hose chil-dren are tested, given a label, and some of us no longer feel responsible forthem. We try to make ourselves believe, “It’s not our fault. There was some-thing wrong with those kids; the tests have proven it!”

They have not learned ways to fix errors or even to recognize when theyhave made an error. In other words, they are not constructing a readingprocess system in their heads to make meaning from texts and solve problemsas their nonstruggling classmates are doing. Second, many teachers have nothad the opportunity to learn about how reading works, that is, how a child con-structs a reading process system in his or her own head. Oftentimes there is notenough room in the literacy curriculum of undergraduate and graduate pro-grams to properly prepare teachers to teach reading to children who struggle.

onfused, frustrated, andslowly giving up hope

teaching stamina.

build onstudents’ known skills and strategies

❁A major problem for children who struggle is that they are not putting areading process system together in their heads to help them read withunderstanding and fluency.

“Museums, so far as their collections are concerned, are seldom, or never, formed a

Museums provide society with a useful place to think through impor-tant questions. To do that well, museums need to consider their work in new ways. Are they about questions or answers? Are they about the past or about the present and future? How might museums best use new tech-nologies while at the same time take advantage of the collections that make them unique? How might they not be weighed down by those collections but inspired by them

the Coda, looks back at all of these topics through the eyes of contemporary artists

collecting.

In their stories we can begin to understand collecting, cataloging, and categories; how museums preserve objects, learn from them, and tell stories with them; and how visitors interact with and learn from exhibitions

old three stories.

Like its director, it had not kept up with new ideas in science and teaching.

. New colleges

The colonial colleges and academies were small institutions, attended by atiny fraction of the young men at the time. At most they possessed just a fewbuildings and enrolled no more than a couple hundred students, many of whomnever graduated. Even the sons of colonial intellectuals, like “Creasy” Mather,often exhibited little interest in higher education. Yet, for the small and tightly-knit elite they were critically important institutions. The curriculum focused onLatin and Greek, languages that linked the cultivated domains of science andtheology at the time. Knowledge of classical languages and related subjects thusrepresented a form of cultural capital that distinguished the well-educated fromthe rest of the population. Advanced schooling may not have been as importantas today, but it still commanded respect in certain circles. For the leadership ofthe British colonies, the development of the colleges was an essential act ofinvestment in higher learning (Vine, 1976).For most colonial children, on the other hand, the only opportunity forformal instruction was offered by local schools, which were conducted under avariety of circumstances. These institutions were also quite small, and thosewho bothered to enroll usually did so for less than seven or eight years, oftenattending only four or five months each term. They studied the Bible, along withspellers, books of prayers, catechisms, and other religious texts. The famous NewEngland Primer was the best known of a range of reading materials used forlessons in spelling and grammar, along with morality and virtue (Axtell, 1974).In these respects, the school was an extension of the home and the church, wherereligious instruction and reading commenced and were encouraged to onedegree or another. Families with a greater stock of formal education, and theskills and knowledge that accompanied it, could give their children an advantagein the transmission of cultural capital. But most people in colonial America didnot view schooling as a route to higher social status or economic improvement.

in practice it appears that schools typically were attended infre-quently, and only a minority of colonial youth would be considered “educated”by today’s standards

Two hundred years ago

And because schoolsare directly involved in the process of teaching ideas and shaping attitudes, theystand at the very center of the process of change in culture.

Some people enjoy reading history, others dread it.