A welcome if controversial call for parents to take control of their children’s education.
A manifesto for parents.
This is a book about “education entrepreneurship”—the development of models for teaching and learning that go outside the traditional schoolroom and innovate in the cognitive and social development of children. Written with zeal, the book encourages parents to play a larger role in their children’s education. The author lays out learning outcomes as socially driven: “I want a happier, more joyful learning environment for my child.…I want a more customized, personalized academic experience.…I want my child to be respected as an individual.” Through a series of case studies, the book traces the success of several educational entrepreneurs. Some are home-schoolers. Some are technologists of learning. Some are teachers who have set up their own institutions. “To shatter the collective illusions surrounding education, parents should be honest and upfront about their desire for difference in education.” Some may question the premises and motives of this book. Is education like a Silicon Valley startup? Are schools “small businesses?” Are students “stakeholders?” Should parents “market” their success? Anyone who cares about public education and content-based curricula will be impatient with this book. But parents who have found local schools lacking in support may be inspired to take teaching into their own hands. It may be easy to parody this book’s narratives: “Jen’s story of building a school that intentionally integrates neurodiverse and neurotypical students is one example of how entrepreneurial parents and teachers are taking the initiative to create community-based learning solutions for children whose identities, experiences, or educational needs are not being met in traditional schools.” What’s harder is to ask ourselves, what is school for these days?
A welcome if controversial call for parents to take control of their children’s education.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2025
ISBN: 9781541705524
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
This guide to Black culture for White people is accessible but rarely easy.
A former NFL player casts his gimlet eye on American race relations.
In his first book, Acho, an analyst for Fox Sports who grew up in Dallas as the son of Nigerian immigrants, addresses White readers who have sent him questions about Black history and culture. “My childhood,” he writes, “was one big study abroad in white culture—followed by studying abroad in black culture during college and then during my years in the NFL, which I spent on teams with 80-90 percent black players, each of whom had his own experience of being a person of color in America. Now, I’m fluent in both cultures: black and white.” While the author avoids condescending to readers who already acknowledge their White privilege or understand why it’s unacceptable to use the N-word, he’s also attuned to the sensitive nature of the topic. As such, he has created “a place where questions you may have been afraid to ask get answered.” Acho has a deft touch and a historian’s knack for marshaling facts. He packs a lot into his concise narrative, from an incisive historical breakdown of American racial unrest and violence to the ways of cultural appropriation: Your friend respecting and appreciating Black arts and culture? OK. Kim Kardashian showing off her braids and attributing her sense of style to Bo Derek? Not so much. Within larger chapters, the text, which originated with the author’s online video series with the same title, is neatly organized under helpful headings: “Let’s rewind,” “Let’s get uncomfortable,” “Talk it, walk it.” Acho can be funny, but that’s not his goal—nor is he pedaling gotcha zingers or pleas for headlines. The author delivers exactly what he promises in the title, tackling difficult topics with the depth of an engaged cultural thinker and the style of an experienced wordsmith. Throughout, Acho is a friendly guide, seeking to sow understanding even if it means risking just a little discord.
This guide to Black culture for White people is accessible but rarely easy.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-80046-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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