Tag Archives: education
** Class Warfare by Steven Brill
Class Warfare is quite inspiring, although the topic is somber: how K-12 education is struggling in the US and how many established forces, starting with the teachers’ unions, are preventing the very changes that would encourage the better teachers to … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
** Why Does College Cost so Much by Robert Archibald & David Feldman
I spent much of the school year helping a recently emigrated high school senior complete her college applications followed by reams of applications for scholarships to pay for college. And yes, thanks for asking, she was admitted to several universities … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
Stones into Schools by Greg Mortenson
Stones into Schools continues the story started in Three Cups of Tea, the poignant description of how a mountain climber promised his hosts in Pakistan to build a school, and succeeded, years later and despite all odds. Now at the … Continue reading
Filed under True story
Lost in the Meritocracy by Walter Kirn
Lost in the Meritocracy is the memoir of a smart and seriously conceited writer who was accepted to Princeton on a scholarship and proceeded to discover that his classmates were spoiled rich kids and that some of them behaved in … Continue reading
Filed under True story
Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford
The author of Shop Class as Soulcraft makes some points that I completely agree with: that pushing all teenagers to college is counter-productive, that what we pompously call knowledge work is often plain silly, that the feeling we have after … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
The Film Club by Dan Gilmour
Like the book reviewed yesterday, The Film Club‘s topic is education, of a sort. The 16-year old son of the author is failing high school and his dad decides to halt his misery, imposing only two conditions: watch three movies … Continue reading
Filed under True story
How Lincoln Learned to Read by Daniel Wolff
How Lincoln Learned to Read recreates the education, formal and informal, that Lincoln and 11 other well-known Americans received, and through the stories evokes the changing education landscape in the US. I am not a fan of history books but … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
Whatever it Takes by Paul Tough
Whatever It Takes tells the story of Geoffrey Canada and his quest to transform the way the children of poor, poorly educated parents are raised in Harlem. Canada’s vision is for a “conveyor belt” that would start with educating expectant … Continue reading
Filed under True story
Mother on Fire by Sandra Tsing Loh
I know it’s supposed to be a satire. I know it’s supposed to be over the top. But Mother on Fire wanders not only over the top but sideways and over to the next valley, leaving the reader confused and … Continue reading
Filed under New fiction
