A couple of days ago, I posted an essay by the multi-talented Bob Shepherd about teaching reading comprehension. Many readers pointed out to me that I forgot to include the link, and they were eager to read the entire essay. This is not the first time I have omitted a link, which is absolutely vital, and I apologize sincerely.
I didn’t remember where I saw the essay but assumed it was on his blog. I began searching and eventually found it. It was first published five years ago. But as with any worthy writing, it is as informative now as it was then.
Here is the link:
While searching for the link, I found many other wonderful essays. The one that meant the most to me was Bob’s dissection of the brutal attack on my last book, Slaying Goliath, in the New York Times Book Review by a science journalist named Annie Murphy Paul.
From my perspective, Ms. Paul’s review was mean-spirited, misleading, and completely missed the point of the book, which was to celebrate the parents, students, teachers, and citizens who stood up to the powerful “Disrupters” and saved their schools.
She thought I was boasting about myself, which I was not. She thought I was wrong to name the billionaires and financiers and corporations that were trying to privatize the nation’s public schools. Why not name them? I thought I was writing a muckraking book like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, but she berated me for not telling “both sides” of the story. Should I have complimented Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and Betsy DeVos on their good intentions? That was not the purpose of the book. I wanted to give aid and comfort to those who stood up to the wealth and power of the oligarchs who hate public schools and compliment them for their courage and persistence.
Bob (whom I have never met) wrote his review a week after Ms. Paul’s review was published. I wish I had seen it. I was down in the dumps at the time. I would have been thrilled, as I am now, to know that someone saw through her vitriol.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane,
The link does not work. When I clicked on it, the message said that the link was not valid.
I would like to read Shepherd’s essay.
Thanks for helping out so I can do so.
Barbara
Barbara Bennett, M.A.
Educational Therapist • Educational Consultant • ADHD Coach
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This is from Bob:
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This is my review of the review of Diane’s book:
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Thanks for posting this. Unable to read the Times, I often depend on commentators here who comment on the things the times says. Bob certainly took Ms Paul to task. The woodshed, we call it around here.
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What a magnificent review of a review! I am so glad that you found it and that you shared it. People in my community Dash parents – are still trying to comprehend the idiocy of the current curriculum. Bob’s review explains what’s happened very succinctly. I’m only sorry that you didn’t see this when it was published.
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Thank you. Me too.
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I comment primarily because Bob frequents this forum.
Bob – This essay is the best autopsy I’ve encountered of the body of work created by reading “experts.” In a much more elaborate and scholarly way, you make the case I made for years in speeches to parents of applicants. Reading is a relatively new human game. It became useful, perhaps essential, only after the advent of the printing press. As you point out, unlike oral language, the ability to read is not provided in the standard human model. It is an aftermarket accessory. My admittedly amateurish version of your brilliant essay was: “One doesn’t learn to read through phonics instruction or ‘whole language.’ Fluency and comprehensive require both. While some children “reverse engineer” an understanding of phonics, many need more explicit guidance. Thereafter, fluency and comprehension come from inviting children into fabulous stories and fascinating realms where they will absorb language in meaningful contexts layering one on another. The worst thing you can do to a child is instruct her in spelling and grammar or otherwise turn beauty into boredom, extinguishing the curiosity that animates learning.” – or something like that.
My only quibble with your essay is in your too simple comparison of mathematics and reading. While it is inarguably true that math has the more precise elements, there are many different ways to apprehend mathematical “truths.” Show me your steps” and teaching math only through “approved” algorithms are the methods of teachers who don’t really understand mathematics. In that sense, math teaching can be as primitive as reading instruction.
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Thank you, Steve, for your gracious review and for your wise comments about mathematics instruction. That’s a whole discussion that I would love to have with you some time. Warm regards to you and yours,
Bob S.
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While I agree that math is not “steps,” these steps are arguably the proof of the answer, justified in their presentation. Too often, allowing students to intuit answers without some proof (incorporated into the steps or whatever other logical presentation) often proves damaging to the student.
Where I do agree is that students often intuit truths.
