education-theory

Fascinating and readably well-written argument that western civilization has a long-held prejudice (though not one shared by the author) against color, especially bright color.

Batchelor is highly literate and informed, plus has an impressive knowledge of contemporary art. His suggestion that color tends to be seen as frivolous/minor/feminine/or even evil is backed up with wide-ranging references to culture (contemporary and earlier), art history, lit., and more. (Including an unexpectedly timely observation that historically, evidence of the decadence of Islam included its profusion of color and pattern.)

Just a few other examples:
--the white space as sign of seriousness and quality in the modern gallery or collector's home
--the art historical ranking of disegno as superior to colore
--in French lit, the symbolic association of rich hues and precious materials with decadence
And much more.

As for me, I almost had to buy this book for its hot pink cover alone

Fascinating and readably well-written argument that western civilization has a long-held prejudice (though not one shared by the author) against color, especially bright color.

Batchelor is highly literate and informed, plus has an impressive knowledge of contemporary art. His suggestion that color tends to be seen as frivolous/minor/feminine/or even evil is backed up with wide-ranging references to culture (contemporary and earlier), art history, lit., and more. (Including an unexpectedly timely observation that historically, evidence of the decadence of Islam included its profusion of color and pattern.)

Just a few other examples:
--the white space as sign of seriousness and quality in the modern gallery or collector's home
--the art historical ranking of disegno as superior to colore
--in French lit, the symbolic association of rich hues and precious materials with decadence
And much more.

As for me, I almost had to buy this book for its hot pink cover alone.

Batchelor's own take on color theory is not only a well-researched overview of color in art, architecture, cinema, and literature; it is also a call to action of sorts for artists to reclaim color from its minimalist bastardization in art and its commercial bastardization within the market culture. Batchelor uses the terms "chromophobic" and "chromophilic" to characterize to what extent this bastardization takes place and cites examples from (mainly contemporary) art history as to where the shift from color-as-representation to color-as-color took place.

That discussions of color as secondary to drawing (or design) are neither prevelant in the industry nor in academia proves how engrained into art theory the secondary status of color is. Also of interest is the chapter on the role of semantics and color interpetation. How for example some colors in the abstract such as green-yellows are univerally more difficult to convey than others.

Every serious artist should read this book to reintroduce the importance of color to his/her concerns and to adress contemporary concerns over the loss of color by its oversaturation in less artistic settings.

I'm not so sold on concept mapping and v-diagrams (everyone's got their own angle) but Novak's analysis of the shortcomings of education this century is excellent. There have been enormous and important innovations in educational theory this century, but very little of it has been put into practice because of the nature of the institutions.
Never mind - if you read this book, you're bound to gather some really important insights into the nature of learning, creating and using knowledge, and if you're in education or training, you'll come away not only with a higher awareness of learning theory, but some exciting ideas to try in your own practice.

If you've read Professor Novak's "Learning How to Learn" and "Theory of Education", this book offers updated examples and his insights into how corporations, not just schools, can use his theory.

However, for those unfamiliar with Novak's past work, this book is revolutionary. He shows how the theories of behaviorism and positivism have led to an education system that, despite increasing expenditures, fail to teach children and instead encourages learning by rote. He goes on to show that knowledge is created by the learner, not caused by the teacher, not "poured into people's heads". He also addresses the emotional aspects of the educational "context" (his word).

This book is not just for educators. Anyone unfamiliar with Novak's work with Concept Maps, Knowledge Vees or the Constructivist philosophy will have a lot to gain from reading this book.

One annoyance: there are quite a number of passages that are repeated! I blame this on the editor, not the author. It doesn't take away from the message of the book, but it gives me the feeling that something else might have been missed.

Marking the culmination of Novak's 40-year career in science education, learning theory and epistemology, this book offers a remarkably insightful, theoretically powerful, and eminently readable volume on knowledge making in schools, corporations and healthcare agencies. The focus of Novak's work is on ways of empowering people to take charge of their own learning and knowledge creation. In this effort he succeeds most powerfully in integrating current ideas from the cognitive sciences, philosophy, psychology, neurophysiology, and educational practice.

