Elizabeth Green has written a crisp, intelligent, and provocative book about the state of teaching and teacher education in America. We already knew that our students are not doing as well as those across the globe, from much poorer countries, and that this has been happening despite a dramatic increase in spending per pupil over the last half century. Why have our children's' schools failed them? In Building a Better Teacher, Green argues that it is not teachers who have failed their students, but the institution of educating and training teachers that has failed us all.
The book (and accompanying New York Times Magazine article, which is a distinct and also excellent read) begins to explore this thesis with a page-turning narrative of the Japanese system of teaching (specifically math), the method's original creation by American teachers, and the failure of American school systems to implement these methods across the country. The main idea of this method, as obvious as it may seem, is to emphasize mastery of concepts over mastery of execution. Think proofs instead of problems, and starting as early as students learn to count. The brilliant elementary school math lessons taught by book heroes Magdalene Lampert and Deborah Ball are such a thrill to read I found myself wishing I too had the chance to try out these ideas in the classroom. Perhaps the book will convince some to quit their jobs and become teachers.
The failure of American schools was not to recognize the importance of this concept, but to adopt it successfully. Green highlights two reasons for this failure. The first is that American teachers are given an excessive amount of autonomy in their work. Teaching, almost like marital intercourse, is considered in America to be a "deeply private act" that neither requires nor allows intervention from outsiders. Unlike in Japan, teaching in American classrooms provides little time or want for teachers to work together to continually hone their craft.
Second, even the INITIAL education of teachers, at graduate schools of education across the country, have failed them. Green carefully documents the rise of the modern Ed school and concludes that this institution ultimately cares very little about preparing teachers to teach successfully. Much of the research conducted at these schools is apparently not related to teaching at all, and many of the faculty members that are ostensibly education researchers are really academic psychologists not good enough to get tenure in a real psychology department. Calling themselves "educational psychologists", most of what they study is completely unrelated to classroom teaching. There are exceptions of course, but the overall message Green delivers is clear: there needs to be serious reform in graduate education programs.
So what is the solution? Of course Green has not been the only one to notice these issues, and she chronicles several efforts to "fix" teaching, some more successful than others. The first chapter on charter schools highlight the efforts of Doug Lemov and his taxonomy of teaching practices, building them up as a theoretically crucial component of any education reform. But in the next chapter, on discipline, Green reveals a darker side of Lemov and his impact, ultimately concluding his efforts may have been partially misguided and done more harm than good.
There is much more of course, but if any of that sounds interesting or provocative to you, I definitely recommend buying and reading the book. If you just want to know how to be a better teacher, this book will help, but only in a few chapters, and the best nuggets about effective teaching are tucked in between intellectually dense (but captivating and well written) reporting on education reform more broadly. But really if you want to be a better teacher, and this is the message between the lines of the book, you should read the whole book and learn that fixing the institution of preparing and continually educating teachers is the most important and only sustainable way to improve American teaching.
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Top reviews from other countries
Cliente Amazon
Excelente obra sobre educação
Reviewed in Brazil on January 28, 2017William A. Garrabrant
The first 30 pages of this book are worth the ...
Reviewed in Canada on August 31, 2014
Stanislaw Pstrokonski
Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 28, 2015