The Red Pencil: Convictions from Experience in Education [Hardcover]

Theodore R. Sizer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 11, 2004

This engaging and important book is a critique of American education wrapped in a memoir. Drawing on his fifty years as teacher, principal, researcher, professor, and dean, Theodore R. Sizer identifies three crucial areas in which policy discussion about public education has been dangerously silent. He argues that we must break that silence and rethink how to educate our youth.
Sizer discusses our failure to differentiate between teaching and learning, noting that formal schooling must adapt to and confront the powerful influences found outside traditional classrooms. He examines the practical as well as philosophical necessity for sharing policy-making authority among families, schools, and centralized governments. And he denounces our fetish with order, our belief that the familiar routines that have existed for generations are the only way to bring learning to children. Sizer provides alternatives to these failed routines—guidelines for creating a new educational system that would, among other things, break with wasteful traditional practice, utilize agencies and arrangements beyond the school building, and design each child’s educational program around his or her particular needs and potential.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

After nearly five decades spent pondering American secondary schools, veteran educator Sizer finds that little has changed since he was a student. There is "great strength in tradition," he says, but the teaching methods employed in 1946, when he sat quaking in first-year Latin, are ineffective, and to this day students' future success is determined primarily by their social class—not their school achievements. Sizer's frustration with American education is palpable in this slim book, which carefully considers the three "silences" of education and proposes ways to combat them. Dialogue between school administrators and their interrogators (like Sizer) breaks down, he says, over the difference between teaching and learning, the matter of authority, and the structure and order of the educational system itself. Sizer (Horace's Compromise), who has been a principal, school designer, teacher trainer and professor, proposes education that honors students' differences (antithetical to techniques currently employed by many teachers) and allows for individual attention (almost impossible in large public school classes). He applauds philosophies that "stress the importance of free minds [and] individual responsibility and creativity." The book is pleasantly free of weighty pedagogical terminology, and while both Sizer's problems and solutions will likely be familiar to concerned educators, his lucid arguments and his own experiences as a major figure in educational reform make this an enlightening book.
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Review

"A forceful, hard-hitting, and sensibly-directed critique of American schooling, one that also sets forth a convincing plan for reform that policy-makers, parents, and general readers need to consider."—Gerald Graff, author of Clueless in Academe

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (August 11, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300104588
• ISBN-13: 978-0300104585
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,975,888 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Changing Public Schools, December 12, 2007

By 

L. LAUKAITIS (Tucson, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Red Pencil: Convictions from Experience in Education (Paperback)

I couldn't help but feel compelled to write a review after I read the previous review. If you like Dewey or Adler, you will really enjoy this book. Sizer draws from both Dewey and Adler's ideas and points out all the problems with education today. Sizer has years of experience in various areas of education which does nothing more than to give his words even more value. The book is written in first person, so you actually get to live through some of his experiences which brings him to his idea of reformed education. Sizer's coalition of essential schools are interesting and provide one of the best models for education up until this point. If you want to find more information about this model before reading the book, look up Coalition of Essential Schools. They are charter schools located throughout the U.S. that are using this model. This is a must read for anyone who wants to read about contemporary education and understand where we have come from. This book isn't that negative as the previous reader mentioned. It is no more negative than Dewey's "Experience and Education."

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars the Zelig of ed reform, June 24, 2011

By 

Gerald A. Heverly (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Red Pencil: Convictions from Experience in Education (Paperback)

Theodore Sizer and his wife were intimately involved in just about every aspect of education reform from the 1950's till his death in 2007. He even connects to some earlier reform efforts through his father. And, to add to his credentials, it must be added that Sizer did just about every job in the education world from high school teacher to school principal to college professor and, lastly, founder of a charter movement. Along the way Sizer also found time to observe thousands of classrooms and interview thousands of students. Those quotes are sprinkled throughout his many books.
This, his last book, is hopeful. Given that many of his best contemporaries including John Holt, John Taylor Gatto and Gerald Bracey embraced varying degrees of pessimism about American education it is interesting that Sizer never joined them. In Red Pencil Sizer asks the 64 dollar question: if so much of our system is screwed up why isn't anyone willing to take the risk of trying to do something different? He gives various explanations all revolving around people's fear of change and risk. Then, in the last chapter, Sizer says, you know what? Some people are really trying to change things--charter schools like the one he founded based upon principles outlined in this book. You will have to decide whether you think Sizer's principles can save American education, or at least move it in a positive direction. Sizer, himself, was hopeful that the charter movement was empowering some individuals to "discomfort the guardians of the status quo", but he also recognized that there were plenty of people trying to keep that status quo intact. Who will win--or whether there will be a clear winner--remains to be seen.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars We need education for rational thinking., March 2, 2011

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Sanford Aranoff (NJ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Red Pencil: Convictions from Experience in Education (Paperback)

I cannot agree with Sizer. My goal as a mathematics professor is for the students to understand the material, starting from the principles, and applying the logic. We need to examine the principles for empirical verification. In order to accomplish any goal, we must clearly state the goal at the outset. The goal of education is rational thinking. This is true for the most part, even though there are other parts, such as sports and arts. How do we state the goal? By asking ourselves, "What's the problem?" See Teaching and Helping Students Think and Do Better: Things to Help Students Think and To Do Better in School and In Life for a discussion of this point. What is rational thinking, our educational goal, the failure of which leads to the downfall of society? See the new book, Rational Thinking, Government Policies, Science, and Living. Rational thinking starts with clearly stated principles, continues with logical deductions, and then examines empirical evidence to possibly modify the principles.

However, there are plenty of interesting statements. Here are a few:

p. 15. "What counts is with whom a young person consorts and what images invade his world."

p. 23. "Virtually all of the media intrusion is attached to commerce. Much of it is advertising, and advertising, if not by definition then by demonstrable practice, marches at the edges of deceit, teaching a dubious moral message.

p. 112. "Data emerging from forty years of research strongly suggest that no child's accomplishment can be accurately and fairly assessed by a single test.