for adults? I have read Dangerous Minds and The Girls in the Back of the Class, so I knew I would find interesting anecdotes and practical advice. But this book has much more-- information on scotopic sensitivity, essential fatty acids, and why detention programs don't work. But I like Johnson's humor as much as her serious writing. I especially enjoyed the fable in this book, and the quirky drawings. But because I am a teacher, the last chapter, An Open Letter to Teachers really hit home for me. It made me cry. It made me proud to be a teacher. I think every politician and school administrator in this country should have to read this book and spend ten minutes talking to the Queen.

I love the Queen's royal edicts, especially the part about making the U.S. Congressmen and women enroll their own children in the poorest public schools in their districts, and making all the public officials teach in the school system with the curriculum available and living on a teacher's salary. They made me laugh out loud when I read them, but after I thought about them for a while I realized they were good ideas. Johnson's fable is a winner, too. I enjoyed reading the letters from students because it gave me some insight into the kids I deal with every day. The Open Letter to Teachers brought a tear to my eye. I skipped ahead to the end and read that letter first. Read this book!

LeeAnne Johnson's rules for education are thoughtful, well-presented, and a product of someone who has actually been in the classroom. She is a hands-on educator. As a special education teacher, I found myself wanting to shout, "Right on!" This book should be read by every administrator, school board member, teacher, and teacher wannabe. I look forward to her next book.

Even though I am a student not a teacher I really like this book. My mother bought it for my teacher but I read it and I wish Louann Johnson was my teacher. She cares about kids just like in the movie Dangerous Minds. If the president would listen to her I think we would have better schools insted of just a bunch of stupid tests. I want to go to that dream school. If my school could be like that it would be really great.

This book hits the target most of the time. The author is really anti-drugs for ADHD and some children need medications but thats my only complaint about this book. I think the rest of it is on target and people should read it and think about the things Louann Johnson is saying such as detention is a bad idea. I was one of those bad kids back in school and detention never helped me. It made me hate school. The best thing in this book is the stuff about light sensitivity because when I tried putting a blue plastic sheet over the book my daughter can read a lot better. I wish LouAnne was a teacher at my kids school. I think they would be happier and they would learn more.

I feel compelled to point out that the title essay Queen of Education is a SATIRE. That means it was not meant to be taken literally, but rather was a way of making a point. This essay is brief and does not represent the rest of the book which has a varied content and is definitely worth reading. It includes a chapter on Scotopic Sensitivy, a chapter on the effects of poor nutrition on our children, some of the documented dangers of ADHD medications, actual letters from actual students and teachers, suggestions for administrators who want to retain their new teachers, and an explanation of why punitive detention programs don't work. And the most important chapter - the epilogue which is an Open Letter to Teachers, a sincere thankyou from the author to the many teachers who devote their lives to helping children and receive little recognition.

Here are some selected excerpts from the book:

From Chapter 9 (Scotopic Sensitivity):

"...black print on a white page creates very high contrast and people with Scotopic Sensitivity find such contrasts distracting, uncomfortable or even painful. Fluorescent lighting often increases the discomfort..by placing a colored overlay on the page many people can read without eyestrain or headaches--even some people who hae a long history of problems with readin. 'I know a lot of people are skeptical about the overlays," says Madden [a school principal]. 'They want something real challenging and difficult as a solution to reading problems. And had I not experimented yeas ago, I would have thought, This cannot be. But those overlays have really helped some students who used to earn 30's and 40's and are now making 90's and 100's on their work. In one year our school went from 75% passing the state test to 89.4% passing.'"

From Chapter 10 (The Big Fat Problem):

"The optimum ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3 EFA's is 2:1...but when the ratio surpasses 20:1, we have trouble because of the molecular structure and behavior of the EFAs. When Omega 6's are present in much higher ratio than Omega 3's, the Omega 6's will actually block the gaps between the molecules of Omega e's, canceling the transmission of electrical impulses in the brain which directly relates to the ability to think, focus and concentrate. In clumsy, unscientific English: eating too much of the wrong kind of fat makes us stupid."

From Chapter 11 (Why I Wouldn't Give My Own Kid Ritalin):

"In 2002 I came across the abstract from a research study that a group of scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York conducted, titled 'Methylphenidate and Cocaine Have a Similar In vivo Potency to Block Dopamine Transporters in the Human Brain.' I was incredulous. Could this possibly be true? I wondered....So I went to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) web site and searched on the word methylphenidate. What I read on the DEA web site increased my concern: 'Methylphenidate, a Schedule II substance, has a high potential for abuse and produces the same effects as cocaine or the amphetamines.'"

From the Epilogue (An Open Letter to Teachers):

"Dear Teacher,thank you for continuing to teach in spite of the poor pay, pathetic working conditions, and monumental lack of respect and understanding from the general public about how mentally and emotionally exhausting your job can be. ..for working countless hours of unpaid overtime because it is the only way to do your job well and for not reminding people constantly that if you were paid for your overtime, you could retire tomorrow and never have to work again...for giving hopeless children enough hope to continue struggling against the poverty, prejudice, abuse, alcoholism, hunger, and apathy that are a daily part of so many tender young lives...for taking on the most difficult, challenging, frustrating, emotionally exhausting, mentally draining, satisfying, wonderful, precious job in the world. You are truly an unsung American hero."

If people want to review this book, they should review the entire book and make an intelligent criticism, not simply trash a satire that they didn't "get." I know this book isn't perfect. No book is. The subtitle is misleading and should be removed. But the author has devoted the past decade of her life to trying to improve the situation in our public schools. And I sincerely believe that anybody who reads this book will see that.

