Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Comments from my first critic on my book - Shut Down Kids



A critic has made the following comments on the first part of my book – Shut Down kids.
I have only taken the gist of his first comment.



In particular, the chapter titled "Reading Remediation" was a bit lost on me. It wasn't immediately apparent how everything in this chapter fit together, or what its purpose is. 

There is no need to cite any of the existing remedial methods. It's sufficient to say "prevention is better than cure". There's literally an idiom which conveys this idea that you've written a whole chapter on. 

If you're going to mention the existing remedial methods, I think it's only useful if you comment on them, or draw some interesting conclusions from these methods. Maybe, you could compare them all, and point out that they have something in common, and that it is in fact this one thing in common that is most important, and that if we take this most important thing and apply it in teaching all children, there would be far fewer cases of children shutting down. 


My response: That chapter on Remediation is to show that there are many remediation methods out there in the market that work in getting a shut down kid to grade level and maintain him at grade level. 

Specifically the critics comment: "....and point out that they have something in common" - the one main thing in common is that they all work in remediating a shut down kid.

The remediation methods mentioned in that chapter are only a few of the many remediation methods out there. I have mentioned these few just to inform my readers that there are such methods and many more that have been in use for decades.

My purpose of that chapter is to get readers to think that if all those methods work what is it that makes them work?

Would a kid need that remediation class if in the first place he is taught in such a way that he does not shut down in the first place?

I specifically refer to the last two sentences in that chapter:


This book is about why kids shut down and how to prevent kids shutting down.

When you prevent kids from shutting down we do not need remediation.


There are a few more comments from this critic which we will examine in the next few posts.

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