A seminal analysis promising hope for the future through small wonders in the classroom.
Furthering the awareness campaign on the benefits of “collaborative, hands-on, interdisciplinary” schooling.
In the face of the current global recession, Harvard fellow and former Gates Foundation senior advisor Wagner (The Global Achievement Gap, 2008) believes one of the solutions is redirecting classroom emphasis toward more “college-ready” curriculums. The author, a father of three, advocates for more progressive skill building to better prepare students for life beyond the classroom. Wagner’s thesis derives its strength from expertly structured content. He focuses less on the problem (America’s lack of innovators) and more on a remedy supported by testimonials from an impressive array of young minds gainfully employed in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) or civic-minded entrepreneurships. Parents, academics and business leaders voice experiences as well. The story of Kirk Phelps, a high-school and college dropout who became part of the first iPhone team at Apple, is bolstered by his parents’ narration of their motivational child-rearing style. Wagner’s prognostications translate to solid advice on how early educational coaching and motivational mentorship can facilitate success in today’s competitive marketplace. The outcome, he writes, is a generation of young adults who feel passionate, empowered and motivated to excel beyond their own expectations. Though his tone remains mostly optimistic, Wagner admits that cultivating innovative, intellectual leaders isn’t a universal panacea, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction. The author also includes a multimedia experience: Quick Response (“QR”) codes, which, when captured by smart-phone technology, open links to web-based videos and material procured by collaborator Robert A. Compton.
A seminal analysis promising hope for the future through small wonders in the classroom.Pub Date: April 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-1149-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
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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