Literacy kudzu

Will Fitzhugh via Valerie Strauss:

Kudzu, (Pueraria lobata), I learn from Wikipedia, was "... introduced from Japan into the United States in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, where it was promoted as a forage crop and an ornamental plant.

From 1935 to the early 1950s, the Soil Conservation Service encouraged farmers in the southeastern United States to plant kudzu to reduce soil erosion.... The Civilian Conservation Corps planted it widely for many years.

It was subsequently discovered that the southeastern United States has near-perfect conditions for kudzu to grow out of control--hot, humid summers, frequent rainfall, and temperate winters with few hard freezes...As such, the once-promoted plant was named a pest weed by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1953."

We now have, I suggest, an analogous risk from the widespread application of "the evidence-based techniques and processes of literacy instruction, K-12."

At least one major foundation and one very old and influential college for teachers are now promoting what I have described as "guidelines, parameters, checklists, techniques, processes and the like, as props to substitute for students' absent motivation to describe or express in writing something that they have learned."

Posted by Jim Zellmer at May 16, 2010 1:30 AM
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