Friday, June 03, 2005
Burning Books and Every Child Left Behind
"Mornings before the first bell, English teacher Daniel Alderson stands under the flagpole at Sonoma Valley High School reading out loud from Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451, which is about a government that burns books. Along with other political classics, such as George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 may soon be iced out of the curriculum at Sonoma Valley High, at least for remedial readers and Spanish-speaking students.
"The soft-spoken Alderson is organizing a series of read-ins to protest this consequence of George W. Bush's ironically labeled No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). According to Alderson, NCLB is proving to be a windfall for test and textbook manufacturers and consultants even as it dumbs down the nation's educational system, striking particularly hard at immigrant children who do not always pick the right bubble to shade on multiple-choice tests."
