Karen

= Chapter 18 – History of Schools and Writing = =David R. Olson=

= Schools are literate institutions because… = =** 1. Schools provide training needed to participate in larger institutions. **= = = = 2. The role of literacy in school reflects the role of literacy in society = - Ancient Past – business records - Religion – the Bible - Growth of Reading Public - Increase in reading led to an increase in forms of writing & increased need for schooling (Q.D.Levis, 1932) - 16th & 17th Century > (1st modern novel) - 18th Century - 19th Century - 20th & 21st century >> - textbooks for different grade levels & subjects
 * regulated by government
 * high levels of literacy are socially valued and schools must meet these levels
 * activities in school are organized around written documents
 * Examples: blackboard, notebooks, textbooks
 * “Although modern classrooms are often reported to be noisy, verbal environments, writing is the predominant and official mode of communication in the school” (Bazerman, 2009, Kindle Locations 9654-9655).
 * Puritanism – Reading Bible to self often private & silent
 * Defoe – wrote as he spoke in //Robinson Crusoe//
 * Reading these made up for formal education
 * Availability of printed works made it possible to educate oneself
 * Sudden growth of reading public resulted from a new match between the skills of the writer and the reader’s needs and interests
 * Writers addressed the community
 * Essay and sermon became distinctive genre
 * Split between highbrow and lowbrow
 * Working poor read Dickens who spoke directly to readers
 * //Disintegration//of reading public – sharp divide between fiction directed to general reader and that directed to educated reader
 * Schools create canon of traditional text
 * //Audience Directedness//- writers address particular readers with particular interests and purposes.
 * Students are a current audience

= 3. Schools have become mass institutions. = - Before Industrial Age, schooling was for a small percentage of the population & teaching relied on individual methods - //Simultaneous system// - group method of instruction was introduced in the 18th century by De la Salle - Student perception: serious information is that which is written down whether on the blackboard or found in a textbook - Today we mostly assess reading ability through written tests
 * Increased enrollment
 * “…he said, individual methods caused a lack of discipline and an intolerable level of background noise in the classroom” (Bazerman, 2009, Kindle Location 9720).
 * Group Methods – 1 teacher to teach whole group
 * Increase in paper & tools allowed students to work on their own
 * Teachers began to rely on written assignments to rate performance
 * “Hence, writing came to serve as the primary criterion for judging competence, assigning learners to grade levels, and awarding credentials" (Bazerman, 2009, Kindle Location 9724).


 * =Discussion Question: What changes are we seeing in education now? Are these mirrored by current events?=

= 4. Schools provide for the development of specialized cognitive competencies that are, arguably, by-products of learning to write and otherwise deal with the specialized genres of written language. = - Thinking for Writing - Texts as Models for Writing: The Composition - Learning How and When To Use Writing - Learning When to Consult a Text
 * Writing is a technology for making utterances and thoughts real
 * Writing requires thought to take a special form & make decision
 * //Cooperative principle//—be relevant, informative, brief, and apposite. Thinking for writing requires that one reformulate one's ideas in a number of new dimensions
 * //“//Learning to write and to organize one's thoughts for writing requires reading, teaching, and a great deal of practice” (Bazerman, 2009, Kindle Location 9748).
 * Textbooks are a model
 * Lingustic level – spelling, grammar, & punctuation
 * Textual level – //composition//: prose structure of claim-evidence relations
 * Essay - seems to be a contrivance of the school rather than genuine writing because it is written for one reader – the professor
 * Perry (1970) – discovered as students become more educated they move a naive, uncritical approach to presented information to a more critical, perspectival stance.
 * Writing is an aid to memory.
 * Learning to write is not just a skill but a function
 * Note taking is more critical for older students
 * Early Writers
 * Bell (1990) – rarely did children carefully examine text to find misconceptions
 * Horowitz & Olson (2006) – simply copy a text
 * Learning to use a variety of speech come as writers begin to distinguish their own view
 * Students view texts as authoritative & trust as true

= 5. Historical shifts in assumptions about the relation between writing and literacy altered the uses of texts and writing in the school. = - Literacy and Knowledge
 * Old 14th century belief – “All knowledge is contained in books.”
 * Textbooks are treated as authoritative
 * Tend to be written impersonally, as society’s authorized knowledge
 * Contributes to student’s passive, uncritical attitude
 * Link between society and written records
 * Schooling is largely making contact with society's valid knowledge
 * History of schooling – is the history of those books
 * first choosing them
 * later creating them
 * more recently - revising the assumptions about knowledge and writing
 * Reliance on textbooks challenged
 * Parvin (1965) treating as a useful tool
 * Text’s role: for student to use to search out information
 * Textbooks
 * Recent term – end of 18th century
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; line-height: 25px;">Texts come to be written to be searched rather than read
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; line-height: 25px;">It could be argued: trends in testing encourage search strategies rather than reading strategies
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; line-height: 10px;">Texts today have 3 functions
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">Analogous to Scripture, providing a definitive stance on what is taken as true and valid
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">Texts serve as a resource
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">Serve as a model of writing and thinking that student productions can be evaluated
 * ==Discussion Question: What do you think about textbooks? What should their role be in the classroom?==

Bazerman, Charles (2009). Handbook of Research on Writing: History, Society, School, Individual, Text (Kindle Locations 9627-9975). LEA. Kindle Edition.