Recommended Reading

I’ve recently read two articles that have helped me think about where we are as a profession. Bob Tremmel’s "Changing the Way We Think in English Education: A Conversation in the Universal Barbershop” (English Education, October 2006) explores how tied our thinking is to “the principles, motives, and mechanisms of standards-based education” and then goes on the use the ideas of physicist David Bohm to suggest how we might move toward a new, less fragmented paradigm. The second article (cited repeatedly in Tremmel’s piece) is Bob Yagelski’s “English Education” in English Studies: An Introduction to the Discipline (edited by Bruce McComisky, NCTE, 2006). Yagelski argues that English education “can serve a unique and vital function within English studies as a site where theory and practice inevitably converge and where the various subdisciplines of English studies can come together in the service of a project that transcends these separate subdisciplines.” Yagelski’s description of a possible future for English education is one of the more inspiring visions of our work I’ve read. Tremmel’s article is available online to EE subscribers. You can purchase the McComisky volume here.