Customer Reviews

Reclamation: Saving our schools starts from within

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As a Parent who will have 3 children in a public school system in the near future, this book was of major interest. Thank goodness my children will not be attending schools that fall into the LAUSD area. Kaufman does a tremendous job of identifying the major problems that have weakened our education system, and the he proceeds to outline changes that would better the system, and ultimately produce a young generation that is more euqipped for the real world.

All material relating to the Teacher's Union are a critical part of the book. My opinion of Unions aside, which is I believe they have out-lived their usefullness, the fact that a Teacher's continued employment is in the hands of Union bylaws is a serious issue an Kaufman lashes out against it. Kaufman put his money where his mouth was - he was willing to have his pay determined by his performance as a Techer. The Union was violently against that - that really scares me.

Without giving away specifc content, because this book needs to be read without any pre-conceived prejudices, Kaufman's arguments are presented well, concise, and his positions clearly state where he stands on a certain issue.

The book also give me hope. Because although Kaufman has left his calling in life that he has a pssion for, I know that there are other Teachers out there who are passionate about their profession as Kaufman was. Hopefully those like Kaufman will read this book and realize that they can no longer sit on the sidelines - that they must become involved to right the ship. And the ultimate hope is that Kaufman himself returns to the Classroom.

"Reclamation" is one hell of a book. Not only is it full of diagnoses and remedies for the country's dismal public school system, it is a page turner.

A page turner, you ask? How can any book about education reform be enjoyable to read?

I think the reason this book works is because Mr. Kaufman knows of what he speaks. He's not some intellectual at a think tank writing in dry prose about policy. He's been in the trenches and he knows from his own experiences as a teacher in the inner city what works and what doesn't.

What works? Rewarding teachers for doing good work--not for their failures. Inserting competition into what is now a government monopoly. Improving the poor home environments of so many children. Reigning in the power of the teachers unions.

Speaking of unions, that chapter was the most researched and eye-opening of the book. Mr. Kaufman made it clear that those people we most entrust with our kids are often out for themselves. They are also overtly political, as the brainwashing taking place in our classrooms (plenty of examples given in the book) reveals.

Vouchers and merit pay are no longer controversial subjects after reading Mr. Kaufman's arguments in favor of both.

Buy this book. Trust me.

Well, I must admit up front that I know Ari, or A.J. as he goes by here, but, independent of my personal familiarity, I have to say that he says some very valuable things about education in these pages. Reclamation is a series of reflections regarding Ari's time as a teacher in the Los Angeles Public Schools. Although he was not there for long, he got the most out of his experience. He kept his eyes open and observed some truly amazing events while he was there. There are a great deal of references here that you won't find elsewhere like the part about the bureaucrats coming round to make sure his displays of student work were recent enough and teachers attending an inservice whose topic was "How to Get out of Teaching" as a career. The school assembly with the yoga instructor was also hilarious. Of course, these are the types of laughs that ultimately make us feel sad. Those of us who are intimately aware of the functioning of the public schools will be recognize the coercive mediocrity which Ari describes and enjoy his recollections. My only reservations about the book are that it should have been longer due to its breadth of subject matter, and also that he should have formed a cohesive narrative and not relied so heavily on the individual articles published in the past. Overall though, Reclamation is a solid effort.

It is ashame to admit this but Ari Kaufman's "Reclamation," will be glossed over. It won't sit in the front halls of major bookstore chains like Barnes and Noble and Borders. It won't loom pretentiously on the display cases of airport book stores, beckoning you to devote yourself to it for the duration of your flight. And yet the irony is that if you were to purchase "reclamation," one cross-country flight would be all you need to read what may be the most necessary and yet under-appreciated work that I have read in quite some time. Amidst all of the chaotic developments that have plagued our country since the new millennium, the progressive deterioration of the public school system in this country has flown relatively under the radar despite its potentially catastrophic consequences. In a relatively short amount of space, Kaufman takes you into the heart of this issue, explains some of its most basic and fundamental problems, and even goes as far as to propose realistic and productive ways of combating these problems.

