Readicide Blog Post

I know that tests are a necessary evil (or are they?). I’m not even a teacher yet and I’m already sick of thinking about teaching to a test and preparing students for tests. I understand that they say good teachers don’t teach to a test, but work with me here. Maybe I’m thinking only in my ideological world where I just teach students life things everyday and they learn them. Why do they have to take a test, or why can’t the test try and account for real-life knowledge. How the government works? How to get a job in the real world? What makes good people, the rights and wrongs of morality? It seems like so much of what students learn in schools is superficial. Readicide furthered this fury in many ways but since ranting and raving about something with never accomplish anything, let me continue on to tell you what I gleaned from the text.

The “Texas Miracle” statistics were shocking. I couldn’t believe how different the results were for students who went through the Texas methodology of learning (study for the test) and then how poorly they did the next year when tested on the same kind of material.  I can’t believe in education that there would be people so deceitful and forget the whole mission of education – to better the student’s lives, just to make a couple extra bucks. I just don’t get how people get so caught up in statistics and bonuses and that sort of thing. I guess that is why we often refer to education (even those who love it and want to devote our lives to it) as a racket.

I found the section that talked about the word “farrier” rather insightful and helpful. Gallagher discusses the comparison of struggling readers with background on a subject, to advanced readers with little knowledge of a topic. The struggling readers who had knowledge on the subject of baseball, but didn’t quite read as well as the other students, actually comprehended the article more completely than the other group (38). This comparison really highlighted just how important it is to have background knowledge on a subject and what that does for a reader’s comprehension level. Though Gallagher was not the first person we’ve read who has suggested this, he was the one who got the information to stick.

I had completely forgotten about SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) until Readicide brought it up commending it as a validated test preparation tool. I miss SSR in the classroom; I really enjoyed it as a kid and was pleased to see the benefits of it were unquestionable. Also, I liked the idea of the AoW (Article of the Week) and having the whole English Department backing this idea (47-49). As Gallagher says, this will stop students from not knowing who al Qaeda is!

And finally, bring the library to the students!

The End