A useful though eminently debatable case for reform in the interest of teaching to today’s needs.
Former Harvard University president Bok examines ways in which higher education can shape better citizens.
The author looks back over seven decades of teaching to examine where tertiary education is and where it’s going. It’s now said that students retain little information from the lecture format, with better results coming from active participation rather than passive reception. Though in days past, Bok’s charges at Harvard filled the halls to hear the likes of Stephen Jay Gould and Michael Sandel, such talented interpreters are rare. All the same, “at least half of college faculty continue to lecture extensively, especially in large college courses, despite persuasive evidence that active forms of problem-solving are more effective at helping students learn to think carefully and reason well.” Meanwhile, writes the author, altogether too many professors resent teaching, and the more renowned the school, the stronger the dislike for it: “Their rewards from the outside world…come almost entirely from their research.” If universities are to weather the coming financial and cultural storms, Bok suggests, they’ll need to retool to offer answers to real exigencies, such as the fact that employers (and donors) complain that students emerging with diplomas lack “soft” or “noncognitive” skills such as a willingness to work as a member of a team and observe basic social niceties. More to the point, Bok also argues that institutions must do more to teach beyond mere rubrics, touching especially on questions of ethics and civic engagement, and point the way to how students might acquire “wisdom enough to decide how to live purposeful, fulfilling lives” and prepare themselves for lifelong learning. Whether faculties will want to take the time to produce “active and informed citizens” remains to be seen, notes the author, and such faculties tend to serve their own interests.
A useful though eminently debatable case for reform in the interest of teaching to today’s needs.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-691-20580-9
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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