Perry views his “functionalist” approach to education as a part of what needs to be done for the country to succeed. Many of...
A leading agitator for reform of the American school system outlines what needs to be done now, and why.
CNN commentator Perry (Raggedy Schools, 2009, etc.), a former school principal in Hartford, Conn., has been on the front lines of education reform since the 1990s. He calls himself a “functionalist”—i.e., “In my mind, if it works it's right”—and endeavors to employ functionalism in all of his projects. Secondary schools work if their students are qualified in the way their certificates represent, he writes, and are properly prepared for college. More than $2.5 billion is spent yearly in remedial education at the college level, repeating what should have been accomplished before they arrived on campus. Perry examines the responsibilities of teachers and teaching, parents and parenting, administrators and superintendents and the teacher’s unions (“the worst thing that ever happened to education”). The author’s first priority, however, is the children. He is a strong opponent of those who contend that funding disparities between inner-city and suburban districts are a cause of the failures in the system, and he insists that schools and school districts fail because of low expectations and poor teaching skills. He argues that teachers who do not like their students cannot teach them, because the students will not trust the teachers. He discusses how he finds and recruits teachers who will match his outlook, and what he expects from parents. Throughout the book, the author displays an admirably action-oriented approach, with plenty of advice for parents and others on how to get involved effectively.
Perry views his “functionalist” approach to education as a part of what needs to be done for the country to succeed. Many of his arguments are controversial, but they are crucial to the debate.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-72031-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
