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LIVING A MOTIVATED LIFE

Name: LIVING A MOTIVATED LIFE
Author: Raymond J. Wlodkowski
ISBN: 978-90-04-38832-1

A MEMOIR AND ACTIVITIES

by Raymond J. Wlodkowski ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 25, 2018

This book will primarily interest adult educators, but it’s also a worthwhile read for anyone interested in education...

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A psychologist demonstrates what he’s learned about intrinsic motivation and transformative learning.

During Wlodkowski’s (co-author: Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn, 2017, etc.) long career in academia, he’s had an interest in intrinsic motivation, which he defines as “when people act or respond for the satisfaction inherent in the behavior itself.” He uses stories from his own life to show how this concept influenced his own career. For example, his Aunt Ann lived with his family when he was young; she was the only one of her 11 siblings to leave home, and he found that he wanted to live a similarly interesting life. He says that her example inspired him to take a satisfying professional risk by accepting a position as human relations specialist for the Milwaukee Public Schools during their effort to desegregate. The author also stresses the importance of professional mentorship; he tells of how he invited his ancient history professor out for coffee one day, which led to a lifelong friendship. Throughout the book, he refers to their relationship and how it influenced his later career decisions. These frequent references clearly demonstrate the profound effect that the elder man had on his life, and successfully show the value of having a mentor. In the 1980s, his mother’s death made him realize that few formal learning opportunities were available to working women as they aged. This drove him to study what motivated adult learners; he went on to speak at adult education conferences and publish books on the topic. The bulk of this book consists of the author’s life story, told in chronological order, which flows well with the various lessons throughout. Because the author includes many personal anecdotes from his years in Detroit and the broader Midwest, this book will especially appeal to readers with connections to these areas. However, Wlodkowski’s expertise in such a specialized field may appeal to a somewhat narrower audience. At the end, he includes methods for teaching intrinsic motivation and transformation theory to adult learners via memoir writing and storytelling.

This book will primarily interest adult educators, but it’s also a worthwhile read for anyone interested in education history.

Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2018

ISBN: 978-90-04-38832-1

Page Count: 206

Publisher: Brill Sense

Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

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.