What I Learned In School E-Book

James P. Comer

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 265

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Beschreibung

From the Winner of the Grawemeyer Award in Education in 2007 "In the world of education reform, where silver-bullet ideas,ideologies, and intellectual fashion clamor for influence, JamesComer's thinking has long been a sea of calm, balanced, and humanewisdom focused on the needs of the whole person. Reading Comer yousee the incompleteness of so many other approaches to reform, aswell as learn an integrated approach to making schools work. Andnow, here it all is in a single book. If you want to see howschools can actually work, as opposed to affiliate with a priorbelief about how they should work, this is a must read." --Claude Steele,professor, the Center for Advanced Study inthe Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University "The best introduction?professional and personal--to theremarkable world of James Comer: physician-educator, parexcellence." --Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education,Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts "James Comer is a rare constellation among social scientists: agreat intellect, a keen analyst, a creative problem-solver and aman of enormous empathy. His writings are required reading foranyone interested in education reform or improving the odds forpoor children." --Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO, Harlem Children'sZone

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Outstanding Ideas in Education

Introduction

The Intersection of Race, Schools, and My Research

The Way to Approach Student Development and Learning

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS AT THE GRAWEMEYER AWARD CEREMONY

ADDRESS AT THE GRAWEMEYER AWARD CEREMONY

Chapter 1 - Washington Elementary School

Chapter 2 - Me, Walter, and America

Chapter 3 - Three Networks and a Baby

The Baby and the First Network

The Family in the Three Networks

The Child and the Second Network

The Adolescent in the Second Network

The Third Network

The Individual Stands Alone?

Chapter 4 - So You Want to Work in Schools?

Chapter 5 - My Work

The School Development Program’s Evolution

Survival and Funding

The School Development Program Today

Outcomes and Implications

Chapter 6 - To Leave No Child Behind

Chapter 7 - All Our Children

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

INDEX

This page represents a continuation of the copyright page.

THE AUTHOR

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Page 165 constitutes a continuation of the Copyright page.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Comer, James P.

What I learned in school: reflections on race, child development, and school reform / by James P. Comer. p. cm.—(Outstanding ideas in education series)

Includes index.

eISBN : 978-0-470-54166-1

1. Comer, James P. 2. Educators—United States—Biography. 3. Education—United States. 4. Education—United States—Philosophy. 5. Child development—United States. 6. African American children—Education. I. Title.

LB885.C5255W.92—dc22 [B] 2009018597

HB Printing

Outstanding Ideas in Education

The Outstanding Ideas in Education series offers an introduction to some of the leading thinkers in the field of education. Each volume in the series provides a thought-provoking retrospective of their work—in their own words—through seminal articles and essays. In presenting these monumental ideas in a clear and comprehensive format, each volume is designed to stimulate discussion and further innovation in the field.

INTRODUCTION

What I Learned in School

DURING THE SUMMER OF 2007, I met then Senator Barack Obama at a fundraiser for his presidential campaign. The last time we’d met, two years earlier, I’d spoken with him about our School Development Program. I was not sure he remembered me, but before I could introduce myself, he said with gusto, “Dr. Comer! Are you still trying to save the world?” At some point later, it occurred to me that his comment closely echoed something Lee Shulman, president emeritus of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, said in his address at the 2007 Grawemeyer Award presentation. In his speech, Dr. Shulman spoke about people whose work seemed to be driven by a “saving the world mentality.” That I might have such a mentality was a bit bothersome because it was a bit too close to megalomania, but the more I thought about it, the more evidence I found that I might indeed have world-saving ambitions. And when I consider some of my early thinking and behavior, it might be that I had such ambitions even as a young child.

When I interviewed my mother for Maggie’s American Dream, her oral history and my related autobiography, she recalled a revealing incident. After my elementary school principal, Miss McFeeley, retired, she and my mother met in the local grocery store several times, and each time, she would tell Mom about this one memory she had of me.

Ms. McFeeley remembered, so many years later, something I said once after she finished scolding my three best friends. I said to her, “They are not bad; they just want to be loved.” I’m sure that I deeply repressed the interaction because my eight- or nine-year-old’s memory of my principal was of a fierce, seven-foot-tall woman who banged her large ruler on the table and brought complete silence to a hall full of noisy elementary school students lined up at noon one rainy day. I feared her immensely. So making our little world better must have been incredibly important to me, because I was not naturally courageous.