"AMONG SCHOOLCHILDREN" (TRACY KIDDER).   Term Paper ID:18419 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Critical review of account of one year in working life of an elementary school teacher.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Critical review of account of one year in working life of an elementary school teacher. Paper Introduction: Among Schoolchildren is, in essence, an account of one year in the working life of an elementary-school teacher, "Christine Zajac," in the somewhat decayed industrial town of Holyoke, Massachusetts. In this work, Tracy Kidder, best known for his account of computers, The Soul of a New Machine, has presented what amounts to a "nonfiction novel" about Chris Zajac. As a vivid account of teaching a culturally-mixed (mainly "white" and Puerto Rican) class of fifth-graders in conditions that are more nearly inner-city than suburban, Among Schoolchildren is a lively account of the experience of teaching--or at least, of Mrs. Zajac's experience of teaching, as presumably witnessed by Kidder himself. Well-written by an author with a background in both journalism and sociology, Among Schoolchildren could be heartily Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Among Schoolchildren. Now all these shortcomings must be measured against the (evident, butnot stated) intention of About Schoolchildren, which is simply to give us a"nonfiction novel" of the life of one year in,an elementary-schoolclassroom, as witnessed by Tracy Kidder in Room 2 5 of Kelly School,Holyoke, Massachusetts. Zajac senses thatClarence realizes that something is up, and we are told that "Clarencedidn't know what was happening to him, but he sensed danger." Again, thereader would like to have other viewpoints; other evaluations of what isgoing on with Clarence during this period. We see the evaluation process as Zajac herself does (161-68), but the reader will be frustrated at not having been taken behind thescenes to have the picture of Clarence more fully filled-out. The picture he draws isvivid, but it lacks perspective; it is not adequately enough triangulatedto serve us as a reliable sociological report of the school experience. Was her name drawn out of ahat, in effect? We get, fairly vividly, Zajac's impression of principal Al Laudato(44-47), and we get a handful of his views on particulars, but not enoughto give us a picture of Room 2 5 as he sees it. Is Zajac good, but not one of the burnt-out "best?" How wasshe chosen to be the subject of this study? Throughout the book, Kidder keeps verystrictly to his invisible-narrator role. We neverlearn enough about Kidder to know how to correct for his own inevitablebiases. We do notknow. Or was someone (perhaps Al Laudato, the principal), askedto provide a "typical" teacher for observation--and did he respond, as anyschool principal would have good reasons for doing, by guiding Kidder tothe best teacher available? It is starkly clear to Zajac thatthe students fall into two groups, largely along lines of socioeconomicclass: Those whose projects are fairly well-done--and whose parents cometo visit the science Fair and see them--and those whose projects are crude,rudimentary, or hastily put-together, and whose parents do not show up (279-8 ). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989.----------------------- 8 Clarence,hitherto sullen and rebellious, becomes as close as he can to a modelstudent in the couple of weeks before he is transferred. In this work,Tracy Kidder, best known for his account of computers, The Soul of a NewMachine, has presented what amounts to a "nonfiction novel" about ChrisZajac. Works CitedKidder, Tracy. In a popular book of this nature, we can readilyforgive Kidder for not encumbering it with a detailed discussion of hismethodology, but he goes rather too far in the other direction. Thus, Among Schoolchildren stands as a successful exercise injournalism, but not as a work of science. There is nointroduction, and the author himself appears editorially only in the brief"acknowledgement and sources" at the end of the book (333-4 ). Other teachers appear onlybriefly, as names. We mayinfer that he sat at the back of the classroom through the school year, andthat he had a few out-of-school interviews with Christine Zajac and some ofher family members. To begin with, we may consider Kidder's methodology--which we must dospeculatively and interpolatively, since he says nothing at all about it.His authorial pose is that of the invisible narrator. As a vivid account of teaching a culturally-mixed (mainly "white"and Puerto Rican) class of fifth-graders in conditions that are more nearlyinner-city than suburban, Among Schoolchildren is a lively account of theexperience of teaching--or at least, of Mrs. Zajac's experience ofteaching, as presumably witnessed by Kidder himself. We would also be interested in having a psychologist's professionalevaluation of what happens during the interval between the beginning of theformal evaluation process and Clarence's eventual transfer. Zajac is in no position to tell us, and Kidder does not attempt to.We are never given a triangulation on this all-important question of therelationship of class and educational attitudes performance. (Ironically,though Kidder presumably visited Miss Harty, Chris Zajac has not, thoughshe "kept meaning to" (323). Now, this limitation is perhaps a reflection ofZajac's own situation; she does not know any details of Clarence'spsychological testing, and feels herself almost a passive participant inthe final "core evaluation" at