But this book is not simply for professors and other members of the "intellectual elite." It is first and foremost a helpful guide to teachers, students, business managers and healthcare workers who want to succeed in the competitive arena of the "knowledge age."

Perhaps the most important contribution Novak makes is his careful description [and multiple examples] of concept mapping and V diagramming as tools for facilitating learning, understanding and knowledge creation. Unlike many "recipes" and "panaceas" offered by others, Novak cites numerous studies that provide very strong support for the use of these powerful "metacognitive" tools.

This book is an extraordinarily important contribution to efforts that seek to empower people to become meaningful learners and knowledge makers. It should be read by every college student, every teacher, and by all those charged with managing knowledge professionals.

"Poetic Knowledge skillfully excavates an essential mode of human knowledge. It is a mode as proper to our intelligence as it is redolent of man's transcendence and the value of knowledge for its own sake. Until we understand the philosophical rigor and precision behind the following statement, our darkened era will persist in its educational malaise: '[T]here can be no real advancement of knowledge unless it first begin in leisure and wonder, where the controlling motive throughout [is] delight and love.'"--David Whalen, Hillsdale College

O Lord our Lord, how admirable is thy name in all the earth!

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.

Twinkle, twinkle little star,
How I wonder what you are.

Awe. Admiration. Amazement. Marvel. Delight. The Psalmist, the poet Wordsworth, the child who looks up at the night sky and lisps the nursery rhyme, all speak of that passion of wonder which Aristotle taught is the beginning of philosophy. It is something we have all experienced in seeing a thunder storm roll in on a spring day, looking at the sun set afterwards, or watching a quarter horse race across a pasture, its muscles rippling in the light.

The immediate, direct apprehension of reality that inspires wonder and awe is called by the ancients poetica scientia, poetic knowledge. It is this neglected, even distrusted way of knowing that is the subject of Poetic Knowledge, a book published in 1998 by the State University of New York Press.

The author, Dr James Taylor, explains that poetic knowledge is
not merely a knowledge of poetry, "but rather a poetic experience of reality."

He writes: "Poetic experience indicates an encounter with reality that is non-analytical, something that is perceived as beautiful, awful (awe-full), spontaneous, mysterious. . . . Poetic knowledge is a spontaneous act of the external and internal senses with the intellect, integrated and whole, rather than an act associated with the powers of analytic reasoning. . . . It is, we might say, knowledge from the inside out, radically different from a knowledge about things. In other words, it is the opposite of scientific knowledge."

If this passage seems like heavy going, abstract and difficult,
it must be said straight away that it is, and that it is not the only one. The author has made an exhaustive study both of what poetic knowledge is, using the language and categories of scholastic philosophy, and of its history from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages down to its deformation since the time of Descartes in the 17th century.

However, the book is not only or principally a philosophical
treatise, of interest solely to academics. Consider these passages:

"When Wordsworth writes 'My heart leaps up when I behold / A
rainbow in the sky' . . . , something of the rainbow's reality is truly known, but rational explanation alone is insufficient, in fact impossible, for this is the gaze of contemplation, of love. It is the difference between being unexpectedly moved by an unknown attractive face--desiring to know the person better--and the desperate premeditation of computer dating.

"Knowledge at the poetic level considers neither ends nor means. . . . For example, in the case of furniture there are chairs and tables placed together in such a way that we may sit and have a meal. Sometimes we consider these things in themselves apart from any purpose as in the case of their beauty: a Shaker-style chair, for example, set on a polished wood-plank floor, against a white-washed wall with the sunlight from a bare window fallings in beams and shadows across the room. It is a serene view, and for that moment completely without purpose, yet the viewer is certainly filled with a profound and mysterious sense of the real and of the beauty of this reality.

And a marvelous section, too long for quotation here, where Dr
Taylor comments on these lines from Rousseau: "Love childhood, indulge its games, its pleasures, its delightful instincts", and "May I venture to state the greatest, the most useful role of education? It is: do not save time, lose it".

