This experienced school teacher reveals the inner workings of the school system, it's less than honorable history, and will make you seriously reconsider your view of education and how the school system has affected it. This particular book is a HUGE work in which he exposes the errors of short-answer tests, bells, uniform time blocks, age-grading, standardization, and all the rest of school religion. This groundbreaking, revolutionary work will change the way you look at the process and even the very concept of public education. Every parent should read this book! It shows how compulsory schooling came to be as it is in America with a lure of utopia and a very strong Prussian connection (which should be cause for much concern). It also exposes the affects of compulsory schooling on America, drawing both from history (showing alarming drops in education, literacy, and much more) and 30 years of school-teaching experience.
***You CAN read this book online for free from his website... (Amazon won't let me put in a link, so just google his name and you'll find it.) BUT, like I said, this is a HUGE book, and reading it all online would be quite tiresome to the eyes. I actually started reading it on his site but it hooked me in so I decided to buy it in book form.
This book is a very worthwhile read. I will say that it isn't 100% optimally organized and edited, but you won't find the material easily elsewhere either. So... if you're willing to be a little forgiving on the writing in places, you'll learn more than you ever dreamed of the true history of American Education.
His books have helped me to rethink my view of education- what it can be, what it should be, and what it isn't in America. This has been of great help as my husband and I have decided to educate our own children, and we've reshaped our views of education.
I also highly recommend reading his other books... they are much shorter, and are revealing of the current state of schools from his 30 year school-teaching experience:
Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (which shows the deliberate dumbing down of the American School System, and displays "how the U.S. educational system cranks out students the way Detroit cranks out Buicks. He contends that students are more programmed to conform to economic and social norms rather than really taught to think.")
Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling: "Focuses on mechanisms of compulsory schooling which cripple imagination and discourage critical thinking. Here is a demonstration that the harm school inflicts is quite rational and deliberate. The real function of pedagogy is to render the common population manageable, remove the obligation of child care from adult workers so they are free to fuel the industrial economy and to train the next generation into subservient obedience to the state."
**Although I can't give a direct link in this review, you can find my website by accessing my profile. I mention that because I have a LOT of great resources on my site for those who are in the process of rethinking education and determining what that means for them and their children.**
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pawelgonzalez
You will not be dissapointed.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 6, 2014
