A portrait of what an ideal American high school might be like, as envisioned by respected educator Sizer (Education/Brown Univ.). Sizer's earlier Horace's Compromise (1984) was based on intimate knowledge of US high schools. It followed the painful struggle of a fictional teacher, Horace Smith, to work within the restrictions imposed by the system—large classes, dated curricula, bureaucratic halls of mirrors—and still educate his adolescent students. Horace is here again, still a teacher but now also chairman of a committee formed not merely to reorganize but to re- create his high school. The committee includes teachers, students, parents, a school-board member, and, as influential observers, the principal and a consultant wise in the ways of the politics of education. Sizer details in lively fashion the struggles of the group to reform a system that more and more resembles an old- fashioned assembly line. The reform derives from the principles of Sizer's real-life and influential Coalition of Essential Schools. The Coalition's proponents seek to refocus the efforts of education on the student rather than on the system, and to redefine the ends of education before adjusting the means. One controversial innovation: evaluate students through ``Exhibitions''—i.e., independent but far-reaching projects—rather than standard tests. Sizer is not sanguine about the prospects for change, but he sees hope in the pressure that is being put on schools from an evolving culture and technology. A guide, not a blueprint, this is must reading for those who want to be reminded what education should be about.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-395-57230-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An unusual biography cum investigation of an academic caught up in a Cold War controversy. Kirschner (History/Simon Fraser Univ., British Columbia; The Paradox of Professionalism, not reviewed) initially aimed to help his older colleague Halperin (19061995) write his memoirs. But this story of a McCarthy-era political refugee grew, and the author not only incorporates Halperin's memories but applies his own skeptical sleuthing. Though lucidly written, the book's biographical depth may slow readers mainly curious about whether Halperin did spy for Soviets during WW II. Kirschner sketches Halperin's youth in Boston, the son of Yiddish-speaking immigrants, his undergraduate years at Harvard, and teaching stint at the University of Oklahoma, where he became a scholar of Latin America and an ``issue-oriented'' fellow traveler. Halperin was recruited in 1941 as a researcher on Latin America for the federal agency that preceded the OSS and CIA. He went to Boston University in 1949, but in 1953 the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee subpoenaed him, citing testimony by a Soviet courier that he had spied for the Soviets during the war. Halperin took the Fifth Amendment but also denied committing espionage. The author offers intriguing accounts of Halperin's self-imposed exile: five years in Mexico within the community of American expatriate radicals; a three-year stint in the Soviet Union, which soured him on the promise of Communism; a subsequent move to Cuba, where he also concluded that socialism had failed; and his final relocation to Canada—ironically, to a campus seething with socialist slogans. In a final chapter, Kirschner conducts a near-exhaustive lineup of evidence on both sides; he concludes that Halperin was more of an ideologue than he let on and that it ``seems improbable'' that his accuser perjured herself. A minor tale of the Cold War, but well told.
Pub Date: May 10, 1995
ISBN: 0-8262-0989-0
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Univ. of Missouri
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
Westerners have long complained about the enigmas of Japanese culture. Now comes proof that the puzzlement cuts both ways. Noted Japanologist Keene (On Familiar Terms, 1993, etc.) here interprets 30 Japanese diaries dating from 1860 to 1920, around the time of the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when for the first time in over two centuries the West affected Japanese society on a large scale. At that time, he writes, ``it was as natural for those people to keep diaries as it is for Japanese today to take group photographs as souvenirs of an occasion,'' and from these rich accounts Keene shows that Japanese attitudes toward Western culture ranged from intense curiosity and excitement to complete disdain. Some early travelers found foreign lands to be utterly perplexing, even inscrutable. Complaining of his English hosts' constant attempts to convert him to Christianity, Natsume Sseki writes: ``I wonder who could have invented such a straitlaced society.'' (Keene notes that the Japanese who were most successful abroad were those who had already converted or who did so later.) Provincial governor Muragaki Norimasa, traveling aboard the American warship Powhattan on a goodwill tour of the United States, confesses his hatred for sea chanties and is appalled at the sight of plebeian-looking President James Buchanan: ``He wears no decoration whatsoever...not even a sword.'' Other Japanese found that they hardly recognized their own country after the Meiji Restoration. Keene excavates the plaintive diary of a bedridden young man named Masaoka Shiki, who yearns to see wonderful things that he has only read about in the newspapers: ``lions and ostriches in the zoo'' and ``automatic telephones and red postboxes.'' The diary of Higuchi Ichiy, a learned woman, reveals sadness that in the face of such changes, the women of the upper class still expect her ``to pretend to rejoice over things that do not please me.'' These are the luminous details—not curiosities, thanks to Keene's careful analysis, but real finds—of which the best histories are made.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8050-2055-1
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
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