Initial Thoughts on "Facts, Artifacts and Counterfacts"

I experienced a number of mixed emotions while going through this week's work. First: befuddlement. I read through the first two chapters of The Culture of Reading, utterly baffled as to what it had to do with a presented coursework that I was supposed to be analyzing for this class and blog. Then came shame, as I realized that I had somehow managed to mix up the assigned books, and that I was supposed to be reading Facts, Artifacts and Counterfacts (which, for some bizarre reason, the authors chose to stylize as “Cunterfacts” on the cover). But, then, as I read through the chapters, I began to feel jaded and world-weary. Every single book I've read this quarter has proclaimed that they will be the ones to revolutionize the classroom. I probably would have been amazed by this introduction- had I not already read nearly the exact same thing in The Discovery of Competence. Impressively enough, the first thirty pages of the book manage to completely avoid actually describing the course in any way, instead choosing to extoll how fantastic their class is, and explaining how inferior other forms of teaching are to their ideals. The values presented, despite the claims to the otherwise, are actually remarkably similar to the ones in The Discovery of Competence. The two books both fundamentally emphasize the notion that the students are social, that homework and writing should be exploratory, and that progress comes from exposure. All they really do is shift the thematic focus and assignments around, and call it a new paradigm.