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CLIMATE AND CULTURE

Name: CLIMATE AND CULTURE
Author: Stuart M. Knapp
ISBN: 978-1-4196-5488-6

: FACTORS ENHANCING STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

by Stuart M. Knapp & Dion T. Harrigan ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 22, 2009

Instructions on developing a base from which educational research can move forward.

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A look at methodology, not monsoons.

This book’s somewhat-confusing title signals a bit about the obscurity of the subject. The focus here is on educational theory, where the words "culture" and "climate" have more to do with the defining the personality of an institution or organization than they do with sunny skies or rites of passage. The idea is that large institutions, like school systems, are kind of like planets–their atmospheres evolve over time, often despite the intentions of those running things, hence the term "climate." Trying to reform a school system without understanding its atmosphere is like trying to colonize a planet before one knows whether or not the environment can sustain human life. Organizational culture has been in the public consciousness for a long time, and Knapp and Harrigan address the customs that develop organically in the course of an institution’s life. This small volume is really a literature review, a compendium of current reading material for academics in the field of elementary education. The authors take four categories–culture, climate, gifted and rural–and examine the articles and papers in which these categories "interact," in terms of the culture and climate of rural schools and the ways they support or don’t support gifted students. In rural communities and schools, being gifted is viewed as something suspiciously elitist, and schools have poured more resources into developing programs for the physically and developmentally disabled than for gifted students. The book suggests reforms are in order, but not until exhaustive research has been conducted. This is not a layman’s overview, though it might be an interesting read for parents with gifted children languishing in rural schools.

Instructions on developing a base from which educational research can move forward.

Pub Date: March 22, 2009

ISBN: 978-1-4196-5488-6

Page Count: -

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 27, 2010

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

EDUCATION

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INSIDE AMERICAN EDUCATION

THE DECLINE, THE DECEPTION, THE DOGMAS

by Thomas Sowell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 4, 1993

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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

Categories:

EDUCATION

- BOOK REVIEW
SOCIAL JUSTICE FALLACIES
by Thomas Sowell

- BOOK REVIEW
WEALTH, POVERTY AND POLITICS
by Thomas Sowell

- BOOK REVIEW
INTELLECTUALS AND RACE
by Thomas Sowell

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THE ABOLITION OF MAN

by C.S. Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1947

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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.