Mike Schmoker is an author, a consultant, and a speaker. In his article “Reading, Writing, and Thinking for All,” he discusses skills that are not just important for the college students, but essential to critical thinking, cultural awareness, and impassioned writing. Quoting Derek Bok, the Harvard president, as he endorsed the values of a basic liberal arts education on national public radio, Schmoker pointed out that this kind of education is essential for its contribution to personal intellectual growth; it is what employers are looking for (Schmoker 63).
Graduates fail to write well, think enough, and to have a good and enough ethical sense. They also feel that students fail to understand the relationship between business, public, and social policy problems in the US. Putting this into account, Mike thinks that these are the dispositions and skills that students should possess, whether they attended college or not. This is because the same skills are required in professions that don’t require a college education. According to him, liberal arts education helps the student to develop confidence and judgment and also equips them to fully contribute to the world they live in (63).
Bok further believes that it is possible to provide every student with an intellectually challenging education that fosters an understanding of realities-both global and domestic; fosters critical thinking, and also exposes them to important cultural touchstones. To evaluate a curriculum strategy that can do the same, the article examines high schools in Arizona, which strongly emphasize on reading and analyzing texts that give the students a world-class preparation.
The Arizona instrument was administered to measure the standard AIMs test. According to the obtained results the initial results were low even to the well-performing schools. However, the magnet school and the Temple Preparatory academy passed all three portions of the test. Although Temple preparatory enrolled lower and middle-class students, fifteen percent nonwhite and five percent of its students with special needs, the school’s success was mainly from its ability to attract intelligent and industrious students from supportive families. This was primarily because of its curricular choice.
The curriculum of Temple Prep is simple and demanding. Students attend a two-hour humane letter block that combines history and language art. Students spend their time reading, writing, or even discussing issues they encounter in their learning activities. The assigned texts are clear to students, teachers, and parents as well. They also broaden students’ horizons and generate deep questioning.
By graduation, the student has already spent sufficient time reading and discussing big volumes of text. Students get to analyze, argue, agree, or disagree with the ideas. Students’ work includes mastering Arizona’s standards for language arts. The students can display clarity and logic, make inferences, do character analysis, support their arguments, synthesize, evaluate and discern the author’s perspective or bias.
Argumentative literacy is also nurtured into the students’ literacy skills. This helps students to argue intelligently and become contributing citizens and employees. Learning to argue is the essence of education since it prepares students for various aspects of employment and life at large. It also strengthens civil society (5).
In the view park preparatory in Los Angeles, students use a curriculum similar to the one used in Tempe Prep. They develop analytical and argumentative skills from 9th to 12th grade. Students learn English instructions with a focus on reading persuasive writing and arguments. Students learn several argumentation models including Stephen Toulmin’s model that recognizes elements of argument; claim, clarity, evidence, and warrant. This helps the students produce college-level written arguments.
To achieve these objectives, and implement a curriculum that fosters argumentative literacy, the school strives to overcome crucial obstacles. To avoid curriculum chaos, the school should prepare students to be effective readers and writers. Relying on movies, lectures, and worksheets only will result in students’ poor argumentative qualities.
Administrators should audit the curriculum by meeting teachers quarterly to review the covered standards and examine the results of assessment activities. Random classroom walkthroughs should be occasionally conducted. This should be followed by reports to the respective faculties on whether the set curriculum is adhered to, and whether the used materials are supplementing the necessary reading, writing, and debating.
The misconception that some students are capable of a more intellectually viable curriculum is another obstacle. John Goodlad’s study shows that out of one thousand classroom visits, language arts has been students’ least favorite class. On the other hand, when the curriculum is centered around reading, writing, and discussion as an inquiry catalyst, language arts gradually becomes students’ favorite class (64)
To create a catalyst for inquiry, the curriculum should be built around good questioning, good texts, provocative questions, and by having a structured response in both oral and written form. High-quality nonfiction and fiction texts provoke strong opinions and varied interpretations. Students should be asked to compare, contrast, and give justifications.
By adopting and implementing the likes of Temple Prep and Park View, the school sharpens the students writing skills and their critical thinking as well. Teachers should also prepare all students indiscriminately, for a full encounter with the whole world. With this implemented, we are not aware of what the students can do as quoted by Ted Sizer (66).
Works Cited
Schmoker, Mike. “Reading, Writing, and Thinking for All.” Educational Leadership 64.7 (2007): 63-66. Web.