Summer Reading: “34 Important Books About Education”

Here is a factoid that will amaze you. Almost 7,000,000 people have reviewed books, etc. on Amazon. Some people go nuts and start reviewing every product that Amazon sells.

I stick to serious books about education; and it has taken me several years to reach 50 reviews.

For example, I just reviewed a book on New Math and another on censorship in West Virginia. (Such books can be time capsules. You jump back 30 or 40 years, and learn a lot about how we got where we are today.)

Amazon has a feature called Listmania, which lets you put together a list of your personal recommendations. My list is titled “34 Important Books About Education.” It gives only a BRIEF BLURB about each book; you can read the whole list in a few minutes; and if you’re interested in a particular book, you go from the blurb to the reviews to make your decision.

This list is a handy place to find seminal books about education, books by Flesch, Blumenfeld, Engelmann, and many others. Some books are available used at very low cost.

Also note that if you go to any Amazon review by me or any other reviewer, there’s always a button called “See all my reviews.” So you can check out the whole 50.

http://www.amazon.com/34-Important-Books-About-Education/lm/R1XG8X2T4RZY9Q/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_title_full

We seem to be on the same wavelength. The Art of Teaching by Gilbert Highet, Witness by Whittaker Chambers, Reflections on the Failure of Socialism by Max Eastman, Quackery in the Public Schools by Albert Lynd, Educational Wastelands by Arthur Bestor, Ed School Follies by Rita Kramer, and And Madly Teach by Mortimer Smith would have been on my list as well.

Here are a few more:

The Restoration of Learning: a Program for Redeeming the Unfulfilled Promise of American Education by Arthur Bestor (Knopf, 1956)--Bestor's follow-up to Educational Wastelands
Bending the Twig: The Revolution in Education and Its Effect on Our Children by Augustin G. Rudd (Chicago: Heritage Foundation, 1957)--A thoroughgoing attack on "progressive" education
Schools Without Scholars by John Keats (Boston: Houghton mifflin, 1958)--Keats, a liberal famous for his criticism of the auto industry in The Insolent Chariots (1958) and on suburban culture in Crack in the Picture Window (1957) unloads on "progressive" educationists with a devastating critique
The Cult of Uncertainty by Isaac Leon Kandel (New York: Macmillan, 1943)--a critique of "progressive" education by a noted educator
So Little For the Mind by Hilda Neatby (Toronto: Clarke, 1953)--an extensive study of the baleful effects of "progressive" eduction in Canada
The Diminished Mind: A Study of Planned Mediocrity in Our Public Schools by Mortimer Smith (Chicago: Regnery, 1954)--Smith's follow-up to And Madly Teach
Why Teachers Can't Teach by Joan Dunn (New York: McKay, 1955)--A high school English teacher recounts her experience teaching in a "progressive" school in New York City in the late 1940's
Brain Washing in the High Schools An Examination of Eleven American History Textbooks by E. Merrill Root (New York: Devin Adair, 1958) and Collectivism on the Campus The Battle For the Mind in American Colleges by E. Merrill Root (New York: Devin Adair, 1955)--a look at American education by a conservative essayist and poet

Thanks. There are some I’ll have to do soon.

Truth is, if I had known how many good books there are on education, I might never have gotten started!

The sad part is that the average educated person hasn’t heard of any of them, except Why Johnny Can’t Read.

Trying to make all of these books and authors famous is one of the best things that conservatives can do for education.

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