From a purely literary standpoint, Kaufman's book is a pleasure to read because of the natural eloquence of Kaufman's writing style. Furthermore, by focusing on personal experiences as a foundation for his book, Kaufman is able to retain an innocence and unique honesty in his words that even goes as far as to manifest itself as humor in quite a few situations. The bottom line is, you do not have to be an embittered teacher, an overprotective parent, or a prospective idealist to appreciate this work. Do yourself a favor and buy it for your next airline flight...the cosmo magazine won't be offended that you took a week off to read something of consequence...

Mr. Kaufman has a strong and thoughtful voice on this subject. Whether or not one completely agrees with his total perspective he deserves a wide audience. Tell your friends, especially those with young children, to read this.

Ari delivers a very passionate and convincing argument against the current direction of public education in America. Ari uses excellent examples from his experiences as a teacher to substantiate his opinions. A very interesting read on a most important topic. I hope, as Ari, that his words have an effect on the future of education in America.

Mr. Kaufman brought forth an issue that many parents and taxpayers, who fund our public schools, may be somewhat aware of...but don't truly understand. Mr. Kaufman's accounts of things such as imparting political philosophy towards primary school classes, and the power of teachers unions to block initiatives that help students in order to protect their own interests; they are clear, concise, and very intriging to read. Through strong, mostly first-person accounts, Kaufman "opens the book", so to speak, on some of the corrupting influnces that are affecting the public education process in today's society. The content in the book forces the reader to engage and think about what kind of role, if any, they can play in a process that does seem very important to our country's future.

If there's one quibble - it's that broader opinion and facts from more numerous, and other reliable sources would've served to strengthen support for Kaufman's points even more. But hopefully, even though he has left teaching as a day-to-day vocation, Mr. Kaufman will continue to build up contacts "inside the education sanctum" and research the trends further - so he can continue communicating his succinct thoughts on this topic.

Mr. Kaufman's book has really opened up my eyes to a frightening issue that does not bode well for the future of our country. My wife and I do not have kids, but we do plan on having them in the next few years. After reading Mr. Kaufman's book, I will scrutinize any public school we consider enrolling our children into. Reclamation is a first hand account of the greed and laziness that so many teachers have. I graduated high school only 11 years ago, yet so much has changed in that short time. The teachers unions have begun to put the students' interests on the back burner while they are motivated mostly by their own agendas. Political biases are also being pushed onto our students who are so young and impressionable they are not likely to resist the teachers efforts and are thus likely to be brainwashed.

Mr. Kaufman has exposed how public schools in America are failing in so many places and things are only getting worse. I commend Mr. Kaufman for bringin these issues to light so people in the real world can know what is really going on in our nation's classrooms.

As a father of a 4 year old and a 17 month old, this book was fascinating to me as I begin to integrate myself back to the world of public schools, an immensely huge topic here on the island of Oahu. Kaufman's book is written clearly and cogently, and the pages fly by in his very readable style.

I grew up a child of the LAUSD system, going to school in the San Fernando Valley. I had fond memories of some of the teachers, especially one English teacher, who also doubled as the Speech and Debate coach, who was the archetype teacher that Kaufman describes and unfortunately is not characteristic of the tenured, union-entrenched, ones that he encountered: 1) dedicated, 2) spent tons of time with us after-hours, even to the detriment of his own family and comfort, 3) did not communicate to us any sense of dissatisfaction with his job or that he did not want to be there. If a good portion of teachers out there in our public schools, who seek first to defend their pay, status and benefits, at the expense of the children, then I agree with Kaufman that this is a scary and appalling state.

I do know that some of what Kaufman is saying is partly a "new order" versus "old order" type of tension, which is prevalent in nearly any profession. The older order wants to protect what's theirs. The new order brings in "new wine" to "old wineskins" and seeks to bring fresh new ideas to solve problems (merit pay, voucher system, accountability). Yet to me, there is something to having a "grizzled veteran" around to deal with all kinds of classroom situations. In certain situations, it is valuable having that tenured teacher, even if he is jaded and abusive of the system created for him via collective bargaining, such as when things get violent in the classroom, or when drug use is involved. That kind of policing by the teachers, is definitely not measurable.

