The book Teacher in the Rye. Review

I strongly recommend to my colleagues (teachers) to read this incredible book "Teacher in the Rye." The author is Mr. Frank Thoms. First time I met him was in Alma-Ata when he and my future wife Gail came to participate in the first international youth camp where I was a director. (He wrote a book about it.)

Frank Thoms is an American educator, author, and international consultant who spent fifty years as a classroom teacher. He is best known for his memoirs about teaching, as well as his time spent serving as an exchange teacher in the Soviet Union during the Mikhail Gorbachev era
Thoms has written extensively on both his cultural experiences in the USSR and progressive educational pedagogy. His published works include: [1]
• Behind the Red Veil: An American Inside Gorbachev's Russia (A memoir detailing his experiences living and teaching in the Soviet Union).
• Teacher in the Rye: Doing It My Way
• Listening is Learning: Conversations between 20th and 21st Century Teachers
• Exciting Classrooms: Practical Information to Ensure Student Success
• Teaching That Matters: Engaging Minds, Improving Schools
• Teaching from the Middle of the Room: Inviting Students to Learn [1, 3]
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Here is my letter-review of this book. I hope it will be interesting for any teacher, educator.

Hello my friend!
Just finished reading your book “Teacher in the Rye.”

I did not have a lot of time to read it, and started slowly, thinking simply about ‘scanning’ through it ASAP. But the more I read the more I was ‘in the book!’

Briefly,
- It is written professionally, it is interesting! You are a good (excellent!) writer!
- It is written by a unique, smart, honest, experienced great teacher. (As for a great teacher I knew it since you gave a remarkable lesson in my School 22 in Alma-Ata. Honest? You were not afraid to describe your firing by “the head of schools” and accept mistakes and failure at the end of the book. Not many people would have guts to do it.)
- I wish you would have written a little more about your personal life.
- This book helped me to better understand you, and your soul. I discovered your personality better and liked it! In a lot of ways, you and I are the same. We both are people who like to challenge the frames of society, who are not afraid to take risks, and fight “the swamps of bureaucratism.”
- I understand now better your negative image of Russia, and especially Putin. I think (my humble opinion) despite of all your trips and life in Russia, you did not understand the pluses and minuses of the USSR (not Russia, it’s different now!) Cold war propaganda brainwashed both you and me. In my case I wiped it away living here for 34 years. You (do not be hurt - it’s my opinion) and absolute majority of Americans are frozen in their clich; image of Soviet society. You more than many others opened "Matryoshka" but not till the end.
- What scratched my soul is a scornful description of the USSR and its people. It’s a separate topic, I hope you will understand it better after reading my new book “From Hammer and Sickle to Star-Spangled Banner.” Just an example: your language is nice and professional when you are writing about English and American schools but haughty and always critical when you describe Russia. I can give you many examples of it. One, which you are writing about in all your books, is “Russians cheating habits.” I don’t know in what Soviet schools did you see “teachers looking through the fingers, all students whispered, used crib sheets openly!” Possibly, the teachers you met were not experienced. As you know I was a teacher, AP, principal in different schools, a person who was a member of the evaluation committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan and did not see anywhere cheating kids on such a scale! Did Soviet-Russian kids cheat? Yes, but not the way you accused the whole nation! Do American kids cheat? Yes, and you talked a little about it, making a nice excuse for them as “an individual enterprise.”
I can tell you about cheating in America a lot. My 32 years’ teaching experience at university-college-high school here will prove it. But again, possibly you will not believe me. So, I opened internet and here is what it revealed:

“Yes, cheating is highly prevalent among American students. Surveys show that a large majority admit to engaging in some form of academic dishonesty. [1, 2]
The Stats:
Overall Prevalence: Multiple nationwide studies have indicated that between 65% and 95% of undergraduate students admit to participating in some form of academic dishonesty. [1, 2]
High School Equivalents: High levels of cheating often start prior to college, with a substantial percentage of high school students admitting to actions like plagiarizing or unauthorized collaboration. [1, 2]
The AI Shift: With the introduction of generative AI, the landscape of academic dishonesty has fundamentally changed. Many students now utilize AI chatbots to help draft assignments or bypass assignments, making the detection of outsourced work an ongoing challenge for educators. [1, 2]

- One thing in this topic you are right: Russians are more helping each other than Americans. And it’s everywhere in good and bad. Collectivism verses individualism.
In my new book I talked about it.
As an example, I was hurt that Ed and you did not help me (as I did when you were in Alma-Ata) when I came to this country. But later I understood the American individualism and accepted it.

- Next, what I wanted to talk is the American system of education in comparison with the Soviet one. I don’t know if you read my article about it ("The crises of the American education system.”) The article was published in Denver, Russia, Kazakhstan and had excellent reviews of the professional educators. The Minister of Russia education even suggested it to all her colleagues to read.  Thanks to God, now Russia is returning to the Soviet system, throwing out ideology from it. And the results are great, just look at the latest results of the International Olympiads of students. This year Russia won all gold medals in Math and Chemistry. American teams … You may google yourself.

