Feel-Good Curriculum: The Dumbing Down of America’s Kids in the Name of Self-Esteem
Book Reviews | Jan 4th, 2007
Author: Maureen Stout, Ph.D.
Publisher: Perseus Publishing
Genre: Social Science
Pages: 336
Retail Price: 9.99
Buy on Amazon.com link
The author is one of those dinosaur teachers who looks around her class and wonders why no one wants to listen to her.
She sees a trend among her students toward laziness, apathy, self-absorption, and a disrespectful attitude (you know, kids being kids). But this is certainly a problem, and she feels the root of it lies with the recent liberal slanting in education, like “cooperative learning” and “child-centered classrooms,” which have done away with competition, hard work, honest grading, respect for authority, and discipline. Dr. Stout feels that effective education has been destroyed by raising the student’s self-esteem, which she interestingly defines as “feeling good for no good reason.”
I have to say, for someone so interested in education, this book was horribly written. It’s all over the place, as the author seems to spit venom at everything from modern parenting to race riots (?) and even integration. Her attitude toward multiculturalism is appalling, but it’s hard for me take anything she says seriously since it’s mainly ranting. As well as being disjointed, unclear, and chillingly old-fashioned, the book is peppered with the same self-absorption she hates seeing in her students (do we really care about that one time she gave someone a C and they demanded an A? Must a variation on that story be told every chapter?). All in all, while I agree that there are many major problems with the educational system, the only dumbing down I experienced came from reading this book.
Bottom Line: Racism and right-wing lunacy disguised as social science.
Favorite Part(s):
Overall Rating:
