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WHAT THE BEST COLLEGE STUDENTS DO

Name: WHAT THE BEST COLLEGE STUDENTS DO
Author: Ken Bain
ISBN: 978-0-674-06664-9

by Ken Bain ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 27, 2012

A soundly encouraging guide for college students to think deeply and for as long as it takes.

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Bain (History and Academic Affairs/Univ. of the District of Columbia; What the Best College Teachers Do, 2004, etc.) taps into the experiences of dynamic, innovative individuals to tease out how their college experience shaped them.

The author does not present much groundbreaking material, but his interviews with Nobel Prize winners, professional athletes and entertainers and well-regarded educators and researchers demonstrate the many vital approaches a student can bring to their college experience. Bain writes with clarity and modulated enthusiasm about intrinsic motivation, adaptive experts and the necessity of invention and the importance of mindfulness. He convincingly argues for the significance of a liberal education—“engaging in dialogues that brought their own perspectives to bear yet tested them against the values and concepts of others and against the rules of reason and the standards of evidence”—but what really piques Bain’s interest is the act of immersing oneself in any activity that ignites true passion. Creativity comes to those who become “lost in something other than themselves.” The experiences of successful students are certainly burnished by exposure to the length and breadth of a liberal curriculum, but they are spurred by awe and fascination. The best students seek the meaning behind the text, its implications and applications, and how those implications interact with what they have already learned. To think in so rich and robust a way as Bain describes—“trying to answer questions or solve problems that they regard as important, intriguing, or just beautiful”—is an aspiration of the first order.

A soundly encouraging guide for college students to think deeply and for as long as it takes.

Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-674-06664-9

Page Count: 260

Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.

Review Posted Online: June 3, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012

Categories:

EDUCATION

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BEHIND THE PLAYDOUGH CURTAIN

A YEAR IN MY LIFE AS A PRESCHOOL TEACHER

by Patti Greenberg Wollman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1994

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An endearing and lively account of what one teacher encountered in a year with a private nursery school ``class from hell'' on Manhattan's educationally progressive Upper West Side. A preschool teacher for 20 years, Wollman had decided to keep a detailed journal of a recent school year before she knew that her class of 13 three- and four-year-olds would have more than its share of problems. True, there was an unusual number of unruly and immature children (one youngster was still in diapers). But affecting the behavior of the class even more was a procession of tragic events, including deaths and illnesses in almost every child's family, putting extraordinary demands on Wollman and her assistant, Cathy. For, as Wollman says, ``preschool teachers do a lot more than play games and bandage scraped knees.'' They socialize and civilize, give the children a safe place to learn how to identify emotions and express them verbally, and work (carefully) with parents to detect and correct problems. The children come to life: Harris, who struggles to overcome the scars left by a babysitter who hit and screamed at him; Jeremy, who's blaming himself for the baby sibling who died at birth; Sharon, who had a difficult ear operation early in the school year; and the other ten enchanting, frustrating, bright youngsters (names are changed). Though Wollman is often exhausted, troubled, and challenged by her charges, nevertheless, year's end finds the class and its teachers a tightly knit, productive group and the parents rightly grateful to have found a nurturing haven for their children. Wollman writes, ``[We] felt victorious...We had enriched the lives of thirteen families who would never be the same.'' A year's adventures in the world of collage, cubbies, and time-out, told with wit and humanity. (Author tour)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-684-19665-4

Page Count: 280

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994

Categories:

EDUCATION

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CITY ON A HILL

TESTING THE AMERICAN DREAM AT CITY COLLEGE

by James Traub ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1994

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Eschewing hand-wringing and political rhetoric for close, critical observation, freelance journalist Traub (Too Good to Be True, 1990) delineates a unique—and uniquely representative- -institution: New York's City College. Traub spent a year observing classes at City College's Gothic Revival campus, which sits atop a hill in Harlem. Founded in 1849 as an egalitarian experiment, tuition-free City College came into its own when the great turn-of-the-century tide of Jewish migration provided it with cohorts of driven students. Their legendary successes—a record number of Nobelists and intellectuals such as Irving Howe—made it a beacon of educational possibility for the nation. A confluence of social and political upheavals, however, brought radical changes in the 1960s, key among them guaranteed admission for graduates of New York City high schools to the City University of New York, of which City College is a part. An exploration of the drastic results of this ``open admissions'' policy constitutes the main part of Traub's book. After limning the ideological conflicts that still continue among the faculty and in the press, he introduces us to its ramifications in City College's classrooms. We meet a range of teachers, from dedicated idealists, struggling to reach woefully under-prepared students while maintaining some semblance of academic standards, to the controversial Afrocentrist professor Leonard Jeffries, whose authoritarian anti-intellectualism Traub exposes as he captures the human, even tragic dimension of Jeffries's sway over uninformed followers. Empathetic portraits of City College students stand at the book's center. Many flounder in remedial courses; difficult family situations and looming financial disaster burden most; the dedication of contemporary immigrants provides some hope. But Traub's ultimate accomplishment is to reveal the consequences for one legendary college of the inadequacy of our urban high schools and vocational training, and our general devaluation of learning. The crisis continues—and as goes New York's City on a hill, so goes the nation. Exemplary reportage, essential for all those debating the future of American college education.