The concise and passionate story of how a teenager formed his own school that is “intellectually demanding of all its...
The story behind one young man’s alternative school within a school.
By the time Levin reached his junior year, like many kids his age, he had resigned himself to having a couple of great classes, a few he hated, and the rest that were boring. He had interests outside of school that helped him get through his days, but what made him angry was how those with nothing beyond the regimented school day were missing out on life. They weren’t being stimulated in school and had no projects or part-time jobs to engage them. So Levin took matters into his own hands and started his own school. With the support of his mother, Engel (Developmental Psychology/Williams Coll.; The Hungry Mind: The Origins of Curiosity in Childhood, 2015, etc.), and other adults in his high school—and after months of planning—Levin created the Independent Project, a student-run school. The school focused on the students’ interests and passions rather than required curriculum. Though the plan incorporated some traditional subjects, Levin and his team switched things up by aligning science with the humanities and English with math. In alternating voices, Levin and Engel tell the story of how the IP evolved, giving readers an inside look at the entire journey, including the first irritated moments that sparked the original idea, getting approval from the school board, recruiting students, and initiating a trial semester. The authors address their triumphs, setbacks, fears, and concerns, analyzing the step-by-step process so that others may follow and create their own independently run schools. For those who have investigated home schooling, Levin’s methods are reminiscent of unschooling, the process by which learning occurs on a more personal, interest-driven level, without the need to use conventional grading systems. The authors clearly show that learning can be an invigorating, exciting experience for almost everyone—if approached in the right manner.
The concise and passionate story of how a teenager formed his own school that is “intellectually demanding of all its students, no matter what their academic history.”Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62097-152-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
Wood (Education/Ohio Univ.) visits schools and classrooms that are concerned with teaching children, not with satisfying bureaucrats. The children and teachers in N.Y.C.'s pioneering Central Park East Secondary School seem to be so often visited by journalists, researchers, and education specialists that it's hard to imagine they have time for schooling. In this case, Wood spent time at CPESS, as well as at elementary and high schools in New Hampshire (where students of the Thayer School mobilized to head off a toxic- waste site and honed reading, writing, science, and math skills in the process); Georgia (where students produce the renowned Foxfire magazine); Illinois (where parents are an integral part of the workings of Hubbard Woods), and less heralded institutions in Wisconsin and Ohio. The author reports his conversations and observations with warmth—and with the strong conviction that schools should not be factories to assemble future workers, but centers where children can learn to function as informed and thoughtful citizens. His theme is that less is more—less stricture, less structure lead to more flexibility in the classroom and to the skills crucial to a democracy: how to question, how to analyze, how to develop an idea, how to work with one another. Not new (and for a more perceptive report, see Edward B. Fiske's Smart Schools, Smart Kids, 1991), and repetitious at times, but, still, an upbeat, child-centered view of bright spots in American education.
Pub Date: April 17, 1992
ISBN: 0-525-93421-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
Lane (Psychology/Northeastern) follows up When the Mind Hears- -his 1984 history of the deaf—with an excoriating analysis of the oppression of the deaf in contemporary society. Hearing people, Lane says, view deafness as a disability—but the deaf see themselves as a linguistic minority, feel that they have a richer social life than hearing people, marry each other, and celebrate the birth of a deaf child as a precious gift. After developing these preconception-shattering revelations, Lane reveals the meshes of paternalistic control exercised by ``audism''—that institution of school administrators, speech therapists, psychologists, and social workers that authorizes views of the deaf, governs where they go to school, and exercises authority over their community. Despite research showing that American Sign Language is a natural language with its own vocabulary, grammar, and art forms, professionals persist in viewing it as disabled English and refuse to learn it. The consequences for the deaf are dire: IQ scores can be lowered 30 points by examiners resorting to ad hoc pantomime for test instruction; psychologists administer tests designed for the hearing and misdiagnose deaf children as learning-disabled; deaf youth are ``mainstreamed'' out of special schools to languish in a hearing, English-speaking environment. The audist establishment, Lane says, has promulgated calling deaf children ``hearing-impaired''—the equivalent, he adds, of calling women ``non-men'' or gays ``sexually impaired.'' And economic self- interest motivates the audist establishment, Lane argues. The hearing-aid industry, for example, annually sells $250 million dollars' worth of hearing aids to deaf children, whose teachers require them. Yet virtually all of these children went deaf before learning English, making the hearing aids useless. What is to be done to empower the deaf? Allow them their language, Lane says, and their history and their dignity. Essential for anyone with a deaf person in his or her life, or for anyone who wishes truly to understand two million deaf fellow Americans.
Pub Date: May 26, 1992
ISBN: 0-679-40462-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1992
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