At last week’s Gilroy Unified School District Board meeting,
Gilroy High School English Department Chair Peter Gray announced,
to the astonishment of the many Alliance for Academic Excellence
parents in the audience, that the English Department had no
objection to adopting an English anthology based textbook
curriculum package, hereinafter referred to as an anthology.
At last week’s Gilroy Unified School District Board meeting, Gilroy High School English Department Chair Peter Gray announced, to the astonishment of the many Alliance for Academic Excellence parents in the audience, that the English Department had no objection to adopting an English anthology based textbook curriculum package, hereinafter referred to as an anthology.
The parents were astonished because, at the Reading Literature Advisory Group meeting a mere eight days before, the English teachers seemed immovably opposed to the very concept of an anthology. The parents had come prepared to argue for the adoption.
One parent, RLAG and AAE member Rhona Chan, had prepared and distributed to the Board a nine-page document analyzing the benefits of such an adoption.
Rhona is eminently qualified to write such a document; indeed, to write, let alone recommend, curricula. Her bona fides include a BA in biological science from UC Berkeley, and a MS in Health Science and School Curricula from San Francisco State. In the late ’70s, she developed a science curriculum for Lawrence Hall of Science, which was piloted, then adopted by 17 school districts, and is still in use today.
Rhona’s document compares commercially available anthologies to the English curricula (or lack thereof, in my opinion) currently in use at GHS, in a table of 12 points. It describes the typical anthology curriculum package. It details 11 recommendations, based on the experience of GUSD’s middle schools, which successfully piloted, adopted, and put into use a text, and has seen a rise in the number of students prepared for accelerated English courses as a result. It closes with five recommendations for the adoption of an anthology at GHS.
Rhona’s document, though awe-inspiring, is written in educationalese. The layperson who peruses it (me) wonders vaguely whether every polysyllabic word is actually a piece of educational jargon with a precise meaning, whether the whole document would be crystal clear if one had an MS in school curricula. Without that expertise, I had to read attentively in order to, I hope, gather the gist.
Some background: at the present time, the GHS English department does not use textbooks. They have a list of novels. Each class reads a novel, discusses it in class, and writes about it, then goes on to the next novel. Any other instruction – diction, grammar, figurative language, imagery, parallel structure, paradox, paragraphing, point of view, rhetorical strategies, satire, simile, syntax, or vocabulary – must be re-invented, found, devised, or created by the teacher.
Rhona does not address this issue, but the fact is that only an extremely competent teacher can hope to invent or gather all this material. That teacher must have impeccable grammar, excellent writing skills, a love of literature, an analytical mind, and a high degree of organizational skill.
Teachers like that are rare, particularly in the last 30 years, ever since the grammar baby was thrown out with the drill bathwater. Many new teachers have never learned grammar. They would not recognize a noun of direct address, nor know how to punctuate one, even if they used one in a letter to the editor. And they don’t think grammar is important, not nearly as important as self-expression, independent thought, and hooking the attention of the reader.
Even an extremely competent teacher might want to have an anthology-based textbook curriculum package, pre-approved by the state of California, with drill sheets, lesson plans, vocabulary lists, and transparencies to use in her overhead projector. She would have more time for grading essays if she didn’t have to invent curricula.
In sum, the AAE is delighted that the Board is considering piloting an anthology next semester and adopting one for next year. Two things concern them. First, Trustee Jim Rogers voiced his approval of an anthology for ninth and tenth graders. The AAE feels strongly that juniors and seniors need an anthology also.
Secondly, as Rhona says, “Successful implementation of the anthology based textbook will be dependent upon complete fidelity of the staff.”
In other words, if certain English teachers quietly park the books on the shelf and never use them, they will do the students no good at all.
