How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler & Charles van Doren

Posted on May 5, 2013 by MrPopularSentiment

Read: 28 March, 2013

This book was recommended to me by a homeschooling mother, and I can certainly see why. It’s a wonderful little primer on how to read books in such a way that the reader is able to get as much from the experience as possible. It covers how to make notations in a book, how to write an outline, how to use external materials effectively, and how to engage in a conversation between reader and writer. It even has a section where it goes into the specifics of how to read different kinds of texts.

I think that it would be a fantastic foundational text for a high school level English class – whether in a classroom or a homeschool (or, even, to be read by an industrious individual looking for a little self-improvement). It’s not a book best read at once, but rather digested chapter by chapter over the span of, say, a school year. It’s a little dry, so if you’re planning to use it with students, be prepared to liven it up with fun exercises, conversations, and sample readings. But taken in smaller chunks, it shouldn’t be too painful, and I think it would be well worthwhile.

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The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise

Posted on August 20, 2012 by MrPopularSentiment

Read: 19 August, 2012

I’ve found this to be a fantastic resource, whether you’re homeschooling or not. The book is divided by age, and offers a sample schedule and resources for each of the core subjects for that grade level (math, science, history, etc.). Even Preschool and Kindergarten are covered, so I’m already making use of it.

The philosophy of the approach is that education should take place in three parts: Grammar (focus on memorization and absorbing as much information about the world as possible), Logic (learning how to reason, building on the accumulated facts of the first stage), and Rhetoric (learning how to express the ideas developed in the second stage).

It’s an interesting idea that focuses on many elements of classical education that have been (or are being) dumped from public school curricula, such as the study of Latin, the emphasis on proper handwriting, etc.

One aspect that I really like about the approach is that while each subject is taught separately, they are also integrated so that each subject tackles the same general topic from its own unique vantage.

For the homeschooling family, the book provides sample schedules and inspiration for developing curricula. For the family sending children to be educated in a classroom setting, the resource lists can still provide a lot of ideas for additional learning in the evenings or on weekends.

There were some iffy moments, such as the discussion about teaching religion in the Grammar section that started getting dangerously close to proselytizing (“Do fathers love their babies because of the urge to see their own genetic material preserved or because fathers reflect the character of the father God?”). It was completely gratuitous. But at least the authors do seem to acknowledge that some of their readers may be secular/atheists/other-theist and they do give warnings when a resource they are listing is God-heavy.

My last complaint is with the lists of famous people through history to learn about. These lists are titled as “Great men and women to cover,” but many of them have very few – if any – women. And it’s not like no women were doing important things during those time periods, so examples could have been found if the authors had bothered to look.

All in all, I’ve really enjoyed the book and, as I said, I’ve already started to make use of it. It’s written very much as a list of prompts and resources, so there’s plenty of wiggle room to substitute your own materials as you please and to design your own curricula. I definitely recommend that all parents at least pick it up from the library and read through the section for your children’s grade levels.

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NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman

Posted on November 20, 2011 by MrPopularSentiment

Read: 17 November, 2011

Common sense and instinct can tell us a lot of things. For example, it’s good to praise our kids, it’s good to leave the radio on because babies will learn language better the more words they hear, and racial desegregation of schools will lead to less racism as kids grow up interacting with peers of different races.

Unfortunately, all of these are wrong.

“NurtureShock” is the feeling a new parent experiences when they discover that the Parental Instincts Fairy has missed their home. It turns out that while the instinct to protect our children is very real, the how of it is up to us to figure out.

NurtureShock is different from the other parenting books I’ve reviewed in that it isn’t an instruction manual. Instead, it simply summarizes some of the recent science in child development. Although the science itself is very interesting and I positively devoured the book, the lack of practical application was frustrating. As a parent, I don’t just want to know the science, I want to know how I can use it.

I think that NurtureShock would have done better if each chapter were divided in half. The first part would remain exactly as is, but the second part would provide examples to show how parents might apply the theory to their own parenting.

But that doesn’t mean that NurtureShock isn’t worth reading. Far from it, I think it should be required reading for every new parent because it fundamentally challenges so many of the assumptions we make about our kids and how they develop.

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What Does It Mean To Be Well Educated? by Alfie Kohn

Posted on September 22, 2011 by MrPopularSentiment

Read: 22 September, 2011

I don’t think that anyone questions the idea that our public schools are, by and large, failing kids. It’s also no secret that programs like No Child Left Behind that require mass standardized testing promote “teaching the test,” often at the expense of real learning. But in this collection of essays, Alfie Kohn goes a step further and argues that even grades should be dumped as an assessment tool.

Kohn ranks the evilness of the various assessment methods, with standardized tests at the top, followed by ranking methods (such as class ranks and grading on a curve), and ending with the assignment of grades. But each, he says, causes kids to view learning as a chore to get through rather than something they might choose to do.

The book is a collection of essays, so each chapter is a discrete unit. That being said, they’ve clearly been edited so that they make sense together, with references to other chapters for more information. The whole is brought together with a well-written introduction that serves to unify the individual essays in support of a common thesis.

I found Kohn’s book to be very interesting and well-written. It challenged a lot of my assumptions (such as the bunk-ness of grade inflation), and has left me thinking a great deal about education. Only the chapter discussing Maslow was on the weak side, and I’m not sure what it was supposed to contribute to the thesis of the book.

If I had to find a flaw, it would be that while the current system is heavily criticised, Kohn is very light on the alternatives. I think this is a fairly important failing because he’s challenging so many concepts that we take for granted that he absolutely must provide us with alternatives.

I don’t know how much I agree with Kohn yet. I think that his arguments were very compelling on first reading, but I need to mull them over a bit longer before I come to a conclusion. He’s definitely given me food for thought, though, and done so in a vehicle that was a pleasure to read. On that basis alone, I highly recommend What Does It Mean To Be Well Educated for parents of school-aged kids and anyone involved in education, at any level, formal or otherwise.

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