Customer Reviews

Escape from Gangsta Island: A School's Progressive Decline.

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As a former teacher who resigned from the profession for similar reasons, Chapin's book hit home with me, bringing out many of the same issues that education must remedy in order to overcome its current downtrodden state.

Chapin's book is wonderfully crafted and exquisitely worded, mixing eye opening anecdotes and clever background details on major characters, so as to augment his theme and stances.

Any parent who wants to understand why public education is in shambles needs to first learn what those in charge are doing and saying, and Chapin elucidates those horrors in a clear, concise way.

As someone who also just finished co-writing a book on educational reform, I highly recommend Chapin's book. You don't find many teachers who can write and relay their thoughts so coherently, much less take a stand against their profession in order to improve it in the long run.

If you are an educator this is a great book to read. It depicts what it is like to work in a poorly funded school that has an insane administration. It also shows the troubles teacher face when they work in a area where the students come from ghetto neighborhoods and worship the "gansta" lifestyle. None of the students care what happens during their time spent at school but more amazingly the administration doesn't care about educational enhancement either. Which leads this once nice alternative school down a path of destruction.

... and it's progressive in more ways than one, as Bernard Chapin's book is one part withering polemic against Newthink in public schools and one part twisted and often hilarious memoir of the downfall of a Chicago alternative high school. A personality-disordered modern day pedagogical Caligula takes the reins of psychologist Chapin's school and he bears incredulous witness as a flammable combination of ill-conceived ideals and plain old simple madness plunges the institution into chaos. If you've ever worked in the public education system, if you've ever had a brush with bureaucratic idiocy, if you've ever doubted your boss's sanity, or if you've ever felt like the one-eyed man in the country of the blind, this book is essential.

Book is great reading! It will be enjoyed, especially by all in the Education Field! I would tell all envolved in Education, to purchase this book! I applaude Dr. Chapin!

This book was an excellent discussion on the difficulties in dealing with troubled students and even moreso difficult teachers and admininstrators. It really asks and answers the question on who watches the watchmen. In this case apparently no one and because of that the students and the high schools they come from ulitmately suffer in the end.

This one was not what I expected because it was far more funnier and out of pocket than what I thought could ever be possible in a public school even if it's an alternative school. Chapin is a really good writer apart from some of the spelling errors. The guy needs an editor, but this was a page turner. I read it over the weekend and couldn't put it down. CRAZY!!!

How would you like to be an employee of a school in which the principal distributes semiautomatic rifles to departing employees, permits combustible engines to run indoors when students are present, periodically walks the halls of the school with a boa constrictor wrapped around her arms, and cared only about whether students are given passing grades in their courses, even if they do not learn the material they are supposed to learn? This was the Kafkaesque nightmare that school psychologist Bernard Chapin found himself in and that prompted him to write "Escape from Gangsta Island".

Chapin describes the school he worked at and how this dysfunctional principal attained her position. He was dismayed as he gradually learned just how unhealthy she was--there was one epic, guffaw-heartily-out-loud moment involving her inquiry concerning a future NFL Hall of Famer, but as the book progresses, the reader gets worn down as the author describes incident after incident after incident in which it was manifestly clear that the principal was, to say absolutely no more, not up to the job. It must have been an absolute joy for Chapin to be in the educational field and go to work every day knowing that he would be taking orders from someone who did not know how many U.S. senators there are (no, I'm not kidding). At one point, the author mentions a trip that the principal took to Victoria--given what else transpired in the book, one is tempted to wonder if, before the principal took that particular vacation, she believed that British Columbia was an English colony somewhere in South America.

The author catalogs numerous supremely obnoxious behavior traits that the principal displayed that proved her disqualification for a principalship--she used false guilt to manipulate, attempted to win arguments with ad hominem attacks, used tears to win arguments, was condescending even in situations in which Chapin was acting rationally and she was reacting emotionally, attempted to win arguments by falsely accusing the author of being an angry person, believed that disputes are settled by power instead of by reason and logic, attempted to win arguments by saying crazy things out of left field in an attempt to throw the other person off balance, falsely blamed jealousy and/or bitterness on the part of other people for opposition to her ideas, and expected to have all the control while expecting others to have all the responsibility. She was even so out of it that she thought that she was punishing, not benefiting, Chapin by depriving him of her conversation on certain occasions.

One simply cannot imagine working with such a person, and when Chapin's true feelings became known the principal and the school's supervisor (who had many of the same dysfunctional traits as the principal) went into overdrive to ruin Chapin. The psychological gangrene that resulted from their lust for power had so corroded their souls that they attempted to ruin Chapin's livelihood by falsely bad-mouthing him to prospective future employers.

Chapin did ultimately secure another position, and did state that this particular principal was in fact an aberration--the whole story was so bizarre that the NEA was in fact a protagonist here! I felt most sorry for the minority kids who attended the school and did not get the quality education they deserved due to the school's liberal overpermissiveness--it proves Mona Charen's adage that liberalism in many cases harms those it most purports to help.

A note must be made about the book's title. "Escape from Gangsta Island" should not be taken to mean that the author simply wanted to flee a low-income school at his first available opportunity--but for the principal, he could have been happy there for many more years. He also had very good rapport with the black students and faculty members, and is not in the least a racist.

The book is an entertaining read in that one simply cannot believe that some people work for bosses like the one described herein, and the book would be a great cautionary tale for schools to use before they hire administrators.