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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A hateful place, July 23, 2000
Someone has said that every complicated problem has a simple solution-- and it is wrong. Barbers, editorial writers and other purveyors of simple solutions have said that school shootings, such as the one at Columbine High School in Colorado, can be prevented by posting the Ten Commandments, reinstituting school prayer, or kicking out "weird" students. Eliot Aronson, a prominent social psychologist, offers a more sophisticated analysis of school violence. He reminds us that in American high schools, bullying, sarcasm, threats, humiliation, physical abuse, and social isolation are commonplace. It is an atmosphere in which even favored students must tred lightly or risk exile. The shooters are nearly always those who have been pushed by their peers to the outside. Educators seldom contribute to this hostile environment directly, but they often do little to change it. Aronson suggests some concrete steps that can be taken. In particular, he advocates that part of the school day be set aside for cooperative forms of learning. Aronson devised one form of cooperative learning, the jigsaw method, for the express purpose of reducing tensions in the process of teaching regular subjects. The jigsaw method requires students who are not members of the same clique to work together for their mutual benefit. It has been found to reduce tensions and improve the social status of "outsiders." This is NOT group therapy or social engineering; it is a way of teaching regular content that helps bring students together. Whether cooperative teaching methods will substantially reduce the frequency of school violence is uncertain. But Aronson has at least put his finger on the central problem, the fact that our high schools are places that generate hate. I think every high school teacher and parent in the country should read this book. We need to get past the simplistic solutions. (For more on this book, see my review in the September, 2000 issue of Psychology Today.)
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good introduction to Aronson's work, July 26, 2001
On one level, this book is a wonderful advertisement for the jigsaw classroom system and the benefits it can affect in schools. It also does a decent job of pointing out how many of the currently offered solutions to problems in school are really treating symptoms (violence, depression), and not the underlying causes (an overemphasis on inter-student competition). On another level, this book can serve as a very, *very* basic introduction to social psychological theory, almost like a case-study novella. While this book is good for people looking for a quick and simple exploration of what those involved in the system can actually *do* to help make the school system a better place, the social psychology theory surrounding the ideas is explored to better fruition in his books 'The Social Animal' and 'Age of Propaganda'. Of course, those books are both more expensive and considerably longer than this slim, small volume. But if the ideas presented here spark your interest, I can highly suggest the other two books, and 'The Social Animal' in particular fleshes out the social psych theories that underlie 'Nobody Left To Hate'
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Saving our School Children, July 29, 2000
By A Customer
This is a great book. It is perhaps the most important book I have read in the past five years. Elliot Aronson, an internationally renowned social psychologist provides us with a brilliant analysis of the causes of the epidemic of lethal violence in our schools and with some tried and true solutions to the problem. Eschewing the simple solutions like metal detectors and posting the Ten Commandments, he goes right to the heart of the matter--arguing convincingingly that in order to reduce violence in schools we must deal directly with the poisonous atmosphere of exclusion, taunting and bullying. We must not only teach reading, writing and arithmatic, we must also teach, cooperation, compassion and empathy. His solution: We can achieve all of these things while, at the same time, improving academic performance. This can be done by employing the jigsaw method of instruction. This is a strategy which places students in small cooperative learning groups where students must cooperate with one another in order to learn the day's lesson. In the course of working together, they learn to respect one another, care about one another--even if they are from different background and different ethnic groups. Twenty-five years of careful scientific research in dozens of scools shows that jigsaw works! If all schools used the jigsaw at least some of the time, there would never be another Columbine tragedy. The jigsaw technique can be used by any teacher. Detailed instructions are available free on the Internet. Nobody Left to Hate is must reading for teachers, parents and concerned citizens. The book is a delight to read: it reads like an exciting novel and it teaches like a master teacher. Thank you, Professor Aronson for a remarkable gift!
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