Simple yet effective self-assessment guide.
In this work sheet primer aimed at junior and high school students, a business owner outlines the qualities needed to succeed in professional and personal life.
Harvin, a business owner for more than 40 years, says, “If you wish to have success and excel in a career or relationship of any kind, you have no option but to master the traits outlined in this book.” In the following pages, he maps out 32 traits—as the author admits, they’re not all traits—evenly distributed among four categories: personal (integrity, honesty, humility, patience, self-control, correct motives, having a positive attitude and sense of humor); employee (being goal oriented and a hard worker, punctuality, personal responsibility, being ambitious, and being a team player and a self-starter,); leadership (taking ownership, confidence, being calm, concern for others, leading by example, good listening, planning for success, persistence); and family (generosity, understanding sowing, being nonjudgmental, faithfulness, trustworthiness, managing money, respect for others, thoughtfulness). Each trait merits a discussion generally a page in length, followed by a list of its three top advantages (“You will have many true friends” is the third point for the honesty trait) and a final “thought to ponder”: for instance, “It is much easier to be a Hard Worker than it is to work hard at getting out of work” is the takeaway for “Hard Worker.” Harvin then offers space to rate yourself on the trait on a scale of one to 10 and to sign and date that you have “read, understand and believe” the information outlined. He also provides a separate page to write out why you gave yourself the rating you did, how you think you can raise it, and why you think this trait is important to have in your life. One could quibble that Harvin presents too many traits—as compared with, for example, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People—or that some circle similar themes (e.g., “Ambitious” and “Goal Oriented’’) or that there’s not enough work-related detail. Still, his work sheet approach offers students or indeed anyone a solid starting point for exploring accountability and better behavior in life.
Simple yet effective self-assessment guide.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-1496943880
Page Count: 124
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
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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