Review: Mothers of Invention by Drew Gilpin Faust

Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (The Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies)
by Drew Gilpin Faust

A Review

 Groundbreaking (though not a flattering portrait) of White Elite Southern Women during the Civil War

This monograph, written by Harvard's first female president, offers a historical survey of elite Southern women during the Civil War as read through their letters, diaries, citywide decrees, women's societies, and a variety of other popular and legal sources.

The portrait is not flattering. Faust debunks the myth that many white Southern women centralized production in their homes (war "home-factories"), that they successfully made their own products (i.e., especially cloth), that they managed their plantations well, or that they significantly impacted nursing and other professions.

Essentially, Southern women subscribed to an ideology of helplessness and frailty that relied on white masculinity for its defense. They didn't *want*, for the most part, to be independent--they would have much rather preferred being protected and enclosed in the safe "hoop" of patriarchy.

The Civil War required them to step up into position of independence and assertiveness, and at first, women protested and withdrew. They could barely manage their slaves, resorted to impulsive, emotional outbursts, and otherwise failed (for the most part, though of course there are always exceptions) to transgress existing gender boundaries.

However, by the end of the war, elite white women were tired of relying on a white masculinity that seemed to be failing in protecting their identities. Bitter and disillusioned, they began tentatively constructing their own identities, but not as their "northern sisters" had: more out of spite and anger at conditions, their actions were rooted in the "distinctive" Southern "experience of poverty and failure"...

Review: Self-Taught by Heather Andrea Williams

Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom (John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture)

by Heather Andrea Williams

A Review

Excellent descriptive work of African American education, but not powerfully interpretive 

This research is a much needed contemporary history of the education of African Americans in the South from slavery through reconstruction and the beginnings of the common (public) school. It addresses the question from the local, 'grassroots' perspective--Williams explores how blacks sacrificed to build schools, pay for teachers, advocate for their own education, and how these individuals striving for freedom inspired a movement for education across the South. Poor whites, seeing blacks entering schools, were driven to anger, jealousy, violence, and imitation. Some whites enrolled in freedpeoples schools, as they believed them superior to the poor white schools in the neighborhood (if there were any).

Williams' work could definitely use an update and a broadening of perspective. Her research is education-centric--she does not consider broader social forces at play in her analysis, or if she does, she brings them up for a paragraph before moving on. In other words, she does not string her analysis along broader themes of race/ism, freedom, democracy, etc, all at play during this period. Education was in fact the very foundation of new conceptions of democracy: it was foundational to the ideology of freedom, and it was not coincidental that freedpeople associated education with a way up in the world. They were in some ways appropriating a republican ideology of free labor that valued education as foundational.

By not considering the broader context--the North, the new forces of industrialization and the changing meaning of labor, contestations of freedom, and so on, Williams' point is less forceful, less connected. However, as descriptive work, and as *the* contemporary (21st century) work on the subject, this is definitely must-reading.

Review: Mathematician's Lament by Lockhart

A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form

by Paul Lockhart

A Review

 Wonderful Ideas in Theory, with tragic flaws in argument

As a mathematics teacher and long-time student of mathematics, I was overjoyed to begin reading this book, finally one that attempts to explain the beauty and elegance of mathematics and to expose the way in which we are teaching it, which does not do justice to it at all. I absolutely agree with *most* of Lockhart's assessment on many points, for example, that mathematics is an art, that it should not be taught as procedures and formulas and meaningless word problems that contrive to be about "real life." 

I agree, most of our math teachers do not have this kind of appreciation for mathematics, which is tragic because it means our kids will grow up scared and intimidated by math ("math anxiety") instead of awed at its power of abstract interpretation. I agree our approach needs to be completely overhauled. 

My 2 star rating is due to the fact that Lockhart's analysis is strongly lacking in a historical understanding as well as pedagogical/curriculum knowledge. For example, he says that word problems should not be contrived to be about real life (I agree with this point), and that math is beautiful precisely BECAUSE it is irrelevant to real life. 

As a mathematician I cannot possibly comprehend how another mathematician could possibly believe the beauty of mathematics comes from its "irrelevance" of abstraction: in fact, the reason math is SO powerful is that these abstract representations have all been historically "discovered" or "invented" (depending on what you believe math is: inherent in the world, or a human game of abstraction)--particularly in order to try to model and explain phenomena observed in "the real world." 

Lockhart says math was created by humans "for their own amusement" (p. 31), but ignores that in fact all branches of mathematics in the past were created in response to actual world problems, and not only that, but now, some of the most fascinating mathematics is being created again in response to solving some of the most complex problems we have imagined, such as the mathematics behind string theory. I don't know how Lockhart could possibly consider that humans invented counting, ways to measure their plots of land and keep track of money, or ways to measure the orbits of planets (thus leading us to the current "space age") as "purely amusement"--perhaps, if LIFE is amusement in general, but really, all of these inventions had a very REAL, concrete, specific historical cultural purpose and are not "just made up" for fun!!! 

