Saturday, July 9, 2011

Twitter Book Club: Seymour B. Sarason (1996) Revisiting "The Culture of The School and the Problem of Change" - Chapter 1


I picked up this book, as well as two others by Sarason, on the recommendation of Gary Stager. I have to say, after reading this book I have a love-hate relationship with this author. Sarason wrote something like more than 40 books in his career. My first thought was, how can anyone have enough time or experience to draw from to write this many books. After reading this book I kind of have a clue. While I highly recommend reading this author's work and feel the ideas presented here are very important I am pretty sure you can skip this one and just read the quotes in this series of posts.

Revisiting is a 1996 republication of his 1982 book, the Culture of the School and the Problem of Change, with additional chapters added. I just about flipped out when I read the first passage in the second section where he openly states that when writing the first draft of this book he never reread or did any revisions. That actually explains a lot about the style of writing as well as how someone could write more than 40 books in their career. I will withhold further judgement about Sarason's writing ability until I read the other two books of his that I ordered. Writing style and lack of revisions aside, the ideas expressed were important and great. He time and again asks his readers to consider a factor most never consider, what is the culture of the school? and How does the culture of the school affect efforts to enact change?


Chapter 1: The Plan of the Book

"To take distance from the setting in which one is an integral part is a ubiquitous problem in dealing with the cul... http://tl.gd/akofb8less than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply



"The notion that schools will change if only the federal government will make a commitment to the public schools, a... http://tl.gd/akohb4less than a minute ago via Twittelator Favorite Retweet Reply

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