One Size Fits Few: The Folly of Educational Standards. - Review - book review

It's becoming more popular to take on the standards movement these days, and teacher/author Susan Ohanian provides us with some of the ammunition we need to do so.

In One Size Fits Few: The Folly of Educational Standards, she provides a call to action, saying, "It is my moral duty to offer a counter argument to people who would try to streamline, sanitize and standardize education."

In addition to reporting research about the damage that standardization can cause, the author sprinkles her book with anecdotes about differences among children. A standardized curriculum and timetable, she argues, does not help the nonstandard student. In the chapter "Whose Standards These Are, I Think I Know," Ohanian accuses the "Standardistos" of not knowing children ("that's not a kid, that's a scope-and-sequence chart").

This teacher/author is offended when Standardistos use terms such as "all workers," "children as future workers" and "world-class children." Standards proponents don't talk about the one in four youngsters in New York City who live in poverty and who cannot pass the revised Regents exams, she states. Ohanian contends they hold interest only in "how the kids in Grosse Pointe measure up against the kids in Larchmont or Palo Alto and how both compare to the Japanese."

Ohanian's work is a refreshing call to action. Her response to those who push standards as the cure-all for public education? Stand up and say, "We already have standards, thank you very much!"

This will hit a responsive note with many school leaders.

(One Size Fits Few: The Folly of Educational Standards, by Susan Ohanian, Heinemann, P.O. Box 5007, Westport, Conn. 06881,1999,154 pp., $16 softcover)

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