I admit I wouldn't have bought this book, but the mother of one of my students gave it to me as a gift. Now I'm glad she did because I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, especially the letters from students because I am always looking for good discussion topics that will engage my middle school students. I like LouAnn's edicts even though they will probably never happen. There is too much bureaucracy in our schools and not enough common sense. My favorite part of the book was the last chapter, the epilogue. I felt as though LouAnn were talking to me in her letter to teachers. It's nice to be appreciated because teaching really is a difficult and demanding (but rewarding) job.

Most books about education in America today acknowledge that there are very serious problems in education, and that things have been getting worse. One of the best is "Inside American Education" by Thomas Sowell.

"The Queen of Education" has both a light hearted side and a serious side. It starts off with a cutesy fable about how education become so broken, and then how things got (hopefully will get) better. The book is very serious about the many problems our children are facing in public schools.

LouAnne Johnson explores some ideas on how she would solve the problems of education. She talks about what she would do if she could be the queen of education and just pass edicts. The first chapter goes over her edicts. Her edicts tend to be superficial. I almost didn't go pass the first chapter because I kept making notes about some possible unintended consequences of her edicts.

Her first edict is "No classroom in this country shall have more than twenty students." She goes on to say "Period. We have spoken." Does this mean all bands and sports teams have to be 20 or less? Why can't a high school history class have 100 students who listen to a lecture and then break into discussion groups? For young children, small classrooms make sense. For well behaved high school students, there is less value. Sometimes students do best when there are two teachers in a slightly larger classroom. But her edict won't allow any flexibility.

Her second and third have to do with forcing politicians to teach in public schools for a couple weeks, and then forcing them to send their own children to the worse public schools. Ha! This would never happen. It is like wishing for a billion dollars. It sounds like a nice idea, but it is never going to happen. And forcing politicians to send their children to bad public schools shouldn't happen. Everyone should be able to chose if they want to send their children to a private school, or even homeschool them. Currently one of the largest groups of people to send their children to private schools is public school teachers. In some cities over 30% of public school teachers send their children to private schools. Shouldn't they also be forced to send their children to public schools?

The edict I made the most number of notes on was her forth which reads: "Begin to deflate the bureaucratic bloat in our public school system this very instant." The huge bureaucratic mess of public education is one of the major causes of problems in education. So this is a good issue to focus on, but then her approach is bizarre. She would send the head of every education hierarchy home for a week. If things don't fall apart, he gets fired. Then she continues down to the next level to try again. So a manager who has done a good job of picking good people for his organization will be able to let them runs things for awhile without any direction from him. But a bad manager may create an organization which can not function without him, for example if he micromanages or doesn't even allow others do to some key processes. So the result of this fourth edict might be to get rid of the good leaders and retain the poor leaders.

The Sixth Edict said that money saved (in some situations) was to go directly "to student libraries, incandescent lighting for classrooms, and fine arts programs." My first thought was why incandescent lighting? What about the electrical work? What about the plumbing? Why specifically incandescent lighting. (If you read chapter 9, you'll find out.) One of the major problems with public education today is having inflexible rules, but the author doesn't learn from this. She repeats this fundamental problem in a number of her edicts.

After reading the first chapter I would have given this book one or two stars.

I am glad I got pass the first chapter, because the book got better. She gives some history about her life, how she got into teaching, and some of the experiences she had being a teacher. This was very well written, and enjoyable.

This is an OK book to read, but you need to be careful. LouAnne Johnson clearly cares about education. She has had many painful experiences in teaching. But some of her solutions would not fix education. At best they might solve one problem and create other problems.

Johnson presents seven "edicts" for fixing education - an appropriate choice of words since she offers little/no justification for them. Let's take a look at some of them -

1)No classroom shall have more than 20 students. Sounds so easy, intuitively makes so much sense. Except it doesn't work. Most research supporting smaller classes is based on confounding expenditures with parental socio-economic class. High socio-economic parents both contribute better genes and home environments to their children; they also typically spend more on education (especially for reduced class size). Thus, simplistic analyses conclude (somehow) that reduced class size is "the cure." More sophisticated analyses, demonstrated by Hanushek, Coleman, and others, is that WHEN PARENTAL CONTRIBUTIONS ARE HELD CONSTANT reduced class size contributes very little if anything to improving pupil outcomes.

Other facts suggest the same conclusion, and don't require sophisticated analyses: a)Asian children almost always outscore Americans - despite much larger classes. b)Jewish and Asian children in America score much higher than other groups. c)Thirty years of decreasing class size, etc. has accomplished NOTHING - National Assessment of Educational Progress results for 17-year-olds have been essentially unchanged, as have dropout rates. d)There is more variation in pupil achievement WITHIN SCHOOLS THAN BETWEEN THEM - thus, school factors cannot possibly dominate pupil outcomes.

4)Begin to deflate the bureaucratic bloat. Absolutely correct. However, her methodology is silly - eg. try a week w/o the Supt. and if things are still running smoothly get rid of him/her. Any competent Supt. will create an organization that can survive w/o him/her for a week. The real problem is in middle-management - consultants, coordinators, supervisors for everything under the sun. Get rid of all of them, except perhaps in the largest districts. They simply diffuse responsibility, add costs, and reduce teachers' achievement motivation.

7)Stop the testing frenzy. Cease the accountability testing of licensed teachers. Really - experts on Japanese education success attribute much of it to "high-stakes testing." How else does one evaluate teachers, curricula, etc.?

Reality is that parents are the prime determinants of pupil success. They need to take charge of their children, and stop thinking this role can be delegated.