Sizer on Adolescence: Back-To-School Countdown (Day 16)

The Brandon Patch Back-To-School Countdown proceeds with this Day 16 report, offering news of interset as the first day of classes approaches.

Teachers in the Hillsborough County School District go back to school Aug. 15 to prepare for the first day of classes, Aug. 23.

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In his landmark, 1984 book, “Horace’s Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School,” Theodore R. Sizer addresses the life of the adolescent learner.

His work led to many things, including the Coalition of Essential Schools model for school reform.

Here are some excerpts from his 1984 book, as it pertains to the life of the America teenager and high school student:

• “A society that is concerned about the strength and wisdom of its culture pays careful attention to its adolescents.”

• “Of all the stages of life, adolescence is the most volatile — full of promise, energy, and, because of newly achieved freedom and potency, substantial peril.”

• “In its freshness, adolescence is attractive. In its enthusiasms, it an be, to older folk at least, exhausting. For most people, it is pivotal: it is the time of life when we find out who we are becoming, what we are good at, what and whom we like. What happens in these years profoundly affects what follows.”

• “High schools exist not merely to subject the pupils to brute training — memorizing geometry theorems, dutifully showing up on time, learning how to mend an axle, reciting a passage from Macbeth — but to develop their powers of thought, of taste, of judgment.”

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ABOUT THE BACK-TO-SCHOOL COUNTDOWN:

This is the 16th posting in a 41-day effort that counts down the days before the opening bell of the 2011-12 school year for the Hillsborough County School District.

Previously posted:

• Back-To-School Countdown (Day 15) — Education Quotes To Consider