Exchanging Writing, Exchanging Cultures

This text explores what US educational systems can learn about literacy training from Great Britain - an English-speaking country with a long tradition of concern about literacy and with similarly troubled inner-city schools? Freedman and her colleagues in England conducted national surveys of teachers and students and also set up a student writing exchange that matched English classes from four middle and high schools in the San Francisco Bay area with counterparts in Greater London. This transatlantic dialogue was designed to encourage students to reach higher and work harder in developing their writing skills. In both countries, the participating schools served high percentages of minority students from lower- and working-class families. "Exchanging Writing, Exchanging Cultures" offers concrete lessons to school reformers, policymakers and classroom teachers about the value and effectiveness of different approaches to teaching writing. For US educators, the British experience provides cogent reasons for rethinking the adoption of a "high stakes" national examination on the British model - a model Freedman found detrimental to learning.
At the same time, the book highlights British educational policies and structures that could improve instruction in US schools. British teachers, for instance, can aspire to positions of leadership and increasing responsibility within their schools, while professional opportunities for US teachers generally take them away from their schools to share their expertise elsewhere. In observing the varied classrooms in both countries, Freedman looks anew at Vygotsky's and Bakhtin's theories of social interaction and their implications for learning, and she explores ways to meet the needs of all students when classes are not tracked by ability level. Freedman's cross-cultural comparison stimulates us to envision new possibilities for our familiar school organizations in order to reshape our urban schools into institutions of high-quality education for all students.