Inside the Brain
Inside the Brain: Revolutionary Discoveries of How the Mind Works by Ronald Kotulak. Kansas City, Missouri: Andrews and McMeel, 1996.
If Ron Kotulak, the Pulitzer prize-winning science writer for the Chicago Tribune, has his way, you'll soon be hanging posters of the development and workings of the human brain near your desk (he includes a good illustration in this book). As Kotulak sees it, the newest brain research—especially discoveries in molecular biology and genetics during the past decade—gives educators "the power to free the brain to achieve its maximum potential, to reach undreamed of heights."
Kotulak unlocks the mysteries of the human brain for those who work with children but are not scientists. One of the most significant findings he details is the brain's plasticity—its ability to change, physically and chemically, in response to environmental factors. Thus educators can no longer write off kids as being hardwired, with brains that are precast from birth. We know, he says, that a newborn comes ready-made with 100 billion brain cells and trillions of synapses—a network of connections that lets brain cells communicate with one another. Babies come overpowered with synapses as inborn protection against damage, neglect, and lack of mental stimulation that causes the connections to die off.
Kotulak urges educators to pay vastly more attention to early childhood education, especially the first three years, when "windows of development" for thinking, language, vision, attitudes, aptitudes, and other characteristics are formed. Infants and toddlers have brains like sponges; they need to soak up stimulation by seeing, hearing, touching, and smelling in order to form connections and pathways for later learning.
Brain research reveals a dark side as well. Too many children with undernourished brains end up in a "mental wasteland"; as they move up the grades, they are able to learn, but only with great difficulty. What's more, says Kotulak, so-called "bad stimulation" (abandonment, neglect, a mother's drug or alcohol addiction) produce biochemical changes in key brain-cell genes that may lead to permanent behavior problems.
Published by Andrews and McMeel, 4520 Main St., Kansas City, MO 64111. Price: $21.95.
—Reviewed by Susan Black, Mid-Atlantic Consulting, Hammondsport, New York.
Lies My Teacher Told Me
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen. New York: Touchstone Books, 1996.
Even those who do not teach American history can learn much from Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen's critique of a dozen U. S. history textbooks. Although it compellingly explains why secondary students often loathe history, Lies could be applied to any textbook.
Beyond pointing out the factual errors that abound in history textbooks, Loewen clearly illustrates how they cheat students of the drama and controversy of history. Most textbooks sanitize and simplify events, presenting tales of wonderful moral men (usually) who courageously fight for the betterment of the world. No arguments, no flaws, and, most strikingly, no recent past.
Because we can remember—and disagree about—events like the Persian Gulf War, textbooks gloss over them. Better to avoid issues that divide us. We may argue about the government's actions in Waco, but how many people are irate over George Washington's approach to Citizen Genet? Lies demonstrates why teachers must carefully examine the books they use—some textbooks may actually hinder critical thinking.
Loewen's engaging, storytelling style casts in even higher relief the bland, stale examples he culls from history textbooks. As he looks at the dark side of historical issues, he weaves a fascinating tale of his own. Textbook writers as well as teachers can learn a lot from Loewen's skill at luring readers in and making them think hard about history.
Published by Touchstone Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. Price: $14.
—Reviewed by Bil Johnson, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.
Amazing Grace
Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation by Jonathan Kozol. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1995.
For most of us who read and watch the news, the existence of urban poverty comes as no revelation. The extent and brutal quality of the conditions that the author of this book depicts as being typical, however, may give the reader a jolt. With an emotionally charged brush, he paints a picture of a neighborhood so horrifying as to rival an Hieronymous Bosch landscape. Of particular interest is the fact that in the midst of this, children are growing up.
Jonathan Kozol skillfully crafts Amazing Grace with quotes from real conversations he had with adults and children living in Mott Haven, a South Bronx community. He intersperses these quotes with descriptions of the neighborhood and his musings about why things are the way they are. Precisely who or what is responsible for creating and improving our urban ghettos Kozol does not make clear, however. "...I don't really think I will make sense of anything and I don't expect that I'll be able to construct a little list of 'answers' and 'solutions'...," he says in his book's conclusion.
More important, what does emerge as an inescapable, if obvious, truth, is that the children of such places are innocent individuals who have not chosen the hard reality that profoundly influences every aspect of their lives, including their education. If the governments with jurisdiction over the inner city don't have the resources or the social engineering savvy to perform the kind of miracles necessary to reverse what Kozol describes, then pronouncements such as the well-known Goals 2000 edict that all children will report to school "ready to learn" ring so hollow as to seem like bald-faced hypocrisy.
The social politics Kozol has written between the lines are unfortunate because they detract from the valid and more important points he makes. Our nation's ghettos are bursting with children for whom we cannot realistically expect even —ally bright futures. Although our system does provide extras, such as Title I, Head Start, free lunch, and the like, these are not getting the job done. Further, to a large degree, our society is in denial about this. We need a national dialogue to bring this situation to a conscious level, and to that end books such as this one are important.
Published by Crown Publishers, Inc., 201 East 50th St., New York, NY 10022. Price: $13.50.
—Reviewed by Mark Gura, Office of Instructional Technology, Board of Education, City of New York.
Maximum Security
Maximum Security: The Culture of Violence In Inner-City Schools by John Devine. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996.
John Devine paints inner-city schools as a war zone, where violence has become endemic and has in too many cases become accepted as the norm. He argues that the typical responses—policing strategies, peer mediation, diversion of money from teaching programs to metal detectors and high-tech surveillance cameras—not only don't work, but make matters worse. They cause both students and educators to view violence as the norm.
Devine faults educators for turning their heads instead of taking responsibility; teachers, he says, have progressively withdrawn from any real social involvement with youth. He takes a passionate and often combative stance toward right-wingers (they blame students, their families, and principals for chaotic schools); and left-wingers (they are in a state of denial about the growing school violence and see kids only as the victims, not as both victims and perpetrators).
In fact, everyone from the deconstructionist Michel Foucault to the small-school activists in New York City take a pounding from Devine, a former priest who now directs the School Partnerships Program at New York University's Metropolitan Center for Urban Education. Devine also sees small schools as one answer, but he advocates a system of such schools, not just a few enclaves that would skim off teachers and resources from big schools. In these intimate learning environments, teachers and students could cooperate in creating a nonviolent culture of learning.
Maximum Security will make good reading for school researchers and restructurers, even though Devine also shows them no mercy. He has filled this book with data and good stories about school life and culture, drawing on his experiences in a university-based tutoring project in New York City schools.
Published by the University of Chicago Press, 5801 Ellis Ave., Chicago, IL 60637-1496. Price: $12.75.
—Reviewed by Michael Klonsky,University of Illinois at Chicago.
