Donald Wilcox Thomas's Books

Esse Quam Videri

By: Donald Wilcox Thomas

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ESSE QUAM VIDERI Jonathan Charlesworth Winslow, known to all as Jaycee, is a mildly dyslexic, slightly overweight child of divorce locked in the grip of his troubled adolescence until he accidently meets Calyx Marie Townsend on the platform of Pennsylvania Station. Set in the late 1940s, the saga of their consequent relationship in a small Connecticut seaside town traces the vicissitudes of his emotional and intellectual growth as he struggles to conquer his limitations over the course of a year. Sent away to prep school, he is aided by his teachers and his Southern roommate, Stuart Longstreet, while at home he is taken under the wing of Jules LeBlanc, an elder and gruff mariner who becomes his seagoing mentor. Esse Quam Videri, the motto of his new school, means “To be rather than to seem to be.” Accordingly, this is a story of being and becoming, of love and hate, belief and nonbelief, bias and rectitude.

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Page Count

470

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Xlibris Corporation

Published Date

ISBN 10

1453594817

ISBN 13

9781453594810

Pushing the Pencil

By: Donald Wilcox Thomas

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Pushing the Pencil

By: Donald Wilcox Thomas

From the essays Teachers must learn how to push the pencil, effecting ease and simplicity out of hard learning that leaves a deep and permanent impression upon youthful thought. Having high expectations is laudable but woefully inadequate for overcoming the disparities that lurk in the deep recesses of our broad domain. More teaching, whether good or bad, is lost somewhere between class and lunch than could ever be recovered from one year to the next. The best lessons taught end up at the dinner table, not at the end of the period. That teaching is as much an addiction as it is a profession need not be elaborately urged. Teachers though born must nevertheless be made and remade. Schools do not improve teaching; teaching improves schools.

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139

Publisher

Xlibris Corporation

Published Date

ISBN 10

1469167913

ISBN 13

9781469167916

Schoolmastery: Notes on Teaching and Learning

By: Donald Wilcox Thomas

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Schoolmastery: Notes on Teaching and Learning

By: Donald Wilcox Thomas

Significant change usually comes about not by introduction of something new but by reinterpretation of something old. Among the more interesting illustrations of this premise is that of Arthur C. Clarke, who in 2001: A Space Odyssey uses it to account for no less than the evolution of mankind. Back eons of time, so the story goes, herbivorous man-apes roamed the parched savannas of Africa in search of food, a search that had brought them to the brink of extinction. Their miraculous transformation from man-apes to ape-men did not come about until they realized that they were slowly starving to death in the midst of plenty, that the grassy plain on which they search in vain for berries and fruit was overrun with succulent meat. Such meat was not so much beyond mankinds reach as it was beyond his imagination. To negotiate the necessary transition, the man-apes had to reinterpret their environment. The history of education can also be viewed as a sustained series of reinterpretations, which, because they remain human, retain remnants of the man-apes primeval flaw a certain primordial rigidity of the imagination that renders us unable to grasp what lies immediately at hand because it fails to correspond with what comes habitually to mind. When it comes time to characterize the educational environment of the past few decades, it will undoubtedly be remembered as an era of reform. Cries for reform in education are by no means new to schools, of course, but seldom are they the focus of such prolonged and concerted attention as they have lately received. Not since the days of Sputnik have we witnessed such massive concern about what was happening or not happening in the nations classrooms. In the sixties the thrust of reform focussed on the teaching of science and mathematics and spawned a period of curricular innovation that carried us well through the seventies. It was an exciting time to teach, a time filled with openness and optimism and plentiful support. But with the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983 by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, a new interpretation struck. Suddenly, it seemed, everything had gone awry: the schools had somehow fallen derelict in their duty to prepare the nations youth to meet the manifold challenges that awaited them. Schools had degenerated into Shopping Malls, SAT scores had plummeted to new lows, teachers had descended to shocking levels of incompetence, and content had turned to jelly. Subsequent reports by other foundations, commissions, and blue ribbon panels confirmed the assessment. American schools are in trouble, said John Goodlad. After years of shameful neglect, according to Ernest Boyer, educators and politicians have taken the pulse of the public school and found it faint. Horace Smith Ted Sizers mythical English teacher was forced to compromise, but dares not express his bitterness to the visitor conducting a study of high schools, because he fears he will be portrayed as a whining hypocrite." Today, with the No Child Left Behind act, schools are embroiled in the tribulations of accountability, with high stakes testing roiling instruction that must teach to the test and urban communities that must struggle just to keep their schools open. Meanwhile, as vouchers swell enrollments in private schools, charter schools have begun to siphon off students and teachers from the public schools. As a schoolmaster for the past forty-five years, I view these changes with trepidation.. A little too close to Horace Smith for comfort, I am nonetheless in no mood to compromise. Although I do not doubt that I am biased, it doesnt seem to me that my students have changed significantly over the years, nor for that matter the fundamental problems of education across continents and decades. And while I am thankful that my country is worried about its teachers and its schools, my

