| "As we have come
to expect from Kieran Egan, this book is full of brilliant insights. He
has a great gift for posing fundamental, yet non-obvious, questions in
such a way that we find some of our most deeply held assumptions up for
grabs." James Wertsch, Washington University. (Book jacket.)
You may read the Introduction to the book by clicking here.
You may read reviews of the book by clicking here.
If you would like to discuss any issues raised by the book with the author,
or with other readers, click here.
You may read the discussions here.
You may read the blurb from the book cover here.
You don't, of course, have to take it seriously.
The dedicatee, in the background. His brother,
who appears in an earlier form at the top left of this page, is in the
foreground.
Who am I to stop you buying a copy of the book? Try Amazon,
or Yale University
Press.
|
 |
Hits since Nov. 22, 2002:
From
reviews |
|
| "The most impressive evidence Egan offers is a series of
quotations from Spencer that could have been plucked straight from
the progressive textbooks used in education schools today."
Lynne V. Cheney. Education Next. Fall, 2003.
"Egan's forceful rejection of the progressive legacy is more
about his sense of science than his politics. Spencer, Dewey and
Piaget presented themselves as modern researchers with exciting
new insights. Dr. Egan judges them without sympathy: he says their
science was bad, and their continuing influence worse."
Peter Temes. New York Times, Section 4A, Books, p.34,
10/Nov/02.
"In developing his case against the "damaging bromides"
of Spencer-and their steady institutionalization by Dewey and Kilpatrick
in teachers' colleges and K-12 public schools-Egan looks carefully
at the real effects of "child-centered" education, psychological
"developmentalism," and what he usefully calls the "biologized
view of mind" that changed curricula all over the Anglo-American
world from commonsense transmitters of the cultural achievements
of mankind to present-minded, experimental, experiential, naturalistic,
and unchallenging approaches."
M.D. Aeschliman. National Review, May 5th.2003.
The book has a wonderful centering effect when superimposed on the
cacophony, muffling all the bickering and drawing the reader into
a marvellously focused consideration of the one thing that really
matters in education: do educators really know what they're doing
with our kids?
Egan asserts that they basically don't. And he presents a pretty good
argument to support his thesis that all the major theorists in education
for the past 150 years have been wrong about how kids learn, and that
much of curricular design and teaching methodology, which are based
on those flawed theories, is unsuccessful
Karin Litzcke. The Republic. March 20th. 2003.
|
|
