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Education is a different animal than it was when I was in school. We were tested every year, but only to allow our parents and the teachers to see what areas were most needed when they wrote their lesson plans; it was not used to monitor a school's success or failure. Every student read aloud during each and every class, even if they were inclusive "special ed" kids. Textbooks were used, despite their expense, to provide coherence and promote reading skills for students, in supplement to our English classes, which were a combination of learning the technical aspects of the English Language and Reading from both SRA shorts alone and from our Reading Texts. Rather than try to reinvent the wheel, it may be wise to rethink old strategies to increase the literacy of American schools. This can be accomplished by combining new theories about language, including using multiple learning techniques, with some standardized "old school" ways, including the use of Spelling Bees throughout the grades. In order to make all children succeed, we've forgotten what teaching is. Education should teach children how to understand what they've learned and apply it to practical applications in everyday life. It should enrich their soul with curiosity and wonder yet be practiced on a daily basis. Standardized testing should be utilized as a tool to assist the teacher, not hang or glorify the school. Student portfolios better reflect a student's success and ability, and although harder to incorporate into neat graphs and charts. A return to basics, with a few new twists, would go a long way to increasing literacy in America.

Since I've been involved in education, I am amazed at how much effort is given to simply checking off standards through the use of worksheets, and how little effort is given to whole learning. Simply allowing children to read a passage without discussion does little more than make reading a chore and does not promote curiosity. Against advice, I structured my 6th grade Language Arts Summer Class as little bits of exposure to Literature from around the world, and we began with Plato's "The Ring of Gyges," "The Cave," and "The Crito." Drawing from their current knowledge of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, I incorporated the similarities between the two to allow recognition. I used a combination of reading the excerpt, then allowing them to watch a video clip portrayal. With each tale we discussed the inference between life philosophy and human

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