Customer Reviews

Education & Anarchy

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a book for people who sense they are not finished learning, and who want to do something about it. Because EDUCATION & Anarchy both promotes and is cautiously critical of constructivist educational practices, this book will be useful to professors in colleges and universities, to teachers at technical and vocational schools, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates. It will also appeal to K-12 teachers, especially specialists in art, drama, and physical education, because it provides practical examples and sample lesson plans showing how to use non-verbal modes of expression across the curriculum and in different disciplines. Because my approach to constructivist, student-centered learning is grounded in the classics and looks to "Great Books" for models of character building, it will appeal to administrators and curriculum planners, and to teachers and student-teachers, who favor traditional humanistic instruction; and yet, because it is broadly critical of standardization and teacher-centered learning, it will also appeal to the more liberal educators, scholars interested in contemporary theory, and advocates of school reform.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING about EDUCATION & Anarchy

William Engel is a gracious and inspiring guide and a charismatic teacher. His "revolutionary" system is solidly grounded in both deep and wide learning and strikingly successful classroom experience. His proposals are ingenious, vital, revelatory, and will be as exciting for the instructor as for the student. -- Stephen Orgel, J. E. Reynolds Professor in Humanities, Stanford University

In the current climate of educational reform, which is obsessed with more testing and vouchers, Dr. Engel provides a much-needed voice to the debate. -- Ken Simon, Middle Grades Coordinator, Minneapolis Public Schools

Engel remains steadfast in his efforts to shake up the stale and staid, tried and true failings of traditional education. I'll take his "anarchy" over the anachronisms of textbook education any day. Engel is more interested in the organic than the cosmetic. --Dave Winans, Fifth Grade Teacher, Gulf Stream School, Florida

EDUCATION & Anarchy is an important antidote to the seemingly irresistible craze for testing and standardization that is transforming education into a top-down mind numbing enterprise. -- Professor Emeritus, Charles B. "Bud" Schultz, Trinity College, Hartford

I will adopt some of its ideas (I like the idea of making each of my students be an expert on one of the cantos of [Spenser's] Faerie Queene). --Stephen Greenblatt, John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University

Education & Anarchy empowers students to learn in ways that make sense to them. When students work together on mnemonic games like the "capers" Engel describes, the medium is part of the message: they realize learning can be creative, cooperative, and, yes, enjoyable. -Dr. Cal Fuller, Theater Director, Montgomery Bell Academy, Nashville, TN