Creativity and Chaos: Reflections on a Decade of Progressive Change in Public Schools, 1967-1977
In Creativity and Chaos: Progressivism in New Orleans Public Schools and the Nation 1967-1977, Charles Suhor brings to life the bold challenges to the status quo in education during a decade of national turmoil. The regimentation and rote learning of traditional schooling could not have escaped the restless temper of the times—Vietnam war protests, racial strife, assassinations, hippie communes, the sexual revolution, an emerging drug culture, and daring innovations in pop/rock music. Suhor describes his immersion in post-World War II popular culture of New Orleans as a rich backdrop for his years as an impassioned educational reformer at local and national levels. A risk-taking teacher and district supervisor of English, he plunged headlong into controversies over black literature, censorship, ebonics, the "new grammar," faculty integration, testing, standardization, and computer technology. He demonstrates how the sweeping national trends often took quirky, distinctive turns in a city that delights in marching to a different drummer. Suhor's engaging account takes the reader into classrooms as well as the intrigues of central office politics and national leaders' disputes on how to best teach students in a time of change. In no sense a doctrinal liberal, he lambastes the errors and excesses of the progressive moment and traces its decline and the backlash demand for a return to basic skills. Suhor concludes with an update on innovations that have waned or persisted in today's schools.
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Creativity and Chaos: Reflections on a Decade of Progressive Change in Public Schools, 1967-1977
In Creativity and Chaos: Progressivism in New Orleans Public Schools and the Nation 1967-1977, Charles Suhor brings to life the bold challenges to the status quo in education during a decade of national turmoil. The regimentation and rote learning of traditional schooling could not have escaped the restless temper of the times—Vietnam war protests, racial strife, assassinations, hippie communes, the sexual revolution, an emerging drug culture, and daring innovations in pop/rock music. Suhor describes his immersion in post-World War II popular culture of New Orleans as a rich backdrop for his years as an impassioned educational reformer at local and national levels. A risk-taking teacher and district supervisor of English, he plunged headlong into controversies over black literature, censorship, ebonics, the "new grammar," faculty integration, testing, standardization, and computer technology. He demonstrates how the sweeping national trends often took quirky, distinctive turns in a city that delights in marching to a different drummer. Suhor's engaging account takes the reader into classrooms as well as the intrigues of central office politics and national leaders' disputes on how to best teach students in a time of change. In no sense a doctrinal liberal, he lambastes the errors and excesses of the progressive moment and traces its decline and the backlash demand for a return to basic skills. Suhor concludes with an update on innovations that have waned or persisted in today's schools.
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Creativity and Chaos: Reflections on a Decade of Progressive Change in Public Schools, 1967-1977

Creativity and Chaos: Reflections on a Decade of Progressive Change in Public Schools, 1967-1977

Creativity and Chaos: Reflections on a Decade of Progressive Change in Public Schools, 1967-1977

Creativity and Chaos: Reflections on a Decade of Progressive Change in Public Schools, 1967-1977

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Overview

In Creativity and Chaos: Progressivism in New Orleans Public Schools and the Nation 1967-1977, Charles Suhor brings to life the bold challenges to the status quo in education during a decade of national turmoil. The regimentation and rote learning of traditional schooling could not have escaped the restless temper of the times—Vietnam war protests, racial strife, assassinations, hippie communes, the sexual revolution, an emerging drug culture, and daring innovations in pop/rock music. Suhor describes his immersion in post-World War II popular culture of New Orleans as a rich backdrop for his years as an impassioned educational reformer at local and national levels. A risk-taking teacher and district supervisor of English, he plunged headlong into controversies over black literature, censorship, ebonics, the "new grammar," faculty integration, testing, standardization, and computer technology. He demonstrates how the sweeping national trends often took quirky, distinctive turns in a city that delights in marching to a different drummer. Suhor's engaging account takes the reader into classrooms as well as the intrigues of central office politics and national leaders' disputes on how to best teach students in a time of change. In no sense a doctrinal liberal, he lambastes the errors and excesses of the progressive moment and traces its decline and the backlash demand for a return to basic skills. Suhor concludes with an update on innovations that have waned or persisted in today's schools.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781588383938
Publisher: NewSouth Books
Publication date: 05/05/2020
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 304
File size: 8 MB

About the Author

A native of New Orleans, CHARLES SUHOR was a high school English teacher and supervisor in the public schools of the Big Easy. Subsequently, he moved to Urbana, Illinois, where he was Deputy Executive Director of the National Council of Teachers of English, working extensively as an anti-censorship activist. He had a parallel career as a writer and jazz musician, publishing numerous articles and poems and playing drums with Al Hirt, Pete Fountain, Buddy Prima, and others. Among his books are the Scholastic Composition Series, Teaching Values in the Literature Classroom: A Debate in Print, Dimensions of Thinking, The Book of Rude and Other Outrages, and the award-winning Jazz in New Orleans: The Postwar Years Through 1970. He retired in 1997 to Montgomery, Alabama, where he is a freelance writer, speaker, and percussionist and a member of Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

Table of Contents

Foreword ix

Preface xii

1 Up from the Ninth Ward: Grow as You Go 3

2 Contexts for Change 18

3 Change Agents in New Orleans 29

4 Literature: Life After Silas Marner 47

5 Grammar, Usage and Oral Language 69

6 Writing 89

7 The Media Movement 120

8 Mass Testing: The Battleground 138

9 The National Decline: Backlash from the Right 160

10 The Decline of Progressivism in New Orleans 181

11 Update: The (Non-)Persistence of Innovation 202

Epilogue 225

Acknowledgments 227

Notes 228

Image Credits and Notes 251

Index 252

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