How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain’s Most Ineligible Bachelor and his Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate
Note that Mr. Day, our hero, also managed to write passionate anti-slavery pamphlets as well as well-known children’s story books, so his tone-deaf wife-raising experiment is all the more shocking. The good news is that, in the end, the orphan does not marry him (since she is not submissive enough for him!) and despite many travails manages to have a very successful life on her own. We all cheer for her.
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 stay in the profession and discourage bad ones — since, not so surprisingly, it seems that teachers make the difference between good and bad education outcomes. I find it very sad to think that most of the attempts at school reform are coming from outside the system, from people who for the most part mean well but who often lack deep knowledge of schools and children, while professional educators could contribute more expertise. Still there’s a lot of hope in the stories, including with the teachers’ unions that may, o so slowly, migrate towards policies that are more student-centered.
talks about why college is so darn expensive, even moderately priced public universities, and shows how college costs have increased very much in line with other personal services that rely on a highly educated workforce. One would wish that the authors would pursue the angle of why college has to be so darn personal, since surely a college professor could, at least sometimes, function in a manner that’s a little different from a dentist with hands in one person’s mouth at a time! And they argue that financial aid should work better, to which I say amen.
continues the story started in 
, 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 head of a bona fide charitable foundation (unfelicitously abbreviated ‘CAI’) Mortenson continues to bring literacy to villages in Pakistan and Afghanistan that are plagued by poverty, difficult access, and fearfully harsh weather.
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 thoughtless and mean ways. Which, apparently, gave him permission to retaliate against them in petty and mean ways. Pretty silly stuff.
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 fixing a tangible object such as a motorbike is uncomparably fullfilling.
‘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 per week with his dad (movies his dad chooses), and don’t do drugs. He will need to be somewhat flexible on the second point, but they do watch hundreds of movies and after a time the son is able to move into the mainstream and even, gasp!, decides to go to college.
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 I really liked this one: the selection of the characters (including Sojourner Truth, Elvis Presley, and John Kennedy) is eclectic and miraculously balanced between men and women without apparent strain and the stories are fascinating, from Ben Franklin’s early apprenticeship to Henry Ford’s illiterate ways. While the book jacket promises a discussion of educational trends, and the book certainly delivers on that, it also tells the story of America. In particular there’s the story of so-called Princess Winnemucca, a Paiute Indian from what is now Nevada whoe tribe was crushed by the great migration to the West and whose services as a translator and cultural go-between almost doomed to death. Well worth reading — and a good way to ponder about the variety of approaches to education.
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 parents on such topic as exercising during pregnancy, reading to their children, and using appropriate discipline techniques, welcome children in nursery schools, and offer an alternative to the often dangerous and under-achieving public schools in the area. The book focuses on the Baby College, the educational program for expectant parents and parents of infants, and especially the Promise Academy, a K-12 charter school.
