A Great Way to Get Ahead in Life

I recently read this book. It was, one might say, a long and hard slog. It is unfortunately in many places a standard assigned textbook. The book has three main defects. First, it is written in the most predictable, turgid, and jargon-filled academic-ese I’ve ever seen. Instead of saying something was important it had “ontological reality,” knowledge became “epistemological units,” etc. Sentences were long, with far too many modifiers, and otherwise filled with classic academic writing errata. Nearly everyone who contributed to this collection should attend serious writing workshops. I realize some of them are not capable of writing well, but it couldn’t hurt. Second, the entire work assumes the conclusion. It is taken for granted that education is not chiefly about giving young people the tools to think critically, criticize and advocate for their own values, and otherwise become effective and self-guiding participants in a democracy. Instead, 100% of the authors assume that the society is basically corrupt and that social justice means, in effect, the advance of politically correct values: indifference to homosexuality, suspicion of merit, suspicion of the traditional family, and undermining the traditional power structure of the western world. And, secondly, 100% of the authors take for granted that education’s job is to raise the consciousness of students in so doing. That is to say, it is assumed that there is one right answer to contentious social issues, that “consciousness raising” is the answer to the problems, that families and other authorities that disagree with this view are malevolent obstructionists, that if necessary these groups should be misled about wat will be pursued in the classroom (since they’d resist otherwise), and that education should essentially brainwash young and impressionable kids into compliant liberals before they’ve acquired effective critical thinking skills. Finally, the book does not grapple with developments in genetics and psychometrics that raise serious questions about the now increasingly discredited mantra that “parental socioeconomic status matters more than IQ/Test Scores, etc.” Obviously, Hernnstein and Murray’s “Bell Curve” is worth reading on this score, but also Arthur Jensen’s “G Factor.” Minority failure is a troubling part of the educational scene; unfortunately, the prescription offered here is the same old ineffective program of spending more, defining deviancy down, and passing the buck that remains onto mysterious “institutional racists.”
Rating: 1 / 5