by Ju- Chun Chai ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 3, 2014
A rare find: a cool-headed assessment of American education that’s both nonpartisan and multicultural.
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An analysis of the differences between the educational systems in the United States and South Korea.
Chai’s first book in English seems intended to repay a debt of sorts. As he sees it, the United States has twice saved South Korea from disaster in the 20th century, and the Asian country owes its educational success, at least in part, to American support. Now, their respective national roles seem reversed; educational outcomes in America continue to rapidly decline, while South Korea’s have become a global example of educational efficiency. According to the author, the U.S. remains an education leader, particularly with respect to its private schools and universities, but it chronically flounders when it comes to serving low-income, urban minorities. He also argues that although American teachers are often woefully underpaid, public schools suffer from systemic problems that can’t be fixed solely with money. He holds up the Korean approach, despite its reputation for relentlessly pressuring its overworked students, as a model that the U.S. might emulate. “Many people, especially foreign visitors, mention that Korean schools…are too intense....Despite the current imperfections of the Korean education approach, there are a few things people in other cultures can learn from it.” Some ways the U.S. can follow Korea’s lead, he says, are administrative; for example, he believes that the federal government should increase emphases on math, science and technology. Much of his counsel, though, focuses on cultural disparity: American parents, he says, need to take a more proactive role in their children’s schooling, and society needs to hold teachers in greater esteem. Throughout this book, Chai’s analysis is clear, shorn of any partisan ideology, and he’s effectively armed with his own personal experiences attending Korean, Japanese and American schools. He also includes inspirational tales—case studies of disadvantaged Korean students who achieved impressive scholastic success. As a former teacher and economist, he provides a unique perspective on the U.S.’s educational troubles, and he provides fine recommendations on how to use Korea’s successes to rehabilitate the American system.
A rare find: a cool-headed assessment of American education that’s both nonpartisan and multicultural.Pub Date: July 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1496193476
Page Count: 116
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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