Pedestrian profiles dominate this sociological study of a cohort of Stanford graduates' first ten years in the real world. Katchadourian (Psychiatry/Stanford Univ.) and Boli (Sociology/Emory Univ.) here follow up on their previous work, Careerism and Intellectualism Among College Students (not reviewed). In that study, the authors used two tests to sort Stanford students into four groups. Careerists scored high for ambition, but not for curiosity; Intellectuals the reverse; Strivers topped both tests; those with low scores on both were termed Unconnected. This sequel examines the professional lives, as well as personal and spiritual states, of these young men and women in the decade after graduation. As one might expect, the subjects have proven quite successful; even those few not in business or the professions seem to have found vocations. In typical pop sociology fashion, the authors introduce us to many study participants. Most are so focused on climbing career ladders that their reflections on their lives have little interest. Discussions of romance, families, and the life of the mind inevitably return to work issues. Of the less intellectual survey members, only a handful evidence the impact of their education in the form of the continuing influence of a Stanford faculty member. Problems appear with the authors' initial typology. The Unconnected turn out to be among the most accomplished, with the greatest number of publications and even awards (50% of Unconnected women had won awards versus 38% of male Intellectuals). The study ends in 1991, which leaves one wondering how different types have weathered the recent recession. In any case, to truly give a sense of the value of an elite education, the authors might have done well to compare their subjects more directly to graduates of less prestigious schools. In the absence of a broader context, this look at the lifestyles of the well-educated and anonymous raises more questions than it answers.
Pub Date: Dec. 28, 1994
ISBN: 0-465-04343-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
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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