which it is decided to place Clarence in theAlpha program. Nor are we ever given a view of Clarence through the eyes of theschool's psychologist, when eventually the decision is made to evaluateClarence for possible transfer into a special program --"Alpha"--fordisruptive students. But eventually, as Clarence'sproblems become more pronounced and it becomes clear that "something" willhave to be done about him, Zajac surely must have looked into the "cume."The reader would dearly like to know what is in it, but we are never told.Now, school system confidentiality regulations may play a part here, butthey could surely be gotten around, since the names given in the book arein any case changed. In Zajac's eyes, at least, the fundamental divide of the classesseems closely tied to the role of parents with respect to the schoolingprocess, a point made several times in the course of the book. Near the end of the book(32 -23), as part of what amounts to a retrospective summing-up, heintroduces us to Miss Harty, a teacher who Chris Zajac remembers as havinghad a major impact on her when she was in elementary school. Who, in fact, is Christine Zajac? But that raises a fundamental question of methodology, which wouldhave to be addressed for us to adequately judge Tracy's picture of Room2 5. A poignant episode occurs late in the school year, when Kelly Schoolholds its annual Science Fair (274-87). At the end of the book, the readeris left with the clear impression that she is a "good" fifth-grade teacher--conscientious in her work, professional yet empathetic with her students.But early on, in one of his occasional digressions away from the immediateclassroom situation, Kidder tells us that according to the research, thebest teachers often quit in a couple of years from "burnout" and generalfrustration. Shehas twenty students to watch and teach, lesson plans to prepare, homeworkto grade, a life to live. The absence of triangulation, as noted above,simply mirrors the limitations of Christine Zajac's own perspective. Well-written by an author with a background in both journalism andsociology, Among Schoolchildren could be heartily recommended to thegeneral reader who wonders what teaching is like, with two importantprovisos: We do not know how typical are the experiences of Room 2 5 ofKelly School--and for that matter, we do not really know how the author'sview of Room 2 5 compares to Mrs. Zajac's view, to that of her students ortheir parents, to Al Laudato's (the school principal), or to that ofanother outside observer. He is totally devoid of motivation, notsimply in a passive way, as with two or three other students in the class,whom school seems to pass by like a river current past rocks, but as anactive rebellion. Among Schoolchildren is, in essence, an account of one year in theworking life of an elementary-school teacher, "Christine Zajac," in thesomewhat decayed industrial town of Holyoke, Massachusetts. She has neither the opportunity nor the trainingto, say, give us a full psychological evaluation of Clarence--and bydefinition, she can in any case give us no view of Clarence save her own.The possibilities of triangulation are sharply limited in what is,essentially, an examination of one person's perspective. He gives us a word-tour of Holyoke as she sees it (57-63), presumably the result of a ride-along tour. The most fundamental question of validationfor the book as a whole cannot be answered, because we do not know, -andare given no information from which we can really infer, how ChristineZajac compares to other teachers, at Kelly School or in American publiceducation as a whole. This is a significant shortcoming, because we necessarily seeeverything through Kidder's eyes, yet we never really get to know him. Nor are we given any access to the minds or records ofschool psychologists, even though they play a significant role in one ofthe major "plot lines" of the book, the case of Clarence. He never does give us his ownimpressions directly. He is one of those students who seem to deal with theiranxiety about failure by actively embracing it. Early on, Zajac notes that Clarence's cumulative file-"cume," in theargot of Holyoke school system teachers--is a thick one, and that thethicker the folder, all too typically, the more problems the student has.At the beginning of the year, Zajac makes the conscious decision not tolook in Clarence's (or anyone else's "cume," so as not to be prejudiced inher dealing with the students (8ff). We see events almostentirely through Chris Zajac's eyes, essentially not at all through anyoneelse's. It may be said that Kidder is more successful asa journalist than as an educational sociologist. Bythe nature of his methodology, we are required to depend on his subjectiveimpressions of both events and their meaning, but we do not know enoughabout him to know how to interpret his reportage, or how to correct for hisinevitable biases. Without triangulation or othermeans of validation, we have only a rather narrow picture of Room 2 5,lacking the context which would permit us to judge how well the experienceswe share in Room 2 5 fit into the overall picture of the public schools.Read it, enjoy it, but do not uncritically accept it. Kidder's own invisibility is one aspect of a somewhat broadershortcoming; the book's lack of triangulation. But is this"objectively" true--or, at least, true from other perspectives? Clarence is what we may well imagine that every classroom has atleast one of "the Problem Child". If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.