Title: The puzzle of education
Author: Bruce Deitrick Price
Publisher: Word-Wise Publishing
ISBN: 1-4392-3035-8
ISBN-13: 978-1439230350
The puzzle of education is a book of essays related to the American educational system. The question Price poses is: What happened to American education? Price proclaims: “The simultaneous decline of American education and the language used by American educators is a historical fact.” Over the years, I have done some research on this topic, particularly through editing and revising college papers. I found this book very interesting and I agree with much of what Price says.
The main crux of Price’s essays deals with the failure of our teaching methods to teach children to read. She explains the difference between teaching children to read using the whole word strategy and phonics, favoring phonics. According to Price, “When we examine education throughout the 20th century, we see a bewildering array of unproductive ideas. But no failure is so primal and destructive as the failure of American public schools to teach reading, the one essential skill.”
Through his essays, Price also touches on math, history, science, and art. Additionally, she provides a history of the American education system along with its downward turn, referring to it as the “beautification” of America. From John Dewey to Maria Montessori to Rudolf Flesch to Gilbert Highet, Price explains their philosophies and the effects on this country’s educational system. He concludes, specifically regarding Dewey and his followers, “Make no mistake, this was a secret conspiracy.”
Along with this, Price makes an excellent point that I’ve always disagreed with: kids need to memorize facts and figures even if they can look up the answers, whether in a book or online. I have always believed that as long as children are taught where and how to look for answers, there is no need for state tests that cause stress for many of our children from fourth grade onwards. His comment on this kind of theorizing is: “But will they? No, people usually get by with what they really know in their heads.” I tend to agree with this point, although I still feel that too much emphasis is placed on state testing.
The puzzle of education it is full of information and history related to the American educational system. From some of his essay titles, it’s easy to see that Price has a sense of humor: Jay Leno: Educator of the Year; Phooey on John Dewey; and educators are best understood as “engineers of ignorance.”
It is important to mention that Price is not throwing these blows related to the ineffectiveness of the school system to the teachers in the trenches. He is directed at those in control of creating and enforcing inappropriate teaching strategies. In Price’s words, “When I talk about ‘educators,’ I never mean teachers. I mean that small group of managers at the top, with doctorates, who effectively control public schools.”
A final quote from this book that I especially liked: “…Another famous government report, A Nation at Risk (1983) concluded that our public schools appear to have been created by an enemy power. Exactly. An enemy that would want the Americans read weakly and count incorrectly.
About the Author: Bruce Deitrick Price is a novelist, painter, poet, and educational activist. He graduated from Norfolk Academy and Princeton (with honors in English Literature). Throughout his career, Price has been writing about education. Besides the arts, his main passion is Improve-Education.org. Price is a member of PEN and Mensa.
