An accessible, ultimately skewed argument for moral-values education. Lickona (Education/SUNY at Cortland; Raising Good Children, 1983) sees respect and responsibility as the fourth and fifth R`s, and he presents his case for values education in a soothing no- exceptions voice with lots of examples from satisfied teachers and parents. He believes schools should teach specific moral values— not emphasize the process of moral choice, as Kohlberg first espoused in the 70's—and though he anticipates some kinds of resistance, he has counterarguments for many objections, even that of the girl who despairs, ``We don't want to be ethical all the time.'' When Lickona identifies broadly shared values (honesty, caring), repeats teachers' anecdotes, or acknowledges the importance of narrative in engaging children in moral discussion, he sounds reasonably in command of the his material, drawing on major theorists (Gardner, Goodlad), offering many kinds of strategies—to foster cooperative attitudes, to assure timely homework-assignment completion—and acknowledging that changes don't happen quickly. But when he leaves common classroom issues for the more complicated and controversial problems of our age— sex, AIDS, abortion—he reveals a bias that some readers will reject. Lickona's book is written ``for God'' and his ideas- -values—relating to sex education are the strongest expression of that devotion. He opposes all premarital sex and sees both homosexuality and masturbation as violations of ``God's imperative that sex be reserved for a man and woman united in marriage.'' Lickona goes beyond Tipper Gore in recognizing forces outside the school that put stress on young lives, and he knows the influence of a school's moral climate (``Schools inevitably teach good or bad values in everything they do''), so for many this neatly organized dismissal of relativist approaches will be a call to action, a schoolhouse extension of Raising Good Children. For others, his underlying beliefs and impatience with genuine contradiction will be the larger issue.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-553-07570-5
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1991
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
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