As Dr Taylor says above in defining poetic knowledge, "it is the
opposite of scientific knowledge". The scientific knowledge he speaks of is not science in the ancient sense of metaphysics, but knowledge which is empirical, quantifiable, dialectical. It is the kind of knowledge demanded by Professor Thomas Gradgrind in Dickens' Hard Times.

"Now what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing
but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them."

Beware, beware of the Gradgrinds of this world.

"There are relatively few persons who can analyze as clearly and as lucidly the writings of Aristotle, Plato, and Acquinas as does this author. Like Taylor's educational philosophy, he seeks to move his readers' affections and will as well as their intellects, and he does this successfully." -- Richard Harp, University of Nevada

This book rediscovers a traditional mode of knowledge that remains viable today. Contrasted to the academic and cultural fads often based on the scientific methodology of the Cartesian legacy, or any number of trendy experiments in education, Poetic Knowledge returns to the freshness and importance of first knowledge, a knowledge of the senses and the passions.

"Poetic knowledge" is not the knowledge of poetry, nor is it even knowledge in the sense that we often think of today, that is, the mastery of scientific, technological, or business information. Rather, it is an intuitive, obscure, mysterious way of knowing reality, not always able to account for itself, but absolutely essential if one is ever to advance properly to the higher degrees of certainty. From Socrates to the Middle Ages, and even into the twentieth century, the case for poetic knowledge is revealed with the care of philosophical archeology. Taylor demonstrates the effectiveness of the poetic mode of education through his own observations as a teacher, and two experimental "poetic" schools in the twentieth century.

"With pithy brevity he has managed to provide both a history of the treatment of poetic knowledge and to develop his own very persuasive account." -- Ralph McInerny, University of Notre Dame

Whether you are a student of motorsport, or just interested in fast driving, this is quite simply THE reference book. It's the original, and the best.

Many will find DSJ's style somewhat dry and almost academic. Don't expect any laughs. But there is SO much valuable information packed into such a short volume, that it's solid value - no waffle ! From driver psychology (Jenks was first to coin the term "10/10ths") to vehicle dynamics at speed, all the essential knowledge is in here.

No race or rally driver worth his salt should ever step into the cockpit before reading this book.

This is an excellent book for learning the "finer" points of high speed driving. The techniques and approach to the subject apply to both racing and street driving. This is a great book to read first if you want to learn to drive better, or if you wish to read more about the subject, it is a great base to start from.

Denis Jenkinson uses his motorcycle side-car racing experience and his work with Sterling Moss as his navigator during his record run in winning the 1955 Mille Miglia race in the Mercedes-Benz 300SLR to describe with practical examples how to drive fast safely. Sterling Moss ranks within the five most talented race car drivers of all time. Denis Jenkinson combines his sensitivity to the nuances of driving fast smoothly with his grounding in practical engineering and physics. He explains the dynamics of automobilies at speed, the need for concentration, acute vision, and situational awareness with practical experiences of driving fast on one thousand kilometers of two-lane Italian roads. This book is uniquely appropriate to learning the art of driving smoothly and quickly on public roads

This is an excellent reference guide for all those on their way to becoming teachers-- Miller not only gives a sampling of the various cultural impacts on American education throughout history and the pioneers who pushed for them, he also provides students with valid reasons for holistic education.

Ron Miller,the leading voice in American holistic education, explains the emergence of holistic education within the context of the historical development of American public education. Frequently used as a classroom text for education students, What Are Schools For? is a consise treatment of the values and issues that impact public education policy in America. This is a must read for parents, educators, and politicians who are concerned with current public policy that sacrafices the complex needs of children in favor of corporate demands for the consumer economy

Ron Miller, the leading thinker in the field of holsitic education, lays out the development of public edcucation in America and explains the emergence of holistic education within the cultural context. Frequently used as a text in college of education courses, What Are Schools For has been updated to address the current crisis in American education. This thoughtful book is a must for educators who are struggling to meet the needs of our children in a system that tends to reduce education to a servicing agent for economic interests