In fact, math is EMBODIED in our cognitive schemas and perception, and THIS IS PRECISELY what makes it so WONDERFUL: its RELEVANCE to EVERYTHING in real life and humanity's inherent capacity for thinking about the real world in this abstract way! Math is not "just" "fantasy" (as on p. 39) (see especially Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being). 

I teach functions (precalculus, AP calculus) and the main theme and point of math for example at this level is to teach kids how basically, in life, we track patterns of change in anything and everything--public health data, unemployment, polling, the stock market, baseball stats, etc. Functions are just the most abstract way to model these changing patterns over time (or some other variable) and thus give us the powerful tool of projecting into the future/past and otherwise analyzing trends. Yes, functions are abstract, but they are NOT "just fantasy play," irrelevant to the real world, or made up simply for the fun of it, in fact, quite the opposite of all of these. 

Further, my (and I believe, many) students would be aghast to learn that a math teacher is suggesting an overhaul of math education based on the idea that"kids don't really want something that is relevant to their daily lives." This is the most absurd statement I have ever heard, so I am guessing Lockhart knows nothing about adolescent/child development, interest, and pedagogical literature. Learning in general is based on making connections to prior knowledge, and I have never heard any question asked more often in math class when I didn't explain the relevance in advance than "Why do I need to know this? How is this relevant to my life?" This is probably the MOST pressing question for adolescents in general.. 

Other examples of pedagogical tragedies in this book include Lockhart's admonitions that "you can't teach teaching," that "schools of education are a complete crock" and that teachers shouldn't lesson plan because this is somehow "not real" or authentic (p. 46-47). While I agree schools of education are not preparing our teachers well and what we need is much more systemic training in content knowledge (for example, math teachers should all have to double major in math/pedagogy or education), IT IS absolutely not true or supported by any research (except perhaps by the current corporate brand of the reform movement) that teaching is something you "have" that you don't need to "learn" and, further, that you shouldn't plan because this is inauthentic. 

A plan should of course never prevent a teacher from moving in new directions as suggested by the course of the class, but coming in without a plan is certainly not considered sound practice in any theory of learning and from any angle, and in general is not a sound principle of life (i.e., just doing everything by the seat of your pants and counting on your "genius" to lead you through whatever you should have planned usually doesn't work, unless you are in a feel-good movie). Only in Lockhart's fantasy "lala land" of irrelevancy is planning a vice and not a virtue. Plus, there's so much more to "planning" than thinking about the flow of the lesson, how you will help students make connections, etc. I assess and plan hand in hand for example, so I will grade the last night's HW and that day's Exit Slip and plan the next days's and week's lessons all the while incorporating items my students did not fully understand the first time, and also while addressing specifically the mistakes they made (and each class/year of students tends to have different problems and make different mistakes so it is important to constantly plan and reflect as a teacher on what is best for your particular students NOW).

Review: The University in Chains by Giroux

The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex (The Radical Imagination)

by Henry A. Giroux A Review

 First part: powerful and convincing; Second part: polemical and arrogant

After the first (and only truly substantive chapter), I would have given this work 4 stars; having (with difficulty) swallowed the next three chapters, I had to revise this rating down to 2 stars.

In the first part of the book, Giroux makes a compelling argument that institutionalized forms of academics have succumbed to the national security state and to a mythico-masculine idealization of American imperialism. Giroux writes that this military-industrial-academic complex has taken over American universities, that the intersection of corporatism and militarization legitimizes and normalizes a constant state of terror/fear (especially embodied in our culture since 9/11), and that the academy is a contested terrain in which such struggles manifest in a unique and singular way.

Though this first part is clearly rooted in an Enlightenment-democracy-model of education and thus has its agenda and ideological orientation, it's not ostentatiously polemical. The second part, however, degenerates rapidly into polemical rantings: he complains that Horowitz speaks in "sweeping monolithic terms" of "the Left", while speaking in sweeping monolithic terms of the "formidable alliance of far-right-wing foundations", conservative talk-show hosts, thinktanks, and the like. He bemoans that the "right" uses a rhetoric of fear and terror, while urging us to consider his argument on terms that engender fear (this is, after all, a "dark time", characterized by "dark" forces that threaten democracy and all that is good in America, and so on). In other words, Giroux uses the language and rhetoric of the "right" in his "leftist" rant, and is thus not any more "academic" or "professional" in his tone than those he so adamantly condemns.