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My point was simply that there is a difference between a standard that says that the student will be able to multiply two-digit integers and one that says that the student will be able to make inferences from text. The former involves a quite precisely explicable procedure–the standard algorithm for multiplication (or some equivalent). The latter does not. There is no single procedure for making inferences that can be explicitly taught. OK. Now you know how to make inferences. LOL. Thinking that these are comparable thing–calling them both “standards,” is a category error.
But yes, of course the actual DOING of math problems is not algorithmic. That’s the point of George Polya’s delightful little book How to Solve It. Working mathematicians use explicit procedures, but they also use heuristics, rules of thumb, and there are some mathematical problems for which completely algorithmic procedures for solving them do not exist.
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2504835/nonalgorithmic-and-approximate-solutions-to-undecidable-problems-formulas
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Bob, you have been a meaningful influence on my English and history teaching for years. I am your student. I think you’d be proud of me if you saw me in action. Thank you.
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Wow, leftcoast. You greatly honor me with this. Thank you. Glad you learned a little from me. I know that I learn a lot from you. I have a long list of those people who influenced my teaching, and I treasure my memories of those folks. Thank you, Mr. Schimezzi, Mr. Long, Vern Smith, James Worley, Don Gray, Alvin Rosenfeld, and many, many others.
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could not get link to work
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Try again. It works now.
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The more stuff I read from this Bob fella, the more I think there might be somethin’ to it! Choosin’ to live in Florida on his own volition makes him a little suspicious, however. Gonna have to ponder this some more.
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Yikes. He’s onto me!!!!
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The Journal, whose motto is, “The Future is Digital,” posted on 3/16/2020, “Science of Reading (finally) Becoming Mainstream in Teacher Prep Programs”. The article identifies 15 colleges in its list of schools. More than half are in former slave holding states. The schools in states other than the strongholds of the confederacy are in W.Va., Id. , Oh. and Utah.
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I hope Diane reads any criticism leveled at her by the enemies of public education and from the education oligarchy as high-praise, indeed.
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Linda, thank you. I wish I could take a hostile review in The NY Times as high praise, but it’s tough to laugh off one that is so subtly venomous (and personal) in the newspaper of record. The typical line from the right is “she used to be a good historian but she’s now being paid by the unions to defend public schools.” Since “Slaying Goliath” was the third book I have written that directly criticizes “the billionaire boys club” and the movement to privatize public schools, it’s simply weird to write that I have suddenly taken sides instead of telling both sides. I have a point of view, and I make it clear. So did Nancy McLean when she wrote “Democracy in Chains.” So did Jane Mayer, writing about dark money. I’m happy to be associated with the many authors who have written books intended to alert the public to threats to democracy.
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In the annals of the history of democracy, Diane, you will be canonized along with Jane Mayer and Nancy McLean.
Women have been leaders in the fight against oligarchy. You are one of the few with a legacy of decades of sacrifice for this nation.
IMO, your commitment to fighting for democracy- showing no fear to name names nor to lose out on rewards from fascist oligarchs- positions you in a category with Zelensky (adding a qualifier, his life is at risk). You fight like the generations of future American lives are at risk, which they are.
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Linda, you are too kind.
But you are right about the role that so many women have played in fighting for democracy.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ida B. Wells, Rachel Carson, Ida Tarbell, Jessica Mitford, and many more. I don’t mean to put down the significance of men like Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair, Jacob Riis, and Ralph Nader. But let us not forget the women, who often wrote and worked without encouragement.
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The baggage of prejudice has been carried by every woman who achieved. Pew reported that 40% of Republican men feel women’s gains toward equality have come at the expense of men.
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Linda, exactly. I wrote this way back in 2017:
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Thanks Bob for the reminder.
We all understand that the attack against public schools is an attack against civil rights and the foundation of American principles.
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I love every single thing about this post and the review of your book. And your book! I continue to learn and grow because of all you crazies who entertain the notion that public education is worth saving. We may be a simple bunch with a one-trick pony, but it sure is a nice pony!
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A “nice pony” that is the fabric of American life, that through
the economic multiplier effect enables community survival, that gave women financial independence, that creates unity in a diverse population, that is the foundation for democratic equality, that advances the nation through progress and, that keeps at bay, the predatory colonialists like Gates, Walton heirs and Koch.
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