Summary of Natalie Wexler's The Knowledge Gap

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview: #1 In 2016, Gaby Arredondo was trying to teach her class of twenty first-graders about captions. She had taught them that a caption is a label that describes a picture, but many of them had chosen the title of the passage instead.#2 The American approach to elementary education is to teach reading skills completely disconnected from content. It doesn t matter what students are reading, as long as they can identify captions in a simple text.#3 The focus on reading in the early grades has led to a huge amount of time being spent on it. This has led to other subjects being neglected, especially social studies.#4 There are many arguments in favor of testing, but most teachers don t like the emphasis on testing and the consequent narrowing of the curriculum. They would rather spend more time on social studies and science, but they are required to test students.