Readicide Blog

Like everything I have been exposed to of Kelly Gallagher’s, Readicide blew my mind. His analysis of Readicide through the Paige Paradox and WYTIWYG seems so obvious after having it illustrated (and been through it) to me the following comparison to Finnish schools is almost tortuous. While I love a good detached cold political discussion, especially over foreign policy, the politicization of education that Gallagher describes was horrifying and daunting. Really that’s all the vicious cycle of the Paige Paradox is, it is political posturing. It advocates a back-asswards approach to funding—not that I advocate throwing money at a problem, as Gallagher notes money is often terribly miss used in districts. For instance, paying 20,000 for a course on test taking strategies rather than books. And, in addition to screwing with funds, it creates a bumbling juggernaut of fear and obsession. Because the tests that caused the Paradox were so vital to the success of the people within it and they assessed different skill sets than should necessarily be valued we produced a generation of test takers who don’t know Al from IS as Gallagher puts it. There was one line that really struck me from Readicide; “establishing a book flood is probably the single most important thing I have done in my teaching career.” What has completely solidified my teaching philosophy is Gallagher’s idea of authentic reading, which I think can be extrapolated out (carefully) to the other subjects. I cannot wait to explore the application of a 50/50 approach in ELA and SS as well.  

Though I was a little underwhelmed with Gallagher’s observance of the “sweet spot” I am going to go back to a couple of spots in my unit plan and apply the big chunk little chunk philosophy. I did chuckle to myself after reading the section; I thought he should have just quoted the Goldilocks—perhaps a reminder of moderation is beneficial. However I kind of missed the point the first time over. Yes he is professing the ideal that there is no one way and variation is important, but what he really is highlighting is that the needs of students can vary greatly just within the classroom.