- I like the title of the book! It’s a great idea to use "The Catcher in the Rye", by J.D. Salinger. But will the readers (even the young teachers) in the US understand it? I doubt that many of them have read this book.
- Despite your severe criticism of the Soviet education system (p.200), my generation knew the novel "The Catcher in the Rye." We also knew Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Theodore Dreiser and nearly all famous American (and English, German, etc.) famous writers.
(Just FYI: this book was forbidden in the USA for some time but was allowed in the USSR!) Do American high school (and even university level) students know any Russian classic writers and poets? You know the answer.

When I came to Mitchell High school in 1997, I was teaching Russian, Civics, Consumer Economy, and World history mostly to freshmen. (I got through the most bureaucratic tests to prove my two University diploma, and I was legitimate to teach these subjects). Their ignorance of the school subjects was shocking. Some of them hardly could read in English. My first lesson in World History class was especially funny. I gave them the contour of the world map and asked them to mark the countries on it. Like I did many times in the USSR. Ninety-five percent showed only US, Mexico and Canada. In the USSR – 100% showed at least twenty countries. And it was the same with other subjects.
Just some facts about why the Soviet system was more effective than American. I could tell with my own words but decided to quote from Wikipedia:
The Soviet Union was able to launch Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, largely because its highly centralized, state-controlled education system was meticulously designed to produce a massive surplus of engineers and scientists to outpace the West. [1]
The success of the Soviet educational pipeline was built on several strategic pillars:
Intense STEM Focus: The curriculum mandated rigorous, universal training in advanced mathematics (calculus, trigonometry), physics, and chemistry. [1]
Merit-Based Tracking: The state actively identified, encouraged, and tracked gifted students into specialized math and science academies and elite technical universities. [1]
State Subsidization: Higher education was entirely free, and the government directed graduates straight into priority sectors like the aerospace and military-industrial complexes. [1, 2]
Centralized Prioritization: Unlike the more decentralized, liberal arts-focused education in the U.S. at the time, the Soviet system treated education as a direct tool for state security and geopolitical dominance. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

(“A centralized, state-controlled education system?” I do not want you to think I mean the tough Communist control. What I mean is - the system, the comprehensive structured standards for all students in the country! Sometimes the poor choices of the textbooks, other educational materials, which the teachers have to make, lead to anarchy.)

This "Sputnik shock" forced the United States to radically rethink its own classrooms, eventually leading to the passage of the National Defense Education Act of 1958. [1]

- Now, about the main idea of your book: The open education movement (OEM).

The forgotten philosophy of the OEM and your experience made this book unique and valuable not only for the teachers but for the parents, too! I would have recommended this book to study at the “Pedagogical institutes” all over the world. (Alas, there are no such institutions in the USA, and this is one of the mistakes of the American system of education.)
 
I read some articles about OEM many years ago. All of them were filled with the severe criticism of the “crazy capitalist anarchy.” The Film “It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world” was shown in the USSR in 1963 for the same purpose! The anti-bourgeois propaganda was happy to find something crazy in any sphere of American life.

I forgot about OEM, till I read your book. I was surprised that without knowing the philosophy of the OEM, I used many methods of this movement! And they worked well for me! I was a popular teacher; kids loved my unusual teaching ways!

I wanted to write more about it, but after I read some articles of the scholars about OEM, I decided to bring only two paragraphs which reflect my opinion:

1. The open education movement of the 1970s was a progressive educational reform that replaced traditional teacher-led, walled classrooms with student-centered learning spaces. Inspired by British infant schools, it championed self-paced learning, multi-age grouping, and hands-on "interest centers," heavily prioritizing student curiosity and freedom of movement. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].
2. The Decline and Legacy while the movement initially dominated educational vocabulary, it largely faded by the late 1970s. The lack of structured environments left many students struggling academically, and the open-space architecture proved overwhelmingly loud and distracting, declines in test scores and growing achievement gaps are just part of the problem.

That’s why (I think) your experiment failed. You cannot change the world by making revolution in a small room alone. It can be one of the methods not the platform of education.

As for your impression of Soviet education and life there, you described yourself well on page 248. You came in the time of collapsing of the Empire, which Putin correctly called the worst tragedy of the 21 century. It was worse than the Great Depression in the USA. People were starving, men committing suicide, women were “selling themselves” to anybody who could save them and their kids. And “mini-mythic American superhero” was “catching them in the rye” easily.

Again, thank you for the book, I enjoyed it.

Sincerely yours, Pavel

PS There are some funny mistakes in the book, describing the USSR and its communist system. But they are your impressions of life there.