Inside American Education

by Thomas Sowell

Overview

An illuminating examination of the deterioration of the current school system in America, backed by detailed research and shocking statistics.

An indictment of the American educational system criticizes the fact that the system has discarded the traditional goals of transmitting knowledge and fostering cognitive skills in favor of building self-esteem and promoting social harmony.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780743254083
Publisher:	Free Press
Publication date:	03/14/2003
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	127,127
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Thomas Sowell is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has been a professor of economics at leading American colleges and universities and has lectured in Singapore, Israel, Switzerland, and Germany, as well as across the United States.

Editorial Reviews

The American educational system, from grade school to grad school, is bankrupt, teachers are incompetent and schools cause social maladjustment, moral confusion and alienation, according to this blistering indictment by Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is critical of values education and ethnic studies, claiming that they brainwash students. His critiques of ``research barons,'' athletic scholarships and their toll on black athletes, education fads and academia's publish-or-perish syndrome are well reasoned. But he often goes wildly askew, as when he argues that sex education causes teen pregnancy, or that dependence on federal funds causes hardship to schools, which often waste resources in their attempt to avoid any suggestion of racial discrimination. And certain of Sowell's solutions, such as discontinuing the tenure system, smack of abridgement of academic freedom. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

``The purpose of education is to give the student the intellectual tools to analyze, whether verbally or numerically, and to reach conclusions based on logic and evidence.'' With these words begins a treatise on the failure of American education--elementary, secondary, and college levels--to prepare today's students for the future. Among the many causes of this failure are the poor intellectual capabilities of elementary and secondary school teachers; the politicizing of education, especially the emphasis on world-saving agendas; the affective approach to curriculum (striving to reshape the attitudes of students); and the presence of ``assorted dogmas,'' including multicultural diversity, relevance, and educating the whole person. All these causes and more are clearly discussed, with some frightening true-life examples, to illustrate that students aren't learning the basics because the basics aren't being taught. Recommended for public libraries.-- A.R. Huggins, Memphis State Univ. Libs., Tenn.

Library Journal