In the first paragraph of this book, Dr. William Glasser, captures the attention of everyone concerned with the state of education in our country today by immediately identifying our number one problem. At least half of the students in any given classroom are unmotivated to learn. In a world where all teachers are steeped in the behaviorist theories of psychology, through which we are taught to manipulate student behaviors with reward and punishment, it is refreshing to read an author who acknowledges the neglected role of individual freedom and self motivation in the classroom. The students who leave our elementary schools, high schools and universities with the best education possible are those who have chosen to actively participate in the learning process. In this book, Dr. Glasser lays out a strategy for teachers who want to get more of their students involved in that process and a strong rationale for doing so. While, I believe that he sometimes needlessly overstates the potential power of choice theory, in his discussion of migraine headaches and dyslexia, for instance, he rightly presents his solution to the problem of motivating students as one of many possible solutions. He argues for the benefits of the use of a cooperative learning strategy that effectively addresses the problem of motivation by fulfilling student needs he identifies as the desire for belonging, freedom, power and fun. Through this strategy, he argues, teachers can increase student involvement and depth of learning because the students are given the opportunity to become self motivated rather than teacher motivated. His theory should be part of every teacher's base of professional knowledge, as an alternative to behaviorism, and the techniques he shares should be part of every teacher's arsenal of strategies for teaching in today's schools.

This book is the updated of "Control Theory in the Classroom". If you have that book, you don't need this one. If you don't, this is a great book for educators.

This book is a good sequel to FL it goes more in depth into how the fretboard works with patterns and teaches different types of chords,arpeggios,and scales.I would say don't get this book if you didn't get the first book unless you have a decent amount of knowledge in music theory;I doubt you will undertand everything; maybe you could with time but, if you got FLI,FLII will be much easier to understand.Don't get this book and only this book if you want to actually learn how to play music this is only a good book if you want to understand the fretboard like a maniac very useful for understanding the fretboard though.

Quite simply the best guitar book I have ever held in my hands

This book exposes the essential Quantum Mechanical topics in a non-traditional order, and explores more advaced subjects as well, without losing clarity. The notation is easier to follow than most graduate level text books. Particularly good chapters are those concerning to Quantization of Radiation and Second Quantization.

Having glanced through/read many QM books over the last couple of years, I recently purchased a copy of Baym, and I've almost read it cover to cover. It flows very well for a textbook, and it doesn't stray off onto complicated tangents like many books I've seen and used do. Perhaps it is because this book is derived from lectures. I think this is a good companion to other QM textbooks for those not-so-clearly-explained passages.

This book is valuable if you are a Rorty fan and have followed his career. It is the best insight into his personality. Namely, his peeves and dislikes. For example although he is a staunch liberal, he strongly dislikes hand wringing extremists and nihilists. He really is a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps pragmatist. And if you push him too hard he pulls the gloves off. He is also a realist in the Aristotilean sense of he knows he is a well paid humanities professor living in an ivory tower (brownstone actually - Stanford) and that most of many of his (analytic) peers don't care for him. What I really like about Rorty, and this comes out clearly in this little book, is his attitude that the playing field has been leveled since Wittgenstein, Derrida, et.al. 'So hey, why not make the world a little better place than you found it?' (Kind of like what your Mom used to tell you.) What I don't like is his "blind eye" towards religion (as a friend who got his Ph.D. from him at Princeton once described him). But that's just the way it goes sometimes for some people. If you have read a lot of Rorty, get this book. If you haven't, then start where you are supposed to: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.

Two earnest grad students take on a cantankerous professor during a 4-hour interview! The results are explosive!

If you don't know who Richard Rorty is or what "Oligarchies" means, you will after reading this. "Six bucks". How can you go wrong?

