Davidson may oversell the revolution in thinking—there’s a lot of cheerleading here—but her points are worth pondering.
A preview of the future from an educational innovator.
Davidson (The Future of Thinking, 2010, etc.), who codirects the annual HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning competitions, describes an experiment where most of a group told to count passes between basketball players in a short film fails to spot a person who walks through the scene in a gorilla suit. Too- focused attention can miss something unexpected. The author takes this insight as a key to examine the nature of attention, which she believes has deep roots in the educational system created to fill jobs where workers arrive at a given time and perform a specific task in tight coordination with other workers. As Davidson notes, students who don’t respond well to these expectations are pigeonholed as misfits, slow learners, troublemakers or worse. But brain research indicates that the educational establishment is out of step; it is becoming clear that our minds are capable of multitasking to a degree far beyond what the 20th-century assembly-line worker or middle manager was trained to do. After a brief introductory chapter, Davidson offers several examples of how the schools and workplaces of the future might look. Duke University’s 2003 experiment of giving the entire freshman class free iPods drew widespread scorn, but the experiment justified itself as students found innovative ways to use the devices in the classroom and lab. The administration grasped the iPod’s capability to connect the students’ work for group projects, such as a podcasting conference that distributed a lecture on Shakespeare worldwide. Elementary-school children are learning by using computer games, and other schools are abandoning traditional class structure to reach children who might be left behind in conventional schools. The revolution is reaching the workplace, as well—notably at IBM, where a significant portion of the workforce now telecommutes and many workgroups are spread out over three continents, connecting by teleconferencing. Further, the military is making heavy use of video games in training soldiers to use new weapons systems.
Davidson may oversell the revolution in thinking—there’s a lot of cheerleading here—but her points are worth pondering.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-02282-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author, who has doctorates in education and social work, argues that intellectual standards in American universities have deteriorated to the point of crisis. This muddled book is powerful evidence that she is right. Browne-Miller tries to make the case that, since the '60s. attempts to create a more egalitarian distribution of opportunity, particularly for racial minorities, have led to academic decline and to social frustration among students, faculty, and administrators. She suggests a radical rethinking of higher education, based on vaguely holistic principles, culminating in replacement of the university by community-based educational centers for the many and think tanks for the few, and entailing years of community service in return for the privilege of education. Shameful Admissions raises some important questions, but the book is disorganized, riddled with unsupported assertions, and rife with purple prose (``Could it be that we have entered a trap, a trap in history, a social quagmire, a Sartrian hell from which there appears to be no exit?''). It is an uncooked stew of every campus controversy of recent years, including some, such as rising crime rates and faculty-student dating, that have no apparent connection to the book's subject. Browne-Miller, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, uses that campus as almost her sole example of the current academic climate, despite its unusual size, atypical demographics (almost a third of undergraduates are of Asian descent), and unique political history. She relies on astonishingly few authorities, considering the myriad questions she raises, and does so uncritically; she quotes Dinesh D'Souza and Andrea Dworkin with equal approbation, not in order to reach a synthesis, but as if she were a desperate attorney seeking support in case law for a proposition she doesn't fully understand. At least it will succeed in making alumni wonder what's going on at alma mater.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-7879-0182-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1995
Thirty-four essays—count 'em—of choice Gouldian prose in this latest collection of his monthly pieces for Natural History magazine. Age has not withered nor custom staled the sharp pen and opinions of our man in Cambridge (Zoology/Harvard Univ.; Eight Little Piggies, 1993, etc.). Indeed, in reading this collection as a whole, representing three years of work, one sees familiar themes emerge with renewed vigor and new evidence. These include the concept that evolution is neither linear nor progressive (man is not the be-all and end-all of life on earth); strong anticreationist and antieugenics stands; the idea that species remain stable over long periods, interrupted by relatively rapid times of change (Gould's and Niles Eldredge's ``punctuated equilibria'' theory); and the abrupt extinction of dinosaurs wrought by an asteroid collision 65 million years ago (the title essay). As always, there is homage to and defense of Darwin, as well as essays that honor lesser-known figures, such as Victorian Mary Roberts (author of The Conchologist's Companion), or else little-known facts about the famous: Edgar Allen Poe's venture into popular science writing (with a little plagiarism thrown in), for example. Gould's essays on other literary figures are particularly well done. He provides a correction on the movie version of Frankenstein in a wonderful piece on Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. And two essays, on Tennyson (author of the phrase ``Nature, red in tooth and claw'') and on Swift (who gave us the phrase ``sweetness and light'' in homage to the bee's contribution of honey and wax), are gems. Since Gould includes autobiographical pieces as well, we are treated to essays on his beloved snails and to the wonderful world of taxonomy and systematics. No better proof can be offered of the importance of Gould's kind of biology than this collection itself. (35 b&w illustrations, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-517-70393-9
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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