Intellectually provocative reportage from the home-education front.
An impressive brief for home-schooling, with caveats.
Part memoir, part primer, this begins by recalling the events that precipitated the decision to home-school. Penn-Nabrit graduated from Wellesley and Ohio State University Law School, her husband from Dartmouth, so both felt qualified to evaluate the education their three sons were receiving at an expensive all-male private school in Columbus, Ohio. They felt the administration was not sufficiently committed to diversity and did not try very hard to find qualified black male teachers, role models the boys needed. Nor did they appreciate being told that their desire to have their sons attend Ivy League colleges was “unrealistic.” Matters came to a head when the headmaster objected to the Penn-Nabrits organizing a picnic without his permission for other black parents and accused them of being tardy with their tuition payments; twins Charles and Damon, age 11, and Evan, 9, were expelled. Devout Pentecostal Christians, the author and her husband wanted their sons to have a holistic education that embraced faith, community, the arts, and sports, as well as the regular curriculum; they decided to home-school. They found graduate students and other qualified professionals to teach subjects like mathematics, science, and foreign languages. Since they ran their own business (a management consultant firm), they could take the boys on business trips that exposed them to new ideas, and they made sure their sons attended the ballet and concerts, volunteered, and participated in sports at their local recreation center. It wasn’t all smooth sailing: the boys missed the social life of a regular school and accepted the changes reluctantly. Each chapter describing a portion of the program and the kids’ progress includes an afterword evaluating the results and offering advice to other parents. The twins were accepted at Princeton, and Evan at Amherst, but adjusting to college was not easy, admits Penn-Nabrit, who offers a frank assessment of what went wrong as well as right.
Intellectually provocative reportage from the home-education front.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-50774-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2002
A passionate plea for educational reform by a teacher who changed the course of a poor rural high school. Wood (Education/Ohio Univ.; Schools That Work, 1987) was ensconced in the ivory tower of academia when he was approached to serve as principal of Federal Hocking High in Stewart, Ohio. He proved to be the rare administrator who was willing to take risks; as a result of Wood’s iconoclastic methods, Hocking became one of the region’s top schools within a few years. Clearly influenced by such reformers as Deborah Meier—whose Park East Secondary School in New York City has served as a model for many educators—Wood radically changed the structure of his school and here advises such changes for all high schools. Echoing 1960s radicals, Wood condemns “the traditional mindset” of institutions that “are not concerned with the needs, interests and abilities of individuals except as they serve the mission of the institution.” The primary goal of schools, he contends, should be to create learning communities that nurture the kinds of citizens we would like to have as neighbors. Students, he believes, should strive for producing high-quality work rather than just accumulating credits; schools must be kept small, so that no child is anonymous. Fewer classes each day, held for longer periods, are crucial to realizing Wood’s vision, along with enough unstructured time to encourage the growth of student-teacher relationships. Students should be given far more decision-making power, he argues, so that they will graduate more capable of handling the adult responsibilities that will be thrust upon them daily. (In Wood’s school, in fact, students play an active role in hiring staff.) Complete with an appendix well-stocked with resources for high school restructuring, this is a somewhat utopian blueprint, but still one packed with common sense.
Pub Date: Aug. 3, 1998
ISBN: 0-525-93955-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
A cogent and insightful report by the education correspondent of The New York Times on the creative solutions that some of America's schools are bringing to the nation's education stalemate. Of the several surveys of American schools that have appeared in recent months, this is by far the most lucid and readable. Distilling the reasons for the deterioration of what was once a smoothly functioning system, Fiske says that, in essence, a 19th- century institution is trying to prepare people for life in the 21st century. Vision, leadership, and a total overhaul of the educational system—all are part of his solution. The author has visited school districts across the country in search of innovative programs that work. His list includes many of the usual suspects- -mini-schools in New York City's District 4; school-based management in Dade County, Florida; the revamped Kentucky state school system; the organic approach of the Key School in Indianapolis—plus others not so well known. The experiments, with flaws and virtues, are presented through the very personal and often eloquent reports of students, parents, teachers, and administrators. Here also is a chapter on computers in the classroom that doesn't simply laud their potential, but is specific about what computers, used properly, can do to free both students and teachers to think and to ask questions. A book important for everyone from the ``education President'' to parents of preschoolers who are facing 12 years of difficult choices about their children's learning.
Pub Date: Aug. 30, 1991
ISBN: 0-671-69063-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1991
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
