by George H. Wood ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 3, 1998
A passionate plea for educational reform by a teacher who changed the course of a poor rural high school. Wood (Education/Ohio Univ.; Schools That Work, 1987) was ensconced in the ivory tower of academia when he was approached to serve as principal of Federal Hocking High in Stewart, Ohio. He proved to be the rare administrator who was willing to take risks; as a result of Wood’s iconoclastic methods, Hocking became one of the region’s top schools within a few years. Clearly influenced by such reformers as Deborah Meier—whose Park East Secondary School in New York City has served as a model for many educators—Wood radically changed the structure of his school and here advises such changes for all high schools. Echoing 1960s radicals, Wood condemns “the traditional mindset” of institutions that “are not concerned with the needs, interests and abilities of individuals except as they serve the mission of the institution.” The primary goal of schools, he contends, should be to create learning communities that nurture the kinds of citizens we would like to have as neighbors. Students, he believes, should strive for producing high-quality work rather than just accumulating credits; schools must be kept small, so that no child is anonymous. Fewer classes each day, held for longer periods, are crucial to realizing Wood’s vision, along with enough unstructured time to encourage the growth of student-teacher relationships. Students should be given far more decision-making power, he argues, so that they will graduate more capable of handling the adult responsibilities that will be thrust upon them daily. (In Wood’s school, in fact, students play an active role in hiring staff.) Complete with an appendix well-stocked with resources for high school restructuring, this is a somewhat utopian blueprint, but still one packed with common sense.
Pub Date: Aug. 3, 1998
ISBN: 0-525-93955-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1998
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by Thomas Sowell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 4, 1993
American schools at every level, from kindergarten to postgraduate programs, have substituted ideological indoctrination for education, charges conservative think-tanker Sowell (Senior Fellow/Hoover Institution; Preferential Polices, 1990, etc.) in this aggressive attack on the contemporary educational establishment. Sowell's quarrel with "values clarification" programs (like sex education, death-sensitizing, and antiwar "brainwashing") isn't that he disagrees with their positions but, rather, that they divert time and resources from the kind of training in intellectual analysis that makes students capable of reasoning for themselves. Contending that the values clarification programs inspired by his archvillain, psychotherapist Carl Rogers, actually inculcate values confusion, Sowell argues that the universal demand for relevance and sensitivity to the whole student has led public schools to abdicate their responsibility to such educational ideals as experience and maturity. On the subject of higher education, Sowell moves to more familiar ground, ascribing the declining quality of classroom instruction to the insatiable appetite of tangentially related research budgets and bloated athletic programs (to which an entire chapter, largely irrelevant to the book's broader argument, is devoted). The evidence offered for these propositions isn't likely to change many minds, since it's so inveterately anecdotal (for example, a call for more stringent curriculum requirements is bolstered by the news that Brooke Shields graduated from Princeton without taking any courses in economics, math, biology, chemistry, history, sociology, or government) and injudiciously applied (Sowell's dismissal of student evaluations as responsible data in judging a professor's classroom performance immediately follows his use of comments from student evaluations to document the general inadequacy of college teaching). All in all, the details of Sowell's indictment—that not only can't Johnny think, but "Johnny doesn't know what thinking is"—are more entertaining than persuasive or new.
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-930330-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
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by C.S. Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1947
The sub-title of this book is "Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools." But one finds in it little about education, and less about the teaching of English. Nor is this volume a defense of the Christian faith similar to other books from the pen of C. S. Lewis. The three lectures comprising the book are rather rambling talks about life and literature and philosophy. Those who have come to expect from Lewis penetrating satire and a subtle sense of humor, used to buttress a real Christian faith, will be disappointed.
Pub Date: April 8, 1947
ISBN: 1609421477
Page Count: -
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1947
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