Ch. 18 The History of Schools by David Olson

It seems that many of the chapters in the Handbook allude to the role class has played in the history of writing (see my posts on the Wysocki and Howard, chapters 15 and 37) . This idea emerges again in this chapter when Olson writes about the growth of literate societies. He describes how the rise of Protestantism led to greater literacy, though reading spread more rapidly than writing, which was taught through guilds in feudal societies. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I try to stay away from religion, but it has been a hard topic to avoid in the history of reading and writing. Although for one reason or another (the Inquisition? Auto-de-fes?) my ancestors chose to remain Catholics; I loved the idea that Lutheranism promoted the, "goal of allowing readers to consult the word of God for themselves as private, often silent, readers, rather than public auditors" (p. 284). How very liberating literacy and education are.


The idea of high and low brow literature emerges as well. Olson describes how by the mid-19th century, different writers appear who wrote for very different audiences. Thus, the working public read Dickens and the educated elites read Henry James. This access to literacy created the need to form a canon of great works which Olson describes as, "inaccessible to a not insignificant proportion of the student body" (p. 285). This immediately brought to mind my last post as that addressed the use of graphic novels as well as Katie's post on The Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Somehow, making reading more accessible makes it less. Why is that? It brings to mind how educators in the 1920's thought their high drop-out rates were indicative of how challenging schools were. (It also mirrors the comments of a few AP teachers I've encountered.)


While the first few sections of the chapter were interesting, I thought the heart of the chapter could be found in the section on thinking for writing and the sections that followed. Just as some feel writing trumps images, Olson seems to indicate that in schools today writing trumps talk by pointing out, "talk is cheap; what gets written down is important" (p. 286). Olson also points to the connections between reading and writing again (why didn't I cite him in my paper?) by noting, "Learning to write and to organize one's thoughts for writing requires reading, teaching and a great deal of practice. Consciousness of language is in part a consequence of learning how to deal with written text whether in reading or writing ((Morias & Kolinsky, 2004), p. 286." This made me think of the seminal work by Carl Nagin and the National Writing Project, Because Writing Matters.  Dr. Kist also brought up the notion of teaching students to be "critical writers" (just as we teach them to be critical readers) and I thought this study conducted by Perry (1970) supported that very idea: "In a series of studies with undergraduates, Perry discovered that as students become more educated they move from a naive, uncritical approach to a present[ing] information to a more critical approach, perspectival stance" (p. 287).


Finally, I was a thought the inclusion of the final sections on textbooks was interesting (as they are formalized, written documents), but I didn't completely understand why this topic should take such a prominent role in a chapter on the history of writing in schools. In my experience, I rarely had a writing textbook - maybe a handbook. Textbooks were the domain of other subject areas.