Teaching as a Subversive Activity (Paperback)

by Neil Postman (Author) "IN 1492, COLUMBUS DISCOVERED AMERICA. . . ..." (more)
Key Phrases: inquiry environment, semantic awareness, crap detector, New York, Quo Vadimus High School, Paul Goodman (more...)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Laurel (January 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440384850
• ISBN-13: 978-0440384854
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,174,686 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

67 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, June 8, 2001

By	Neil Hinrichsen (Knysna South Africa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Teaching As a Subversive Activity (Hardcover)

Quite simply one of the most thought-provoking books I have ever read. However hard it is to get a copy, it is MUST reading for anyone involved in educating people. Heavily influenced by McLuhan, this book is devastating in showing what classrooms REALLY teach - that there is one right answer, that the teacher has it, that memorising facts is important, that fellow students have nothing to contribute, etc etc - and how to construct an environment in which REAL learning takes place - where people learn how to learn themselves. This is one of those books that shakes one's previously-unexamined foundational assumptions of education. I cannot recommend it too highly.

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Dissenting Opinion, March 5, 2008

By	stoic (Mobile AL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Teaching As a Subversive Activity (Paperback)

Most reviewers seem to like Teaching as a Subversive Activity. I am not among the book's fans.

The book's authors, Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, score a number of points. They manage to "nail" educators for relying too much on the lecture method in which students copy, then memorize, the teacher's opinions. This is a very valid criticism; teachers do little to teach students how to think; we settle for teaching them what to think. The authors make another good point about the tyranny of testing, which has become far worse since the early 1970s.

Beyond these points, I found the book to be lacking. I think that the authors meander too far from their original point - that teaching needs to be reformed. They discuss an incredible array of topics in just over 200 pages, but the discussions are superficial due to the book's excessive breadth. And their digressions are not engaging and are often only tangentially related to teaching. For instance, the long list of quotations at the end of Chapter 7 is mind numbing.

The authors' arguments remind me of the old saw that it is easier to tear down a system than it is to build a new one. Many of their suggestions are quixotic, or just laughable. Consider what the authors suggest administrators do if students write graffiti about their teachers in school bathrooms; in this case, Postman and Weingartner state that the administrators should chisel the students' words on the front of their schools. Are they joking? Did the authors ever actually attend high school?

Some of the other ideas have the sound of bad 60s hangovers. For instance, Yale University adopted the authors' idea about eliminating grades in the early 1970s - with disastrous results. The authors hold that there is no such thing as a shared reality - and that, therefore, the students should define the entire curriculum. (If there is no shared reality whatsoever, how did everyone interested in Teaching as a Subversive Activity end up on this page?). Student-directed learning might be interesting in some contexts, but it would be disastrous in others. For instance, I don't want to be a patient of the physician whose class decided that they weren't interested in learning about human anatomy. I don't want to drive across a bridge designed by the person whose civil engineering class decided that they didn't want to learn about bridges. Sometimes schools do have valuable content to teach students - whether they want to learn it or not.

Finally, since Postman and Weingartner published this book, there has been a wealth of research into the inquiry-based and active-learning methods the authors favored; the results have been mixed. We still have much to learn about exactly which methods produce superior student learning. These authors have some intriguing ideas, but they did not find the "Holy Grail" that will cure education of all its ills.

50 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most profound book on education I have ever read., March 24, 1999

By	Kerry Ponsford ([e-mail].k12... (Anchorage, Alaska) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Teaching As a Subversive Activity (Hardcover)

When the first chapter of a book on education is called 'Crap Detecting', you know you are on to a winner! Postman's provocative look at the nature of the classroom and how we educate our children is a must read by anyone who has a real interest in education being about more than tests and tick boxes. I have read this book many times and have never failed to be challenged, enthused and uplifted by it. My classroom and teaching style has been transformed by it - read it!!! Your teaching will never be the same again!