Thinking About Our Kids

Argues that families and communities are as important to the education of children as their schools, criticizes the current educational system, and offers new approaches to financing and classroom routine

"Our failure to respond to the cities' call for help creates a time bomb waiting to destroy civility in urban America," claims Howe, a former education commissioner during Lyndon Johnson's presidency. He challenges the leading government-sponsored studies of school reform (e.g., the National Commission on Excellence in Education's A Nation at Risk and the American Association of School Administrators's America 2000 ) and depicts the education policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations as narrow and unrealistic. The underlying causes for the failure of U.S. schools, contends Howe, are racism, poverty, and society's neglect of children. Like Jonathan Kozol in Savage Inequalities ( LJ 9/15/91), he cites some glaring differences in school funding. Howe advocates a program to improve coordination among all government agencies that deal with children, families, and schools, together with a European model of family and child support. An important addition to education and social science collections; for a diametrically opposed viewpoint, see Myron Lieberman's Public Education: An Autopsy ( LJ 7/93).
- Arla Lindgren, St. John's Univ., New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.