Five opportunities to learn a little more about education

Why Boys Fail: Saving Our Sons From an Educational System That’s Leaving Them Behind
Richard Whitmire
Amacom Books, 239 pp., $15.95 paperback

Recent statistics show that women are having and raising babies on
their own. Richard Whitmere, a plain-speaking journalist, would
undoubtedly trace this trend to the failure of schools to effectively
nurture the development and maturity of their male students.

Originally published in 2010, this paperback is loaded with
statistics proving that boys lag girls in grades, high school graduation
rates, college attendance and, eventually, meaningful jobs. Not
surprisingly, failure to successfully teach boys reading and writing,
required for even low-paying jobs that may require understanding a
manual, is the culprit. Whitmere goes on to describe how boys should be
taught, given their differential kinetic energy.

Studies, reports and interviews (most of them outdated, but still
relevant) are offered and analyzed to get at the excuses (for example,
not enough male teachers). But Whitmere’s nagging frustration lies with
the failure of the federal government to first acknowledge and then do
something about the gender gap.

College: What It Was, Is and Should Be
Andrew Delbanco
Princeton University Press, 240 pp., $24.95

Cobbling together lectures given and essays written over the years,
Columbia University humanities professor Andrew Delanco lays out in an
aptly titled treatise on the sorry state of American higher education.

The “Was” part is an illuminating reminder of the Puritan origin of
early colleges, such as Harvard and Princeton, where only wealthy males
needed apply and where religion, literature and philosophy dominated the
curricula. The “Is” section considers the prohibitive cost, the
woefully underprepared applicants, the self-centered teachers and the
dominance of research over instruction of undergraduates at today’s
colleges.

Obviously the “Should Be” is Delanco’s motive in this effort. He
makes it clear that he has read and thought much about the need to make
significant changes going forward, given the reality of the internet
that disgorges information, but makes no “distinctions of value.” He
dreams of the day when college teachers are back in the classrooms,
working collaboratively to bring their youngsters into this new century.

Push Has Come to Shove: Getting Our Kids the Education They Deserve
Steve Perry
Crown, 252 pp., $25

Steve Perry, who frequently appears on CNN to hold forth about
“education,” is an angry man. Sometimes, his prose in this glib
diatribe against the way American schools don’t work — although
admirable for its folksiness — is a bit over the top.

But he knows of what he speaks because he runs a magnet school in Hartford, Conn.
And his impatience is understandable. Decades have passed and yet all
the talk about education reform has produced little in the way of
improvement in the lives of many children, particularly those who live
in inner cities. Statistics about how the United States has fallen
behind other nations, particularly Finland, head the list of many other
alarming observations.

His reform agenda includes the usual: vouchers, charter schools and
crippling the unions. But more helpful are practical lessons for parents
who must confront their neighborhood schools today.

Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World
Tony Wagner
Scribner, 288 pp., $27

A tsunami of literature regarding education in the new century has
hit the shores. Because the internet now controls the dissemination of
information, schools need no longer force facts upon their students.
Rather, they must encourage teachers and kids to work together to corral
those facts into innovations that will “change the world,” according to
Tony Wagner, who hangs out at the Technology & Entrepreneurship
Center at Harvard.

Using 150 conversations with parents, students, teachers (“outliers
who will never get tenure”) and mentors who have attempted to build this
brave new world of problem-solving, he outlines the steps necessary to
foster creativity. A sense of play, passion and purpose are the
ingredients that will ignite these world-changers.

Aware that “… institutional forces that oppose change in education
remain formidable obstacles to innovation. ...,” Wagner takes them on.

And true to his cause, included in the text are bar codes to take readers to videos of the interviews.

Nurturing Brilliance: Discovering and Developing Your Child’s Gifts
Janine Walker Caffrey, Ed.D
Great Potential Press, 222 pp., $19.95

Janine Walker Caffrey, the superintendent of schools in Perth Amboy,
arranges gifted kids among the following categories: storytellers,
calculators, explorers, magnets, designers, melody makers, butterflies,
charmers and warriors. Any parent who picks up this paperback, eager to
slot her child into one of these groups, will then hungrily follow the
author as she explains how to work that particular child through
childhood and the educational bureaucracy.

Walker is a leader of our public school system, so it is a bit
unsettling to observe how well she knows how dysfunctional it is. But
then, she knows how to play it and how daunting it is to persist.

If one can get past the author’s unfortunate use of her own children as
examples of brilliance, this primer on how to manage gifted kids offers
advice that sounds as though it might work. But the fortunate parent who
discovers unusual sparkle will have to work hard to keep it shining.

source: http://www.nj.com/entertainment/arts/index.ssf/2012/04/five_opportunitie...