Customer Reviews

If You`re Riding a Horse and It Dies, Get Off

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This book was read to my teaching staff as we were talking about the changes in education and aligning our curriculum with the Maine State Learning Results. I am a first year teacher and laughed along with my fellow teachers, some who have been teacher for longer then I have been alive! It puts the changes in education into a cute story that we all know. Everyone has an idea of how to make education better, but sometimes you have to start over from scratch. Buy it, read it, and share it with your fellow teachers when you need a laugh.

This book will put a smile on any educator's face who has been in education for three or more years. This caricature highlights the many "solutions" offered to the educational world. My colleagues and I could not stop laughing. (If we can't laugh at ourselves, we most certainly have lost all hope.) Great gift idea for anyone feeling overwelmed by the next solution past down by someone who "knows better."

This is the best book I've found to explain the rationale for educational change to faculty and staff. Everyone who sees it immediately apprehends the point of why we need change.

Most anyone who works in the trenches of education-teachers especially-know that a good deal of our time is spent riding (or whipping) dead horses; doing things that just plain' ol' don't work year after year.

In this short book, a teacher is riding a horse outside of a lil' red schoolhouse when suddenly the horse flops over dead (X's for eyes and tongue sticking out an' everything). A series of people come along to make common, patent suggestions for how to fix the horse problem, including using a bigger whip, letting a more experienced rider give it a try, team-riding and two of my favorites, "how about an Individualized Equestrian Plan (IEP)?" and a clown on stilts who suggests that they "raise the standard on dead-horse riding."

After a dozen or so ideas that clearly wont work because they all focus on the dead horse, a little boy comes in and says simply that if you're riding a dead horse, you need to get off (the teacher is seen in a red convertible merrily zooming away on the last page).

"If You're Riding a Horse and It Dies..." looks like a children's book but clearly has an adult message. It's cute and will no doubt ring true to anyone who's been a classroom teacher for more than, say, 3 days. It's biggest failing, noted by many other reviewers, is that is does nothing but illustrate and put between 2 covers the most common suggestions to improve dead horse riding, none of which have worked in any meaningful, widespread way.

Teachers are like soldiers in the army: we are the ones who do much/all of the gruntwork and we are also most powerless in the entire hierarchy. We can do very little in and of ourselves BY ourselves to affect sweeping change. We know that we're often riding a dead horse, and if anyone would LISTEN to us and take our suggestions seriously, we very well COULD get off the horse and into the lil' red sportscar.

The book makes no suggestions for how to affect change from within, but in fairness, I don't think that's the book's purpose. The book is intended, I think, to be more of an amusement and call to arms than a step-by-step instruction manual for revamping education and eliminating dead horses. Those who are interested in such a thing might do well to check out "The Comfort Trap (or, What if You're Riding a Dead Horse)" by Judith Sills.

I can't justify giving it 5 stars or even really 4 because, IMHO, a book of this sort should offer at least a small, bulleted list of Where To Begin And How To Fix Education. Still, I think it would have some use for beginning Leadership and other Team meetings where those gathered could use it as an amusing way of beginning to discuss how the dead horses of the school can be taken away for a safe burial.

Those that have given this book poor reviews obviously do not work in public education or have taken the book too seriously. Constructed around the old saying of "don't beat a dead horse" this book illustrates that there comes a time when you must recognize that the proverbial horse is dead and you must move on to a new horse, or in a broader sense, way of thinking. This book is excellent for staff development and illustrating that it is often important to step back from a problem and think outside of the box. It is a perfect illustration of the old saying "if you do what you have always done, you will get what you have always got" only with some humorous educational examples. Simple, but to the point.

I bought this book for my girlfriend who is an elementary school teacher thinking it would have some funny anecdotes about teaching. It is a joke. This is not a book, it is more like a pamphlet. It just uses old, overused attempts to poke fun at various teaching/administrative methods (i.e. forming committees, throwing money at the problem, having standardized testing). Basically it is a childlike book that critiques all of these methods (through a cartoon about riding a dead horse) and provides the final answer to get off the dead horse and "try something new!" Oh how brilliant.

Sometimes common sense is the best solution to a problem. In our scientific research based times, we often overlook the best ideas that are right in front of our noses. This book reminds us that if what we are doing doesn't work...do something else!

Great motivator.

Those that have given this book poor reviews obviously do not work in public education or have taken the book too seriously. Constructed around the old saying of "don't beat a dead horse" this book illustrates that there comes a time when you must recognize that the proverbial horse is dead and you must move on to a new way of thinking. This book is excellent for staff development and illustrating that it is often important to step back from a problem and think outside of the box. It is a perfect illustration of the old saying "if you do what you have always done, you will get what you have always got" only with some humorous educational examples. Simple, but to the point.

This book consists of exactly eighteen sentences; the title tells the whole story. I thought I was ordering a book that would provide some insights. It does not.

I am a teacher, I get it, and I am not amused. Next time, I will explore the book thoroughly before spending my money.

Too bad I can't assign less than one star.

I only wish I had taken jakasaur's review more seriously. Dont waste your money. It is not funny and not helpful.