Customer Reviews

Non-Western Educational Traditions: Indigenous Approaches to Educational Throught and Practice (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education)

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

 

 

I am absolutely amazed at this book's ability to say so little in so many words. The author is mercilessly redundant and discusses some very simple, superficial aspects of different cultures and tries (and fails) to connect them relevantly to the theme of education.

If you're wondering why I am still reading this book, it's because it is mandatory reading for my International Education class at my university. I wondered why anyone would want to read this book, too, until I learned that my professor is friends with Mr. T. Reagan.

After reading an entire 20+ page chapter on culture in Africa, all I have learned is:
1. Tribal Africans are community-oriented.
2. Africans really like their proverbs

And the rest is obvious, self-explanatory "information" dissected and reconstructed by some old windbag in order to make it seem like it is some new sort of development or discovery.

I feel really bad if you have to get this book for a class. If possible, switch your class because if this textbook is the basis for your education you're not going to be getting much, unless you've been living in a cave and have no idea about different cultures in this world! Suitable for a third grader but written in college-level writing, I just don't see the point of this book's existence.

My personal belief is that the reviewer who gave this book one star (March 2010)has not spent enough time reading the book, a reading that might have given her a more accurate sense of its overall meaning and the author's skill in exploring it. Focusing on the propensity we in the West have for misrepresenting non-Western cultures and their educating habits, the author explains how colonialism and imperialism have led us astray and how, by understanding histories and cultural needs of others, we might pull ourselves out of the ethnocentrism that so often bedevils our intercultural thinking.

My purpose here is simply to urge potential readers to examine the November 2009 review for information and to expect from the book a careful, knowledgeable, and interesting look at the ways several non-Western cultures have educated their young and how we benefit from learning these ways.

This book is fabulous it is not biased, it brings out good points for western educational values as well as a very different perspective and respect towards non-western indigenous approaches to education, which is truly appreciated because there are few books that have the courage to explore to differenet approaches to education that have been practiced in other cultures for centuries.... this is a stepping stone for the change that must come in our American society that is filled with such diverse cultures and as such requires new approaches to meet the demands of our children's generations and the different cultures that we will find in the generations to come.