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The End Of Education: Redefining The Value Of School

Postman suggests that the current crisis in our educational system derives from its failure to supply students with a translucent, unifying "narrative" like those that inspired earlier generations. Instead, today's schools promote the false "gods" of economic utility, consumerism, or ethnic separatism and resentment. What alternative strategies can we use to instill our children with a sense of global citizenship, healthy intellectual skepticism, respect of America's traditions, and appreciation of its diversity? In answering this question, The End of Education restores meaning and common sense to the arena in which they are most urgently needed. "Informal and clear...Postman's ideas about education are appealingly fresh."--New York Times Book Review

Paperback: 209 pages

Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (October 29, 1996)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0679750312

ISBN-13: 978-0679750314

Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches

Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #54,681 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #16 in Books > Textbooks > Education > History & Theory #40 in Books > Education & Teaching > Schools & Teaching > Counseling > Academic Development #45 in Books > Education & Teaching > Schools & Teaching > Education Theory > History

I once taught at a university in which the Humanities building had no windows. It was as if we were expected to be inclosed within ourselves, divorced from nature and the world, studying life from pages and computers instead of directly. The walls were drab, the corridors monotonous, and this was the place I was to teach the highest expressions of human culture, and most importantly, what is it to be or "become" human.Neil Postman's book is more than just refreshing. He makes a clear distinction between teaching as a kind of engineering feat--through books, transparencies, film, computers and whatever the latest delivery system is--and teaching as introducing the student to himself or herself and to the world. This book is about teaching diversity, in the real sense of the word. And this book is about the problem of education not being so much "how" we teach or "what" we teach, but that we lack a substantial goal. We lack a metaphysic.If you do not understand what it means to lack a metaphysic, then this book is for you. It is one thing to lose something and know that we have lost it (a wallet, for example), but if we lose something (such as a sense for what a metaphysic is) and we don't even know it is lost, we will not even know enough to look for it.If we have lost the sense of our lives being ordered toward some end, then indeed we are permanently lost. And we are just teaching randomly and learning randomly, as we try to become better producers and better consumers. Is that what we are? Neil Postman says no. We are much more. I encourage every teacher who cares about teaching to read this book. I encourage every student who has wondered why we have to study so many unnecessary things, to read this book.

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