A probing and absorbing look at education and the nature of intellectual investigation.
This nonfiction book takes an inquisitive tour of the education landscape and provides a tutorial in the art of asking questions.
Broussard started a blog in 2015 entitled One Good Question in which she engaged in wide-ranging interviews with prominent members of the education community. Over the course of those exchanges, she developed an increasingly precise sense of what constitutes a truly good question, one “that wasn’t leading, that didn’t tip my hand or reveal my beliefs, that didn’t force students to defend a single position, nor one that did not allow them to respond solely with anecdotes and opinions.” As the author astutely observes in this thoughtfully provocative book, the devotion to produce results in education can diminish the “luxury of time to reflect,” which can be disappointingly counterproductive. The interviews cover a remarkable stretch of intellectual territory, from art education and STEM to issues like poverty and the value of a college degree. Broussard is a talented interviewer, and as a result, the discussions she assembles are both lively and edifying. Furthermore, she furnishes a sweepingly global perspective that includes examinations of education programs in Bangladesh, Finland, and New Zealand. The author’s own expertise is beyond reproach—she is a Pahara-Aspen Institute fellow and a member of the Aspen Global Leaders Network as well as the 2014 recipient of the Eisenhower Fellowship for International Leadership—and her impressive breadth of knowledge is constantly evidenced by the interviews she conducts. Moreover, she captures with both great lucidity and concision the nature of inquiry—she implores readers to consider the full contexts of questions, including the biases they may include. As a “professional inquirer,” Broussard pushes her interviewees to “make mental space for unanticipated wonder”—in other words, to not only pose questions, but also embrace the surprises they may engender. This is a delightfully stimulating contribution to the debates about the future of education.
A probing and absorbing look at education and the nature of intellectual investigation.Pub Date: July 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1636070841
Page Count: 298
Publisher: TBR Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 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.
