An entertaining, insubstantial glimpse into higher education.
Webber (Management, 1979, etc.) recounts tales from his lengthy career in post-secondary education, including the extraordinary and the mundane.
For the most part, the book focuses on the author’s positions in higher education, including his stint as a professor of management at Wharton and later as an administrator at prestigious University of Pennsylvania. At times Webber also provides insight into his personal life, such as his family and background. Each chapter is a few pages long, consisting of vignettes or retellings of thematically related stories. The collection is organized into larger themes such as teaching, fundraising and community relations. Readers interested in the internal workings of universities will appreciate the behind-the-scenes look at how decisions are made, why professors of arts and science may be paid less than their colleagues in business, and the divergent career paths of male and female professors. No background in the university system is needed, however, to comprehend the author’s real-life tale of a dog eating his paperwork–the canine which gave this collection its name. The brevity of the chapters and resultant staccato narrative flow suggests that this book be read in short bursts, and the thematic–rather than chronological–organization precludes delving deeply into any one topic. Though this is a light, quirky read, written in a conversational style with wry and self-deprecating humor, Webber does not shy away from controversial topics. He briefly addresses underage drinking and animal testing on campus, as well as other public-relations challenges. Virtually any college graduate will enjoy this sneak peek into educational administration, politics and fundraising.
An entertaining, insubstantial glimpse into higher education.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4392-0648-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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.
Pub Date: April 8, 1947
ISBN: 1609421477
Page Count: -
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1947
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
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