Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
Buy new:
$12.69$12.69
FREE delivery: Tuesday, April 23 on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: Great Lakes Consignment
Buy used: $6.20
Other Sellers on Amazon
FREE Shipping
FREE Shipping
100% positive over last 12 months
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School Paperback – October 29, 1996
Purchase options and add-ons
"Informal and clear...Postman's ideas about education are appealingly fresh."--New York Times Book Review
- Print length209 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage
- Publication dateOctober 29, 1996
- Dimensions5.2 x 0.6 x 7.9 inches
- ISBN-100679750312
- ISBN-13978-0679750314
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Frequently bought together

Similar items that may ship from close to you
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
From the Inside Flap
"Informal and clear...Postman's ideas about education are appealingly fresh."--New York Times Book Review
From the Back Cover
"Informal and clear...Postman's ideas about education are appealingly fresh."--New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Vintage; Reprint edition (October 29, 1996)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 209 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0679750312
- ISBN-13 : 978-0679750314
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.2 x 0.6 x 7.9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #110,404 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #106 in History of Education
- #115 in Philosophy & Social Aspects of Education
- #1,386 in Education Workbooks (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Neil Postman was chairman of the department of communication arts at New York University. He passed away in 2003.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviews with images
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Pg. ix - "I began my career as an elementary school teacher and have not for a single moment abandoned the idea that many of our most vexing and painful social problems could be ameliorated if we knew how to school our young. You may conclude from this that I am a romantic, but not, I think, a fool. I know that education is not the same thing as schooling, and that, in fact, not much of education takes place in school... To the young, schooling seems relentless, but we know it is not. What is relentless is our education, which, for good or ill, gives us no rest. That is why poverty is a great educator. Having no boundaries and refusing to be ignored, it mostly teaches hopelessness. But not always. Politics is also a great educator. Mostly, it teaches, I am afraid, cynicism. But not always. Television is a great educator as well. Mostly it teaches consumerism. But not always."
There's a big misconception today about what schools are. Most people believe that school = education, and that good grades/academic success = being well educated. But high schools today don't focus education; rather they mostly focus on allocating economic opportunities to those who are capable and eager to obey. And this is an important and remarkable function of schools; otherwise economic opportunities would be determined by inheritance and family connections, as in past generations. But I agree with Postman that this aspect of schooling has become dangerously overemphasized in our society; to the point where learning about society, the original "end" of education, has become nearly driven out of our classrooms. That's the danger of the whole No Child Left Behind and emphasis on standardized test scores. Education has to do with understanding how society works. This can hardly be said of too many schools today.
This is an important read for anyone involved in education -- K-12 or higher ed -- in the 21st century, and particularly for those of us struggling to advance the warrant for the importance of humanities education.
• "The spaceship earth"—viewing the earth as a planet we all share and thus need to take care of, beginning in our own communities.
• "The fallen angel"—an admittedly religious metaphor that recognizes that fallibility of humankind and our thinking; Postman notes that scientists, most of all, understand this: today's science is just today's understanding and can change tomorrow.
• "The American experiment"—"Can a nation be formed, maintained, and preserved on the principle of continuous argumentation?"
• "The law of diversity"—to recognize the "significant artistic, intellectual, and social contributions from diverse ethnic groups," not to raise one group above another but to enrich us all by gathering the best of ideas from all cultures.
•"The world weavers/the world makers"—"how we use language, how language uses us, and what measures are available to clarify our knowledge of the world we make."
Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2018









