4/4/2007
6
Losing
Our Language: How Multicultural Classroom
Instruction Is Undermining Our Children’s Ability to
Read, Write and Respond:
Instruction Is Undermining Our Children’s Ability to
Read, Write and Respond:
uAmerican students’ reading and writing scores are
steadily declining, and the increasing achievement gap between minority and other students is
particularly alarming.
uThe latest studies show that 43% of our children test
below grade level. Educators, politicians,
and parents all blame class size, crumbling schools, and inconsistent
standards for this unfortunate
trend.
nIn 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.
nShe 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 profoundly moralizing
pedagogy.
nLosing Our Language, discusses how, in an effort to
incorporate more ethnically varied readings
into children’s textbooks 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.
