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WE CAN DO IT

Name: WE CAN DO IT
Author: Michael T. Gengler
ISBN: 978-1-948122-14-6

A COMMUNITY TAKES ON THE CHALLENGE OF SCHOOL DESEGREGATION

by Michael T. Gengler ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 21, 2018

A thick, thorough history as only an attorney could present.

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A Gainesville, Florida, native focuses on his hometown and Alachua County to examine that state’s challenging task to end segregation.

As Gengler, a former corporate lawyer in Boston and Chicago, points out, that move was one of the most significant social changes in the United States since Reconstruction. Unfortunately, there was no road map and no magic tool kit to make it work. It all began with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which gave rise to freedom of choice, whereby students could apply to attend specific schools. The NAACP never accepted that as an end point, and few blacks moved to white schools. Funding problems, failed bond issues, a teacher’s strike, busing, and racial balancing were just some of the difficulties. In 1970, the Supreme Court ordered true integration of schools, which forced changes in curriculum and extracurricular activities and led to what the author calls episodic outbreaks of on-campus violence. Gengler, whose legal explanations are often prolix, focuses mostly on the courts and the herculean attempts of both black and white educators to ease the transition. The end of black schools seriously dampened the sense of community as well as the resources and creativity that created a wholesome environment. Brown was only the first lawsuit regarding desegregation; it was followed by Brown II and, more importantly, U.S. v. Jefferson County School Board in 1966. In that case, the judge ruled that the schools must take steps to end the dual-race model, but he gave no standard to evaluate the effectiveness of those steps. The Civil Rights Act restricted that ruling to de jure segregation—i.e., it didn’t carry over to schools segregated by residential patterns. There are few details or statistics omitted from this book, and explanations are exhaustive, but Gengler brings the characters involved to life, demonstrating their patience and dedication. After many failures, it was clear that reforms and rulings could only go so far; school leaders, teachers, parents, and students had to demand and work for change.

A thick, thorough history as only an attorney could present.

Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-948122-14-6

Page Count: 560

Publisher: RosettaBooks

Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018

Categories:

EDUCATION

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INSIDE AMERICAN EDUCATION

THE DECLINE, THE DECEPTION, THE DOGMAS

by Thomas Sowell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 4, 1993

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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

Categories:

EDUCATION

- BOOK REVIEW
SOCIAL JUSTICE FALLACIES
by Thomas Sowell

- BOOK REVIEW
WEALTH, POVERTY AND POLITICS
by Thomas Sowell

- BOOK REVIEW
INTELLECTUALS AND RACE
by Thomas Sowell

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THE ABOLITION OF MAN

by C.S. Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1947

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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.