The transfer, in July 1997, of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule marked the conclusion of a turbulent era of European imperialism. However, as Willinsky (Education/ Univ. of British Columbia) eloquently argues, the colonial legacy lives on in the hearts and minds of those educated, all over the world, in geographic, racial, and cultural categories crafted by European colonialists. As a result of the discoveries of Columbus and other explorers, Europeans’ medieval worldview collapsed and a new one rose in its place. This modern perspective is with us still, Willinsky asserts. Reviewing the vigorous, often violent centuries of European imperialism, the author focuses on the European emphasis on examining, classifying, and categorizing the diverse peoples, geography, and plant and animal life of the conquered continents. “It is not hard to argue,” the author observes, “that the whole venture had about it something of a great public education project intent on bringing the world together under the roof of European learning.” Willinsky goes on to make this argument, showing that imperialist attitudes pervasively influenced the teaching of history and gave rise to such disciplines as geography (National Geographic and geography textbooks tended to treat the non-Western world as a barbaric place gradually coming under civilization’s sway, the author argues) and anthropology (which often produced scientifically credible apologia for racism and eugenics). In his survey of racist bias in language and literature, the author identifies the evident links between the emergence of English as a world language and British and American imperialism: Less evident, the author points out, are potential racist, sexist, and chauvinist perspectives embedded in English that may dominate world culture, and the often smug assumption that English’s universality is evidence of its intrinsic superiority to other languages rather than, as the author contends, an artifact of British imperialism. A thoughtful examination of the changing mission of education in a multicultural world. (11 photos, not seen)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-8166-3076-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Univ. of Minnesota
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1998
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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