An effective, far-reaching argument for revamping the way students learn in the U.S.
An education veteran offers a new vision for a holistic system of learning.
In this debut book, Miller presents a strategy for reinventing the learning environment that may be the first one inspired by the counterinsurgency tactics used in Afghanistan. The author argues that education reform requires the same kind of fundamental change to a “deeply entrenched and institutionalized” system. The work’s vision calls for replacing the current model of using sequential grades organized by age and following a standard curriculum—which Miller traces to an 1893 plan that established the current structure of education in the United States—with an individualized and project-based learning community in which students are responsible for setting their own goals under the guidance of mentors. The opening chapters explore the reasons for making changes to the system. Subsequent sections answer potential objections, present a case study of an ideal learning community in a fictional town, and guide readers through the process of implementing the author’s recommendations. Miller’s arguments are based on both personal experience and substantial research into the history of education and the psychology of learning (a bibliography is included). While he acknowledges that a fundamental overhaul of the education system may seem utopian, he makes a solid case for an individualized and comprehensive approach to the process that emphasizes learning rather than teaching. The case study is skillfully presented, and the guide to implementing systemic changes is thorough, thoughtful, and practical. Miller is a strong writer who assumes his readers are both open-minded and well intentioned (“You want to design a school model that results in every graduate having the traits, skills, and knowledge to thrive in the world of adults”), resulting in a compelling combination of optimism and realism. While the author’s dream of a completely transformed education system is one that will require the changing of minds and societal expectations, the work is a well-crafted and thought-provoking analysis of the structural shortcomings of the current designs of schools, classrooms, and assessments.
An effective, far-reaching argument for revamping the way students learn in the U.S.Pub Date: July 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63489-229-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Wise Ink Creative Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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