A lean, lucid discussion of the pros and cons of school choice. In fewer than 200 pages including appendix and index, Cookson (Education/Adelphi College; Preparing for Power, 1985, etc.) lays out the political and educational arguments about school choice. Reviewing the various forms of choice on the table, including magnet schools and voucher plans, Cookson pinpoints schools as the battlefield chosen by both conservatives and liberals in the struggle to shape American society. Many communities have already initiated choice programs—New York City's District 4 mini-schools, Milwaukee's limited voucher program, Minnesota's charter schools- -which Cookson examines, handing out good and bad grades. The programs' effect on academic performance seems minimal at best, and unless choice is controlled for a mix of race and ethnic background, as it is in Cambridge, Massachusetts, class stratification and racial segregation are likely to reoccur, says the author. Among other problems are inequities in funding—rich districts offer rich resources while poor districts struggle, just as they do without choice. Still, choosing a school gives parents and children a strong commitment to their school community, which enhances learning. Although Cookson condemns the market-driven forms of choice, where shopping for schools is equated with shopping for shoes, he believes that parents who object to the values taught in public schools should have an alternative, including religious schools. In his closing chapters, he proposes a version of managed choice that relies on government-regulated educational trust funds, a kind of Social Security for schooling that guarantees every child equality of education at any public, private, or religious school. A gem of a study that illuminates the debate about school choice, emphasizing the school as nurturer of children and not as political tool.
Pub Date: Feb. 16, 1994
ISBN: 0-300-05791-1
Page Count: 163
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 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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