Knowledge Is Power. Too Bad We Don’t Give Kids Any.
A review of “The Knowledge Gap” by Natalie Wexler
I knelt next to [the girl] and asked, “What are you drawing?”
“Clowns,” she answered confidently.
“Why are you drawing clowns?”
“Because it says right here, ‘Draw clowns,’ ” she explained.
Running down the left side of the worksheet was a list of reading-comprehension skills: finding the main idea, making inferences, making predictions. The girl was pointing to the phrase draw conclusions.
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-Excerpt from The Knowledge Gap (emphasis added)
Natalie Wexler’s new book, released just last month, pulls no punches. It wades boldly and fearlessly into the endless wars surrounding education reform, tackling controversial topics from reading instruction to the achievement gap, the Common Core, and standardized testing. The Knowledge Gap: The hidden cause of America’s broken education system — and how to fix it not only contributes an entirely different perspective on education reform from that found in most recent books of the genre, but also re-frames how we look at the system as a whole, giving exhausted educators and advocates that most precious commodity: hope, for real change.
