Losing Our Language: How Multicultural Classroom Instruction is Undermining Our Children's Ability to Read, Write, and ReasonLosing Our Language reveals what the once benign, now politically correct ideology of multiculturalism has come to mean for elementary school reading curriculums in the 1990s. In this book, Dr. Stotsky details the changes that have been made over the past decade in cultural content and teaching strategies used for reading instruction in elementary schools. She asserts that under the guise of an overzealous, culturally diverse agenda, intellectual and literary goals are rapidly being displaced by social and political goals and by the demands of a profoundly moralizing pedagogy. Losing Our Language discusses how, in an effort to incorporate more ethnically varied readings into children's text-books and to raise minority students' "self-esteem," basal readers have systematically been "dumbed down"; what's more, as the readers have become grammatically more simple and simpleminded, there has been a downward trend in children's analytical powers, general knowledge, and overall literacy. However, in Losing Our Language, Sandra Stotsky offers real hope to parents and educators seeking to regain literacy for our country's children. She gives us a much-needed reminder that ultimately, reading teaches us how to think - regardless of whether we are rich or poor, black or white. |
Contents
The Cultivation of Multicultural Illiteracy | 1 |
in the Reading Curriculum | 22 |
The Cultural Contents of Contemporary Readers | 57 |
Copyright | |
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academic achievement African American American anti-intellectual authors basal readers characters chil children's literature civic classroom contemporary critical cultural content curriculum D. C. Heath decades dents dialect discuss editors educa Educational Research elementary school English language arts ethnic groups example excerpt fiction girl glossary grade 6 reader grade level Harcourt Brace Hispanic Houghton Mifflin grade Ibid immigrant Indians instructional readers intellectual Japanese Americans Kohl's large number learning Macmillan mainstream moral multicultural education multiculturalists NAEP Native American non-English number of selections parents pedagogy percent poem political programs progressive educators proper nouns publishers racial racism reading instruction reading selections reading series response schools of education scores Scott Foresman Scott Foresman grade self-esteem Silver Burdett Ginn skills social goals social studies society story suggest Swahili teacher guide teaching tion total number vocabulary whole language writing