Amman, The book "Is Your School Good?," published by Al-Aan Publishers and Distributors, opens up the file on schools and education from a critical angle that goes beyond curricula and teaching methods, examining instead the nature of the school and its functions, and the standards by which its quality and its role in building knowledge and character can be judged.
اضافة اعلان
The book, written by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner and translated by Husni Ayesh, offers a reading of the background that paved the way for the school reform movement, the criticisms that accompanied it, and the effects it left on the educational process.
The two authors also attempt to dismantle a number of common ideas about schools by examining their fixed and changing functions, and by exploring the features of a good school.
Across three chapters, the book covers the history of complaints about schools and education between 1955 and 1970, then examines how schools function and what their roles are, before moving on to discuss the concept of the "good school" and the changes brought about by criticism of the educational institution, reviewing the experiences and methods followed by teachers and administrators who sought to develop public schools and elevate their role.
The book comes out in a revised and updated Arabic translation, as translator Husni Ayesh explains in his introduction, adapted to fit the contemporary context, allowing readers to access a set of educational ideas in a concise book that can be read and absorbed in an hour or two.
In the book's introduction, translator Husni Ayesh notes that people today live in an era where the pace of change is accelerating and information and knowledge are growing enormously, while their lives are filled with countless pressing and urgent concerns, leaving them without enough time to read lengthy books.
Ayesh points out that Phi Delta Kappa, the leading American educational organization, saw this as motivation to publish a series of short educational books that readers could get through, understand, and benefit from in an hour or two.
He adds: "And here I am, reprinting this translated booklet after revising and updating it to align with the contemporary context we live in."
In their introduction, the authors note that this work represents an attempt to present the background behind the school reform movement and to explain its effects. Despite the book's brevity, a reader who devotes an hour or two to it can become familiar with the most important ideas circulating in schools during that period.
The authors explain that the book consists of three chapters:
"Complaints About School": This chapter reviews the history of criticisms directed at schools and education between 1955 and 1970, explaining why so many people at the time voiced negative judgments and criticisms of schools.
"What Is School?": In this chapter, the authors attempt to offer a precise picture of how schools function, particularly distinguishing between their fixed functions and their changing ones.
"What Is a Good School?": Here, the authors examine the changes brought about by criticism of schools, reviewing the methods followed by the best teachers and administrators to reshape the norms of public schooling, which they consider one of America's most notable innovations.
The book's conclusion states that, in the authors' view, everything discussed reveals the essence of most of the changes schools are undergoing today. As far as they know, no school has yet succeeded in implementing all of these changes, or even sought to achieve all of them, but a good school is one that tries to develop most of its old arrangements and procedures and change them to fit these developments.
So why are these changes considered a form of improvement?
A. Because in some cases they rest on empirical evidence proving that a particular arrangement or procedure is better than another. There is hardly any room for debate, for instance, over the superiority of positive reinforcement over negative reinforcement or punishment.
B. Or because some of them simply seem more logical than others in different situations. For example, sound judgment requires that curricula include many subjects that did not exist about fifty years ago, since they have today become major fields of research and sources of new knowledge, even though the primary basis for considering these changes positive ultimately remains a philosophical one.
The authors conclude their booklet by saying that the American school, more than any other social institution, reflects what society wants to be. Yet when we approach it and ask: "Aren't we the best society in the world?" it answers us, again and again, in a voice dripping with sorrow: No. Over recent decades, its answers have amounted to serious indictments of us, some of them, at times, more serious than ever before.
Our schools still tell us that we have become dehumanized, technocrats bent on building an empire, that we care more about our missiles than our children. They tell us that we are racist, that we are becoming a people of limited capacity, that we cling to conformity, that we do not love learning, and that we have lost our moral spark. It is, indeed, an ugly picture of ourselves.
Yet we believe that anything is possible, that we can reverse negative paths and directions, and do what we have always done: reform the school, hoping this will help us achieve what we envision for ourselves. This leads us to conclude that adopting these arrangements and procedures would contribute to building independence, creativity, equality, flexibility, and the other qualities we celebrate and speak of at length in graduation speeches and ceremonies.
Finally, what sets a good school apart is that it takes some of what has been said here seriously, even if no one else does.
It is worth noting that translator Husni Ayesh is an educator holding university degrees in several fields, the most recent from Michigan State University in East Lansing, USA. He has authored numerous works, including "American Israel and Israeli America," "Survival in a Changing World," and "Democracy Is the Solution," in addition to a large number of articles and studies published in Jordanian newspapers.
Resource: Al-Ghad. Reporting: By Aziza Ali
