(Part 2) Best educational philosophy book according to redditors

Your focus on detention is arbitrary. It's like saying it's unfair that hostages don't have access to pizza. Maybe, but the whole state of being-a-hostage is unfair. Instead of obsessing about their lack of pepperoni and mushrooms, why not, instead, focus on the actual problem?

• We force children to go to school.
  
• We force children to study specific subjects at school.
  
• We force children to do homework after school.
  
• We stigmatize them if they fail at school.
  
• We use school grades as one metric of mental health.
  
• In most schools, we force children to be subject to archaic. pedagogical methods--once that have been proven to be ineffective.
  
• And, yes, we force children who have (in my view) naturally bucked against this system, to stay in school longer than kids who accept it.
  
• In most schools, children learn very little, especially given the amount of time the spend there.
  
• In many cases (e.g. when forced to read Shakespeare), they often develop a lifelong hatred of the subject.
  
• Many children spend years in school being bullied, mocked, and ostracized.
  
• Throughout this time, they're repeatedly told all this is "good for them," and, in the end, like serial abusers, they inflict in on their own kids, telling them it's good for them.
  
  All of this stuff has been studied for decades. We know that most schools are run horribly, according to unsound educational principals. But that never changes.
  
  When psychologists or neuroscientists discover something about learning or education, it takes years or decades to affect classroom practices, if it ever does.
  
  Schools aren't generally affected by Science. Instead, they are buffeted by politics and held fast by tradition.
  
  See
  
  
• Wounded By School
  
  
• Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes
  
  
• The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing
  
  
• video: The 3 Most Basic Needs of Children & Why Schools Fail
  
  
• Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood
  
  
• [A Mathematician's Lament (PDF)] (https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf); longer book version: A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form
  
  
• Ken Robinson's TED talk: Do Schools kill creativity?
  
  
• How Children Fail
  
  
• Unschooling
  
  
• Why do we get frustrated when learning something? (written by me)
  
  I am skeptical that I will CYV, even though I believe that this is the best argument against it--not your view that detention is wrong, but that it's not even worth talking about. Sure, detention is a bad thing--but not the worst thing--about a horrible, corrupt, abusive system.
  
  I'm skeptical, because the system is so deeply entrenched in our culture. And the most people can do is argue about small tweaks: whether we should use this textbook or that, the length of Summer break, the size of classrooms, etc.
  
  The debate about Creationism vs Evolution in schools is a good example. If the Evolution folks (or the Creationist folks) win, they will pat themselves on the back and walk away happy, never glancing back and noticing that the same shoddy educational methods are being used now as before--with just one correction.
  
  Yes, Dominoes is bad pizza. It won't suddenly become good pizza if you put it in a less-ugly box. I agree that the box is ugly, but why focus on it? It's not the core problem.

Well, I’m a big fan of Said, but I can’t seem to find it online very easily. It is for sure in this essay reader according to the table of contents listed on google books (last chapter). Maybe you can find a PDF? But you could see if the UCI library has the reader.

If it’s a required reading, the professor will likely tell you how to get it.

Ouch. My advice, then, would be to employ some good reading strategies and increase the drama/improv acting in your class.

The best book I've read for helping readers is When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do by Kylene Beers. She offers some fantastic pre-, during-, and post-reading strategies. My students love Tea Party. Here is a summary of the book--look at chapters 6, 7, & 8 in particular: http://middlesecondarytoolkit.pbworks.com/f/mainidea111509.pdf

While that helps with comprehension (which naturally enhances engagement), I think teachers also can improve student engagement if they work on their performance abilities. I like to stop every few minutes or so (depending on grade level and reading ability) when I'm reading aloud and act out scenes. Today, my 7th graders (I teach 7-12 and I do the same with all grades) were reading Of Mice and Men, and after the scene where Lennie crushes Curly's hand, I stopped and said "Oh man this is exciting, but I'm not sure you're all getting this. We need to see this," and then I had the smallest girl get up and pretending to be Lennie as she crushed my hand and I melodramatically fell to the ground crying. In another scene I pretended to be Curly's wife and came in and "hit on" a couple male students. I'm a 6'0" man.

It sounds silly, but when you can embrace the cringe and get students laughing, you'll have them in the palm of your hand. It also causes students to pay more attention because they might get selected to be part of the mini-skit, and they don't want to be caught having no idea what we're talking about. If you want more information on how to increase the performance side of teaching, these are my two favorite books on the subject:

Teach Like a Pirate

Happy Teacher Habits

Try get the Giroux Reader or The Critical Pedagogy Reader.

You should be able to summarise the intro. plus one or two chapters and then give your thoughts on it from those two.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1376208,00.html
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07019/755198-28.stm
http://www.amazon.com/Homework-Myth-Alfie-Kohn/dp/0738210854
http://www.amazon.com/Case-Against-Homework-Hurting-Children/dp/0307340171/ref=pd_sim_b_1
http://www.amazon.com/End-Homework-Disrupts-Families-Overburdens/dp/0807042188/ref=pd_sim_b_5 v
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/1009homework1009.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/27/local/la-me-homework-20110627
http://www.openeducation.net/2008/03/10/several-lessons-to-be-learned-from-the-finnish-school-system/
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/rethinkinghomework.htm

College is a waste of time for many or most students and a massive reform is long overdue.

We're facing a looming student loan bubble to rival the housing bubble. Just like the housing bubble (promoted on the idea that everyone deserves a home and should use their welfare checks to qualify for a mortgage -- thanks for nothing Dodd and Frank!), the college bubble is predicated on the idea that everyone needs to go to college to earn a bachelor's degree, and that the government needs to pay for it by subsidizing the loans and removing the risks that normally cause lenders to be cautious.

It's a recipe for disaster. England is facing a similar crisis, because back in the 1990s Blair et al. arbitrarily decided that 50% of their population needed college degrees. Now, England, like America, is swamped with people who believe they're special and intelligent because they have a college diploma, and who refuse to work at entry-level jobs they consider demeaning, when they're actually not that bright and were the beneficiaries of grade inflation and lowered standards.

In the meantime, America is dreadfully short of high-paying jobs like certified welders, because a generation of students have been brainwashed to believe that trades and tech education is for losers. They'd rather get a college degree and work as a cashier for $8/hr (with student loan repayments) than go to 6-12 months of welding training, often on the employer's dime, and earn $20 per hour in a high-demand job.

http://www.amazon.com/Real-Education-Bringing-Americas-Schools/dp/0307405389

http://www.amazon.com/Going-Broke-Degree-College-Costs/dp/0844741973