A soundly encouraging guide for college students to think deeply and for as long as it takes.
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
A potpourri of previously published articles and lectures, as well as chapters written specifically for this book—all explaining what the theory of multiple intelligences is and how it can be applied in today's schools. A decade ago, Gardner (Education/Harvard; The Unschooled Mind, 1991, etc.) put forward the idea that intelligence should be measured in more ways than through verbal and math tests that are standard for schools. He postulated seven basic ``intelligences,'' including language and logical-mathematical but also kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and spatial. Gardner gives all seven equal weight—but schools and testing institutions don't. Hence, children who are weak in language and math skills but strong in musical or interpersonal ``intelligence'' will suffer in the traditional classroom. Here, the author attempts to show how schools can address those differences so that students will be happier, more productive, and more able to cope with life. Except for a chapter on the Key School in Indianapolis, which has built its curriculum and method of teaching around multiple intelligences, teachers and administrators won't find a how-to on restructuring their classrooms here. Look to apprentice and museum programs and to the community for that, says Gardner (somewhat vaguely), leaving schools' options wide open. Strongest here are discussions of how to reframe testing and assessment methods and of how the limited view of intelligence can defeat both student and teacher. Research at Harvard's Project Zero (which Gardner directs) has developed new assessment materials, explained here, that help to measure all seven intelligences. Repetitious, thanks to its format; but even so a good introduction, along with Gardner's Frames of Mind (1983), to the theory of multiple intelligences.
Pub Date: March 31, 1993
ISBN: 0-465-01821-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The genially unorthodox author of Mindstorms (1983) again makes a stimulating case for computers as a primary route to knowledge, revising and expanding earlier observations in view of disappointing school policies of the past dozen years. Rejecting most schools as ``sluggish and timid'' in assuring access to learning, Papert (Mathematics and Education/MIT) divides the conservative education world into ``Schoolers'' (who acknowledge underlying problems but focus on short-term urgent ones) and ``Yearners'' (who create their own small-scale alternatives) as he considers why technology hasn't revolutionized school learning. Championing computers for offering forms of learning that can be ``quick, immensely compelling, and rewarding,'' Papert contends that Logo (the computer language he conceived) is a superior mode of learning for young children, closer to their informal learning style than traditional classroom approaches and invaluable as a medium for most areas of study. But schools have ignored computers' broad capacities, he finds, isolating these tools from the learning process instead of integrating them into all areas of instruction. Papert offers a steady supply of examples—from his own extensive experience as well as from assorted classrooms—providing evidence of computers as powerful learning allies. He also understands the nature of learning—the importance of the personal element in any classroom exchange; the need to adapt a learning-environment design to its social and cultural milieu; the ``internal censors'' that students bring to required work; and the way that ordered ideas can emerge from an imprecise, undirected process. Even those who resist Papert's belief that the foundation of modern schooling is faulty will agree with his central theme that the ability to learn new skills is the most critical skill of all- -and that computers have a unique, accelerating role to play in developing that ability.
Pub Date: June 16, 1993
ISBN: 0-465-01830-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
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