bookshelf

WHY JOHNNY CAN'T TELL RIGHT FROM WRONG

Name: WHY JOHNNY CAN'T TELL RIGHT FROM WRONG
Author: William K. Kilpatrick
ISBN: 0-671-75801-2

MORAL ILLITERACY AND THE CASE FOR CHARACTER EDUCATION

by William K. Kilpatrick ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1992

bookshelf

A flawed but thought-provoking discussion about the moral education—or lack of it—of American children. Among the many chores that schools have taken on in recent years is the teaching of morality. Teachers sometimes do this in free-wheeling discussions that permit students to form their own opinions about classic moral dilemmas—sex and its consequences being a ubiquitous topic; this method is sometimes called ``values clarification.'' Here, Kilpatrick (Education/Boston College; Identity and Intimacy, 1975) pounces on the idea of values clarification and shakes it like a dog savaging a rabbit. Children are not born with virtue (i.e., knowing good from evil), he says, and a classroom dilemma about whether or not to steal is no dilemma if a child doesn't already think stealing is wrong. Children, he contends, need ``training in goodness.'' To accomplish that, teachers and parents should not only reiterate moral strictures- -that lying, stealing, harming another person are wrong—but provide examples both in their own behavior and in stories. Kilpatrick nails, not always convincingly, a host of villains for the new moral ambiguity. Among them are Rousseau, Nietzsche, feminist theorists, and, above all, the fathers of the human- potential movement, Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers. What Kilpatrick does not discuss—and the omission is major—are the institutions and individuals who preach morality and behave immorally, from governments that sidestep the law to evangelists who frequent prostitutes. A generation has grown up with would-be heros—from Presidents to preachers—who are hypocrites, and the institutions that Kilpatrick praises for instilling ``character'' in their charges—Roman Catholic schools, military schools, an orthodox Jewish sect—are not necessarily paragons of morality. Providing children with stories of right overcoming wrong—a list of recommended classics is included—is commendable, but the stirring tales may only highlight the morality gap, generating yet more classroom discussion of values.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-671-75801-2

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

Categories:

EDUCATION

bookshelf

INSIDE AMERICAN EDUCATION

THE DECLINE, THE DECEPTION, THE DOGMAS

by Thomas Sowell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 4, 1993

bookshelf

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

Categories:

EDUCATION

- BOOK REVIEW
SOCIAL JUSTICE FALLACIES
by Thomas Sowell

- BOOK REVIEW
WEALTH, POVERTY AND POLITICS
by Thomas Sowell

- BOOK REVIEW
INTELLECTUALS AND RACE
by Thomas Sowell

bookshelf

THE ABOLITION OF MAN

by C.S. Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1947

bookshelf

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.