Further, while I would agree that the kind of empathetic character teachers are portrayed as in Hollywood is overstated, such as Mr. Holland in Mr. Holland's Opus, I would disagree with that the teaching profession is all that enviable, even once you reach that tenured zone that Kaufman speaks of, where benefits are vested, hours are minimal and perks abound (90 extra days of time off at half pay, no dress code, great pension and health benefits). While Kaufman has not made the condition of schools and behavior of kids an issue in his book, some of the things I have seen and heard about LAUSD schools, is close to how things were portrayed in "Lean on Me", about an inner-city Philadelphia school. If teachers are faced with those kinds of conditions, on some levels I would applaud anyone who continues to be one, union entrenched or not.

Finally, as for unions, I used to work for the federal government as an investigator and being part of the federal union was near-obligatory. The process of quitting the union was a "federal case" and the administrative inertia of having union dues automatically taken out of one's paycheck was hard to reverse. I could relate to Kaufman when he writes on p.42: "Teachers, highly educated as they so often will tell you, clearly do not need a Union. No one is out to trick them nor steal their money. Further, the children's needs should take precedence over their qualms with health care coverage, higher pay, time off, working conditions and so on." As a federal investigator, I often found myself talking with colleagues as we wondered, "Why do we pay union dues? Are we worried we don't have ergonomically correct desk chairs? Is our plight so pressing that we need this kind of obligatory representation?"

To be fair, however, I did see our union representative step in when an investigator was accused of a gray-area ethical violation. The internal affairs people came in and were accusatory, probed and treated the investigator like a criminal. The union representative, however, beat back the internal affairs officers, and turned their "case" into a joke of a situation, all stemming from inadvertence and misunderstanding. I can see at times when a union, even in sophisticated and educated professions, is needed.

I agree with most of what Kaufman says in his book, I disagree with some of what he says, but the main thing is that Kaufman brings the state of the teaching profession and its interplay with union solidarity, as real issues to address. This book makes me want to investigate how close the Hawaii public schools are to the LAUSD and UTLA dynamic, and as I gather more information, I will recommend this book to superintendents, union officials and other school administrators, as a topic on the table.

William Lee
Honolulu, HI

In 1998, a stunning book titled The Shadow University raised serious concerns about freedom on college campuses and the suppression of conservative thought, words, and speech. It was shocking because it showed us a side of college education that had, for many, been kept out of the public eye.

A. J. Kaufman's Reclamation does for public education what The Shadow University did for suppression of free speech and thought on college campuses. Having spent five years as a teacher in Los Angeles County, Kaufman saw what goes on behind the scenes, and what he saw should shock and disturb any parent who has a child in public schools.

One of Kaufman's strengths is his use of narrative to underscore what he sees as the major problems with modern public education. It's one thing to cite statistics and draw conclusions based on those statistics. It's quite another to see how those statistics came into being. Without getting too technical, Kaufman gives us the insight that only a teacher could provide in a debate on public education, and he does so with a light, yet serious tone. It's this tone that helps to make the book a quick and enjoyable read.

Interspersed in most of the chapters is writing that Kaufman and one of his fellow conservative teachers, Aaron Hanscom, wrote for various newspapers and websites. Through these writings and the content of the chapters, it's clear Kaufman has a love of the language. It is refreshing to see someone use more complex words with such ease, which lends an intellectual weight to the author's points.

Among the most damning parts of the book are Kaufman's first-hand recounting of the obstacles he faced to being as good of a teacher as he could be and his conflicts with administration and faculty alike. Of particular note is the attention he spends on teachers unions and how they've become little more than propaganda arms of the Democrat Party, even at the expense of the students the teachers profess to be working for. He also takes time to outline how teachers unions and their members have worked against meaningful education reform for little more than because it would inconvenience them slightly, if at all.

Rather than being merely a whistleblower without a plan to fix the problem, Kaufman steps forward as a reform-minded individual looking to not only expose what's wrong with public education, but offer realistic and workable solutions to make it work as effectively as possible. His passion for education is evident in every word and line.

Overall, A. J. Kaufman's Reclamation exposes problems in one school that very easily could impact schools across the country, if they haven't already. Although it is shorter than other books on the subject, it is no less informative or disturbing. Kaufman paints a picture that is bleak while offering hope for positive change if enough people get involved and informed. It's this commitment to educating the public about what has happened and what can be done about it that puts Reclamation in the same category as The Shadow University.