An intriguing view into the evolution and imperfections of our current system but lacking a clear path toward implementing...
Rose (Director, Mind, Brain, and Education Program/Harvard Univ.; Square Peg: My Story and What it Means for Raising Innovators, Visionaries, and Out-of-the-Box Thinkers, 2013) rejects the faulty benchmark of average and advocates for principles of individuality in schools and businesses.
The author opens with an account of U.S. Air Force pilots in the late 1940s who found that they could not retain control of the faster and more complicated jet-powered airplanes. The problem, which was costly to the Air Force in both equipment and personnel, was found to be rooted in the design of the planes’ cockpits, which had been created uniformly for the “average pilot,” a person who only existed in a statistical aggregate. After extensive research, when the Air Force adopted the guiding principle of individual fit—adjustable seats, foot pedals, helmet straps, and flight suits—the matter was solved, planes ceased crashing, and pilot performance skyrocketed. Springboarding from this provocative anecdote, Rose, a pioneer in the new “science of the individual,” argues that while average is a useful concept when discussing groups of people, it is a useless measurement with regard to individuals and should be abandoned. From its beginnings with a Belgian astronomer in the early 19th century, Rose traces the evolution of average as a measurement as well as its pervasive infiltration into schools and the workplace in the forms of GPAs, standardized testing, performance reviews, and personality tests. He then turns his attention to the principles that underlie the emergent science of individuality to speak to the complexities belied by “averagarian” thinking. Finally, he provides a handful of examples of companies whose commitment to its employees as individuals forms the bedrock of their success, and he speaks to the shortcomings of our current higher educational system, touching lightly on alternative approaches.
An intriguing view into the evolution and imperfections of our current system but lacking a clear path toward implementing the proposed principles of individuality.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-235836-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
A deftly argued case for a new kind of socialism that, while sure to inspire controversy, bears widespread discussion.
A massive investigation of economic history in the service of proposing a political order to overcome inequality.
Readers who like their political manifestoes in manageable sizes, à la Common Sense or The Communist Manifesto, may be overwhelmed by the latest from famed French economist Piketty (Top Incomes in France in the Twentieth Century: Inequality and Redistribution, 1901-1998, 2014, etc.), but it’s a significant work. The author interrogates the principal forms of economic organization over time, from slavery to “non-European trifunctional societies,” Chinese-style communism, and “hypercapitalist” orders, in order to examine relative levels of inequality and its evolution. Each system is founded on an ideology, and “every ideology, no matter how extreme it may seem in its defense of inequality, expresses a certain idea of social justice.” In the present era, at least in the U.S., that idea of social justice would seem to be only that the big ones eat the little ones, the principal justification being that the wealthiest people became rich because they are “the most enterprising, deserving, and useful.” In fact, as Piketty demonstrates, there’s more to inequality than the mere “size of the income gap.” Contrary to hypercapitalist ideology and its defenders, the playing field is not level, the market is not self-regulating, and access is not evenly distributed. Against this, Piketty arrives at a proposed system that, among other things, would redistribute wealth across societies by heavy taxation, especially of inheritances, to create a “participatory socialism” in which power is widely shared and trade across nations is truly free. The word “socialism,” he allows, is a kind of Pandora’s box that can scare people off—and, he further acknowledges, “the Russian and Czech oligarchs who buy athletic teams and newspapers may not be the most savory characters, but the Soviet system was a nightmare and had to go.” Yet so, too, writes the author, is a capitalism that rewards so few at the expense of so many.
A deftly argued case for a new kind of socialism that, while sure to inspire controversy, bears widespread discussion.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-674-98082-2
Page Count: 976
Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Although Pipher defines the therapist’s job as clarifying issues and presenting choices rather than telling people what to...
A long-time psychotherapist mingles reassuring tips for a newcomer to the field with personal recollections of her own successes and failures.
Employing the same format as other volumes in this series (Todd Gitlin’s Letters to a Young Activist, p. 205, etc.), Pipher (Reviving Ophelia, 1994, etc.) writes letters to Laura, a young graduate student, setting forth some of her views on what therapy is all about and how good therapists do their work. The letters are grouped into seasons and date from early December 2001 to late November 2002. The winter correspondence discourses on the characteristics of good therapists, conducting family therapy, and helping clients connect surface complaints with deeper issues. Spring takes the author into the subjects of how to help patients deal with pain and achieve happiness, the use of metaphors as therapeutic devices, and the role of antidepressants in therapy. Pipher considers family therapy in more detail in the summer letters, which also take up the problem of the therapist’s personal safety. In the fall, she turns to ethical issues facing therapists, how storytelling can help clients see themselves in more positive ways, how to recognize and deflect patients’ resistance, and how to deal with failure. Ruefully recounting some of her own missteps and bad judgments, Pipher reminds her student that therapists are human and errors are inevitable. Throughout, she eschews psychological jargon and takes a commonsensical approach to the vicissitudes of living. As she puts it in describing her own sessions with clients, “I do bread-and-butter work”: she often suggests getting a good night’s sleep, going for a swim, or taking a walk.
Although Pipher defines the therapist’s job as clarifying issues and presenting choices rather than telling people what to do, giving advice seems to be second nature to her. Fortunately, the advice appears to be well considered and benign.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-465-05766-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2003
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