There is nothing wrong with encouraging students to encounter literature from a variety of viewpoints and any worthy English teacher of literature should be adept in reinforcing this skill. In this respect, Appleman's book shows merit. She outlines approaches for teaching the literary theories of Reader-Response, Marxism, Feminism, and Deconstruction, with (ad nauseum) student responses and sample handouts. And of course we walk in a world of categorization and theory, so writing about teaching literary theory is somewhat of a "no brainer" since our brain organizes information this way; without this skill, one could not survive. In short, she attempts to bring the theoretical world of the critics closer to younger students. Who can criticize that? Yet.... When I was reading her book, I kept thinking that this information might be handy for a certain teacher who lacks confidence in his or her own ability to respond directly to literature. Having the lenses is a great exercise, especially if one wants their students to show well on "Jeopardy." Yes, they are indispensible to know if one is in an English graduate program. Knowing them would also help one appear more erudite at a literary party. So teach the students literary theory. Then teach them to respond with their own hearts and minds; to read with passion, voraciously, discarding the inapplicable and acting with courage on the true. Teach them to underline their books (their OWN books, of course) simply because they found a beautiful sentence. Teach them to read the Introduction to the novel LAST, after they have had a chance to read and develop their OWN lense--their own viewpoints. This takes greater courage, I believe. Students need to THINK the page. Robert Frost once said that "education in English is properly a slow process of just staying around in the right company till you can speak and handle a book in the author's presence without setting his teeth on edge" (as quoted in George Anderson's "Bread Loaf School of English: The First Fifty Years, Middlebury: Middlebury Press, 1969, p. 33).

I'm going to be a first year teacher and ordered the paperback version of this book because I've heard Appleman talk about how useful literary "lenses" are to helping students interpret a text in many different ways. Like Eagleton says, every teacher does "theory", it's just a matter if they want to come clean about it or not. Having the students think about narrating the story from another perspective is what Appleman is all about. Using Appleman's "lenses" (feminist, marxist, etc) will definitely help give me more flexiblity in lessons and most importantly I won't be bored reading 150 papers all working from the same static interpretation. The poetry section of this book is incredible. When she discusses poetry, it's all about how all kids can have the same poem but things pop out different to tehm. You can use her methods to discuss what poetry really is. If you one of the many public high school English Lit teachers that has been teaching for many years and believes there is ONE and only ONE WAY to interpret a piece of literature, this book is not for you...but it OUGHTA BE!!

Book Review Appleman, Deborah. Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents. New York: Teachers College Press, 2000. Deborah Appleman's book, Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents, recently published by the National Council of Teachers of English and Teacher's College Press, is a MUST read for all English educators and all teachers of high school literature classes. Appleman not only envisions a new way of teaching high school literature, she shows the reader (with practical classroom activities) HOW this is possible. Appleman's first line, "I'm stubborn" (xiii), grabbed my immediate attention. As a friend of Deborah's, I agreed and read on. What I found was not a stubborn approach to teaching literature, but rather a wonderful, open-minded, newly articulated approach to the teaching of literary theory in high school. Granted, Appleman might need to stubbornly insist that naysayers, those who say it can't be done in high school, hear her out, but by mid-point in the book, even those people will be considering the possibilities. In Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescent Appleman defines reader response, Marxist and feminist criticism, and deconstruction theory in an understandable manner. Within each chapter Appleman weaves together, through classroom vignettes, literary theory and literature. Appleman explains how the application of literary theory in high school provides students with an interpretive repertoire which enlarges their view of the world. This approach empowers students to think "beyond the boundaries of their own comfortable world" (63) and to "foster a knowledge of others" (29). In addition to being impressed with the linkage of theory and practice in Appleman's book, I observed it in action when I visited Paige Shreeve's Senior-to-Sophomore literature class at Becker High School. Shreeve read Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents the minute it was released. She then taught her class to apply these critical perspectives to the literature they read. The day I visited, the class discussed Frost's poetry. As I joined a small group discussion, I heard one student say, in reader response mode to "After Apple-Picking," "This tiredness is the way I feel after working a weekend at Subway." Another student, in keeping with a New Criticism approach, wanted to explore the symbolism of sleep. Yet another student, who apparently knew some background on Frost, told the group (using a psychological approach) that this poem was biographical and went on to explain why. These students were not directed by Shreeve to use literary theory; they had already internalized many aspects. Critical Encounters in High School English works. I suggest that you read and "try on" Deborah Appleman's new book. Chris Gordon English Education - St. Cloud State University