A handy addition to any first-time parent’s library.
Psychotherapist and early childhood education expert Norbeck (Education/McDaniel College) combines research with common-sense advice in his brisk debut offering for parents of very young children.
Norbeck seems to truly understand the hectic, interruption-prone life of parents, as the format of his slim guide—which discusses childhood learning and development through age 6—offers memorable, useful tips in segments that can be read in a short amount of time. Ten rules for parents, such as “Find Toys That Teach,” are divided into chapters with professional research summaries. But readers who cringe at the word “research” can take heart—the book’s language isn’t particularly academic, and many of the studies Norbeck cites are far from boring. For example, in Rule 5 (“Respond to Your Child’s Needs”), he briefly discusses the “shyness gene” researched by the University of Maryland’s Nathan Fox, who concluded that 80 to 85 percent of shyness and anxious behavior in humans is biological, though environmental and social factors can greatly intensify it. Likewise, says Norbeck, early identification and intervention can alter anxious behaviors in a positive way. Chapter research summaries are coupled with practical ideas for everyday life; for example, parents of a shy child are urged to gradually expose the child to new experiences, instead of being overprotective. Some of the author’s advice is familiar, such as his adaptation of a governmental guideline for prenatal care, which urges pregnant women to not smoke. Other ideas, however, may surprise even veteran parents. For example, in Rule 2, (“Talk With Your Baby, A Lot”), Norbeck introduces the idea of learning sign language with babies. The author also provides references and several “Best Media Recommendations,” including Dr. Harvey Karp’s 2002 book The Happiest Baby on the Block, which advises how to calm crying babies. Although specific toys and activities are mentioned, this isn’t an exhaustive list of arts and science projects. Instead, very solid and usable ideas are laid out as a foundation to build a lifetime love of learning.
A handy addition to any first-time parent’s library.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-1479281015
Page Count: 134
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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