Lacks the muckraking that characterizes much of Kozol’s oeuvre, but solid nonetheless.
Back to school with America’s most inspiring education advocate.
National Book Award–winner Kozol (The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, 2005, etc.) assumes the role of avuncular mentor in this winsome yet passionate collection of letters to Francesca, a brand-new teacher in inner-city Boston. The epistolary format, though somewhat disjointed, allows Kozol to range widely as he recalls his own first days of teaching and offers vignettes about the children he’s known over the years. He knocks education degrees and vouchers, assesses the fad of breaking up large high schools into “mini-schools” and gives advice about how to work patiently with those kids who are determined to hate and disrespect their teachers. Each letter to Francesca is studded with insights. Today’s obsession with tests and “proficiency” comes in for some of Kozol’s saltiest castigations, as do the teachers who bow before them. “Teachers have to find the will to counteract this madness,” he writes, because “abject capitulation to unconscionable dictates from incompetent or insecure superiors” will only teach children to likewise capitulate. Kozol also addresses the tricky relationships among teachers, principals and parents. Schools often blame parents for kids’ problems, but the schools themselves—from the demeanor of administrators to the imposing buildings themselves—subtly suggest parents are not welcome participants in their children’s education. Many themes from Kozol’s earlier books are reprised here, including his diehard defense of public education and his insistence that those public schools have become re-segregated. Indeed, he repeats approvingly Francesca’s comment that the word “diversity,” a favorite of education pundits, “has come to be a cover-up for situations to which it can’t possibly apply”—i.e., public schools with 3,000 students of whom six or seven are white. Solutions? More money and a large supply of clear-thinking, dedicated teachers like Francesca who can turn the system around.
Lacks the muckraking that characterizes much of Kozol’s oeuvre, but solid nonetheless.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-307-39371-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2007
A passionate defense of our public school system against attacks propagated by budget-slashing conservatives. Education psychologist Berliner (Univ. of Arizona) and Biddle (director of the Center for Research in Social Behavior, Univ. of Missouri) contend that the attack on American schools in the past decade is largely an unwarranted and ``Manufactured Crisis.'' It began when the ``mother of all critiques,'' 1983's A Nation at Risk, was released. Sponsored by Secretary of Education Terrel Bell and endorsed by President Reagan, the report contends that our nation is losing its leadership in science, commerce, and industry as a result of inept educators and inadequacies in teaching programs. Embraced by private school voucher advocates of the right wing, this report is riddled by myths and fraud, according to Berliner and Biddle. The report and its aftermath served to ``scapegoat educators as a way of diverting attention from America's deepening social problems.'' Among the charges that cannot be supported, for example, is the claim that student achievement in American schools has recently declined. Berliner and Biddle explode this myth with detailed analysis of SAT scores and other tests that, they conclude, indicate modest gains in student knowledge and suggest that the nation's academic achievement is now more evenly distributed. While emphatic in their defense of public education, the authors can be rather radical in their proposals for strengthening it. Their vision includes an end to tracking students by abilityand even by age. They would also like to see alternative means of evaluating student performance. Student portfolios, for example, should replace standardized tests. The authors would also like to bring additional funds to bear to counter the ``savage inequalities'' that doom poor school districts to the weakest, tax- based funding. A gutsy, cogent, and well-documented book that both defends public education and offers ways to improve it.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-201-40957-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
This critique of American education offers further subversion from Postman a quarter of a century after his Teaching as a Subversive Activity. Education must have a purpose. And the traditional purposes of American schools, the old cultural ``gods,'' as Postman (Culture and Communications/New York Univ.; Technopoly, 1992, etc.) labels them, are no longer viable. According to the god of Economic Utility, for example, there is a direct link between hard work and success. Yet there is little evidence in our society to document this. In fact, states Postman, during periods of high economic productivity, standards of educational achievement were not particularly rigorous. In our current economy we cannot assume that well-paying, meaningful jobs will be available to most students upon graduation. Since 1980, moreover, the author reveals that the largest increase in jobs has been in work requiring relatively low skills. A more recent god that has failed is the god of Multiculturalism, which Postman describes as ``a psychopathic version of cultural pluralism, and, of course, extremely dangerous.'' A multicultural curriculum, he declares, is liable to distort history and fall into the hands of extremists and propagandists whose main goal is to undermine European culture. Does this iconoclastic author of 20 books find any gods left to serve? Postman does feel American education can be salvaged with much reform. Multiculturalism, for example, should be replaced with a constructive law of diversity that allows us to ``help the young transcend individual identity by finding inspiration in a story of humanity.'' Anthropology, astronomy, and archeology, fluid fields requiring analysis rather than memorization, should become major areas of study. Education would improve overnight, contends Postman, if teachers were to get rid of all textbooks. Socially, schools must create ways to engage students in the care of their own school facilities and neighborhoods or towns. A provocative and insightful assessment of and challenge to contemporary American education.
Pub Date: Sept. 8, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-43006-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
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