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209

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Xlibris Corporation

Published Date

ISBN 10

1465317953

ISBN 13

9781465317957

Rummaging in the Fields of Light

By: DONALD WILCOX THOMAS

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Rummaging in the Fields of Light

By: DONALD WILCOX THOMAS

At issue is what elevates standards. The common opinion seems to be that standards can elevate themselves. The underlying assumption here is that unless you program such activities, professionals won't develop; they will just teach, a process from which, presumably, nothing of value is to be learned. Mastered or flipped, reinvention of classrooms exacts a high cost, as indeed, does all teaching wherever it is carefully and lovingly taught. I would revise the old adage about teaching: "Those who can, teach; those who either can't or haven't shouldn't." It takes a lifetime to discover that those in authority may not know what is better, that older need not imply wiser. It is a difficult lesson for a teacher, enthroned with degrees and remuneration, to teach. The irony of the term "empowerment" is that power cannot be taught or acquired as if it were simply some specialized fund of information. Only we have privileged access to the process that shifts and roils inside our own experience. And only we can alter that process once it makes itself known to us. The mind we have is the only one we get: furnished or unfurnished.

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123

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Xlibris Corporation

Published Date

ISBN 10

1499083254

ISBN 13

9781499083255

Far Reaches of Instruction

By: Donald Wilcox Thomas

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Far Reaches of Instruction

By: Donald Wilcox Thomas

In schools of antiquity, according to Alfred North Whitehead, philosophers aspired to impart wisdom. In modern colleges, our humbler aim is to teach subjects. The drop from divine wisdom, which was the goal of the ancients, to textbook knowledge of subjects, which is achieved by the moderns, marks an educational failure, sustained through the ages. He defines wisdom as the way in which knowledge is held. The ways in which we hold our knowledge is the subject of these essays. It is a subject too little pursued in the corridors of education where the concern today resides with the data rather than the import of the knowledge we pursue. The goal of every teacher, regardless of the level taught, is to think about the knowledge they teach and how it informs and expands the ways in which we live. Without this kind of oversight, we fall into the mere mechanics of instruction, failing to press it beyond the bounds of ordinary thought.

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171

Publisher

Xlibris Corporation

Published Date

ISBN 10

1524547913

ISBN 13

9781524547912

Ozymandia: Notes on Teaching & Learning

By: Donald Wilcox Thomas

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Ozymandia: Notes on Teaching & Learning

By: Donald Wilcox Thomas

This book comprises a series of thirty-one essays addressing all aspects of teaching and learning in our schools. Each essay addresses a single aspect of secondary education (e.g., choice, libraries, grit, grading, exams, and so forth).

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ISBN 10

1543445438

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9781543445435

Book's by Donald Wilcox Thomas

Esse Quam Videri

Esse Quam Videri

Pushing the Pencil

Pushing the Pencil

Schoolmastery: Notes on Teaching and Learning

Schoolmastery: Notes on Teaching and Learning

Rummaging in the Fields of Light

Rummaging in the Fields of Light

Far Reaches of Instruction

Far Reaches of Instruction

Ozymandia: Notes on Teaching & Learning

Ozymandia: Notes on Teaching & Learning

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