Scrooge Meets Dick and Jane [Paperback]

Roger C. Schank (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2001

To hear politicians talk, one would think the entire purpose of school is to assess children rather than educate them. Excitement about learning doesn't seem to be on anyone's agenda. The villains are those who profit from testing mania, make the tests, coach for testing, publish the books on which the tests are based, and believe that the results matter. Children are being taught things they don't need to know and nobody seems to care.

Scrooge Meets Dick and Jane is a cautionary tale of the dangers of educational testing and outmoded curriculum design. Bringing a new twist to Charles Dickens' classic story, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is recast as the head of an educational testing service. He is faced with the ghosts of Education Past, Present, and Future as well as his former mentor, John Dewey. As he observes a horrible future, he comes to understand the harm he has done and its repercussions on the school system. His time with the ghosts and John Dewey leads him to a dramatic turnaround regarding schools and scholastic teaching. It haunts him until he decides to undo the damage he has done to children all over the world.

Product Details

• Paperback: 136 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805838775
• ISBN-13: 978-0805838770
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #630,094 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Emperor Has No Clothes, April 11, 2001

By 

Elliot Soloway (Ann Arbor, MI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Scrooge Meets Dick and Jane (Paperback)

Instead of a frontal assault on the misguided notion that testing is needed in K-12 -- a strategy that clearly has failed since for the next 4 years, at least, we will have more testing and thus much less learning -- Schank tells us a story. A story that portrays the evil of testing at a personal level; a wonderful family is destroyed by the pressures brought about by trying to "do good on those tests." Literally, there were tears in my eyes. This little book makes a MOST compelling, Dickensonian, case for why our craze for testing in K-12 is horrific, wicked, and downright evil.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stop Test madness!, April 2, 2001

By 

Lucy Marshall (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Scrooge Meets Dick and Jane (Paperback)

This is an extraordinary book, at once very sad, and very funny. Schank draws on Dickens' A Christmas Carol to tell a tale where the head of the Educational Testing Service is visited by the ghost of John Dewey (the famous American educator and advocate of learning by doing.) Dewey sends the ghosts of education past, present, and future to haunt Scrooge. They show how education started in this country as political indoctrination and gradually became about preparation for college. Today's schools have lost both purposes and are now about test preparation. Schank shows how this test madness will likely end, but, he says, there is hope for us all, and he explains how we need to understand why we have built what we have built so we can build something new its in place.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Big problems, smart solutions, April 1, 2001

By 

Rand Spiro (E. Lansing, MI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Scrooge Meets Dick and Jane (Paperback)

If you want to know what's most threatening about today's educational trends and, more important, what to do about it, rush to get this book. The author, one of the foremost thinkers about cutting edge edcuational issues in the world today, sounds an alarm that must be heard before our policy-makers lead a generation of children and their teachers down a path that ends in a black hole of unpreparedness for the challenges of work and life in the 21st century. All done in an engaging style, too. Don't miss it!