EDUCATION EMPOWERED

Jallepalli diagnoses what ails contemporary education and prescribes a holistic approach that considers the full range of human nature.

According to the author, K-12 education today is widely regarded as inadequate, and there is a connection between its failings and the “steady decline in our children’s well-being” in general. Unfortunately, per Jallepalli, our pedagogical philosophies have become stagnant and intractably resistant to revision, “almost like religions.” The central problem, as he understands it, is that there hasn’t been significant reflection on the aims of education in light of the essential nature of human beings. In order to rectify this, the author considers the evolutionary history of man and posits six foundational competencies: curiosity, cognition, empathy, ambition, creativity, and communication. A “holistic curriculum” built around these qualities, Jallepalli posits, will nurture a student’s physical, emotional, and spiritual health, as well as creativity and a sense of purpose. Such a curriculum should be customized to suit each individual’s idiosyncratic needs and “prioritize transferable skills and fundamental competencies over mundane information and fixed abilities.” In this impressively thoughtful study, the author offers a wide-ranging consideration of many competing educational philosophies, including a panoramic survey of the groundbreaking work of Dewey, Steiner, and Piaget. He convincingly makes the case that educational reform is an “urgent civilizational imperative” and that discussions that might seem philosophically abstract about the constituent elements of human nature are in fact highly practical and entirely indispensable. Jallepalli’s writing is unfailingly lucid and unburdened by academic jargon or fashionable cant. The weakest and least persuasive section of the book is devoted to outlining the principal characteristics of human nature; however, in fairness to the author, this is far too complex a subject to be handled so briefly without succumbing to the allure of theoretical reductionism. Still, this is an erudite and valuable contribution to a singularly important conversation.

A provocative treatment of one of the most important issues of our time.