An illuminating exploration of how colleges can support diversity.
A professor and a group of recent graduates offer recommendations for improving the college experience.
In this education policy book, Stellar and some former students at Queens College and the University of Albany (debut authors Martinez, Eggan, Poy, Weiser, Eager, Cohen, and Buras) present narratives of their personal experiences on campus. They use their own stories as launching points for broader discussions about how colleges can support students from a variety of backgrounds. After an overview of relevant concepts from the field of diversity studies, the book moves through a series of thematic chapters, each of which opens with a contributor’s tale about facing a particular education challenge. Poy describes the differences between his inner-city upbringing and the campus environment; Eager explains how a lack of confidence in her abilities kept her from pursuing medical school; and Buras writes about the difficulties of learning English as an immigrant. Following each former student’s story, the text moves into a broader discussion of educational research, effective ways of addressing potential problems, and analysis. A concluding chapter brings the tales together and offers concrete suggestions for strategies schools can implement to improve the college experience for students from diverse backgrounds. The book is strongest in the specific details the contributors share in their stories, like the distinction Poy draws between paid and unpaid internships as realistic options for low-income students. But the transitions between the first-person tales and the more scholarly text could be smoother, as the format provides little indication when the narration moves from a former student’s voice to Stellar’s. Still, the informative book succeeds in its presentation of realistic and attainable tactics schools can implement based on the contributors’ experiences, such as peer and faculty mentoring, ensuring all students are familiar with the norms of academia, and providing opportunities for experiential learning. While it lacks the extensive research base of some of the more authoritative works on the subject—like Anthony Jack’s The Privileged Poor (2019), discussed in this volume—the authors’ addition to the field does an excellent job of drawing broad conclusions from a collection of individual experiences.
An illuminating exploration of how colleges can support diversity.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64687-035-6
Page Count: 165
Publisher: Ideapress Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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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