On a personal note--not that Giroux ever feels compelled to share his background as a context for his views--I am a liberal in academia, not an outraged "rightist." What does outrage me, however, is the doublespeak of the "left": instead of practicing a politics of reconciliation, as we preach, some of us choose to continue divisive dialogue.

A typical example: After lamenting that democracy is not respected in the academy, Giroux asserts that "because students disagree with an unsettling idea doe not mean that they have the authority, expertise, education, or power to dictate for all their classmates... [what the curriculum should be]"... and that there is "no language for conservative students to become conscious of their own ignorance". I challenge Dr. Giroux to critically examine these assertions: does he truly want to claim that students (in a democratic academy, student who are supposedly critical thinkers, Enlightened rationalists, etc) are in fact powerless to challenge their curriculum?? And SHOULD BE?? because they do not have "the authority, expertise, education".. or "language" to understand their "ignorance"?? Whoa...

Review: Class and Schools by Rothstein

Class And Schools: Using Social, Economic, And Educational Reform To Close The Black-white Achievement Gap

by Richard Rothstein A Review

 Technocratic meta-research that aims to "prove" what history has told us for centuries

Rothstein's Class and Schools compiles empirical, quantitative studies that have investigated effects on child learning in school to show that children enter school with significant differences in abilities and potentials. These differences are caused by various factors such as class, race, health status, home situation, and so on--all factors typically outside the domain of influence of the school. Essentially Rothstein shows that, because children spend much of their time outside of schools--in their homes and communities, schools cannot be expected to solve all problems (or at least cannot be faulted for not being able to do so). Rothstein's recommendations include moving some of the factors involved into the school or into the dominion of the state. For example, he suggests school health/vision clinics and increased supervision in before and after-school programs (and over the summer). Rothstein further suggests broader policy is needed to restructure the inequality outside of the school--for example, by providing stable, safe housing for low-SES communities.

I absolutely agree with Rothstein's conclusion: schools can't fix all problems. My two main problems with the work, and the reason for the one star rating, are (1) that Rothstein's logic is driven by no evidence, and that he manages to mangle basic logical constructs of arguments, and (2) scientific quantitative ahistorical methods are not at all suited for the questions at hand.

In regard to (1): it is fairly well accepted in most other disciplines that focus on social phenomena--sociology, history, psychology, philosophy, others--that things never happen in a vacuum, that there are always relationships between what happens at home, at school, at work, in public and in private, in body and in mind, at the individual level and at the societal level. This is never something that has to be proven: it is always taken as a premise. Rothstein twists this logic on its head.

He vaguely accuses a "They" for expecting schools to fix all ills, without any proof--In Rothstein: "Americans have come to the conclusion that the achievement gap is the fault of `failing schools'" (p. 1)--additionally, monolithic conceptions such as this should be suspect to any critical reader.

Which brings me to (2): it seems that if one were really trying to show how forces intersected to shape child learning, one might be much better served by historical methods. The unequal structures that still shape American society today that have roots in colonial times, in slavery, in the unique construction of racism in the United States. Rothstein acknowledges that there is a deep connection between race and class in the United States, but leaves the nature unspoken. Instead, he attempts to quantify the correlation between race and class, essentially trying to extricate the effects of race from class by a number.

Historically this construction is absurd. It ignores the fact that race and class have an intricate, intertwined history in America as they do nowhere else. It is here that the racialization of slavery occurred, here that class formation emerged along lines of race because of the nature of racialized slavery. Scholars have written about how racialization, or the construction of race, occurred during American slavery (for example as shown by Ira Berlin, professor of history at UMD in his various works including Ira Berlin, Generations of captivity: A history of African-American slaves. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press). Splitting the two by a number cannot be done in general, but in particular here in the United States, where class formation occurred along racialized lines institutionalized in slavery. This not a simple problem of addition--race and class are not distinct in any way that can be quantified by a number (as a `correlation', or alleged overlap between the two separate phenomena).

There is certainly a place for quantitative work in assessing schools, curriculum, and even individuals. However, to draw lines from what little quantitative data can tell us to implications for how people should live their lives (i.e., in school from `before-school' programs through `after-school' programs, 6am-8pm) seems far-stretched if the problem is placed in historical/holistic perspective. Then, it becomes clear that a whole structuring of society is at play, and that transformations of such structurings have historically taken centuries of gradual change in all aspects of society.

For example, school segregation and inequality is not a new phenomenon discovered by the "reformers" nowadays who are allegedly trying to save schools. Schools have a long history of segregation in the United States: as old as this land has been colonized by English speaking settlers. From the very beginning (1600s) schools have been a mechanism of preservation (or enhancement) of the dominant culture. In the emergence of the common school (that occurred everywhere from the 1830s/40s in parts of the North through the 1870s in parts of the South), segregation was key to the organization and allocation of school resources and to dictating curriculum. Blacks, were, for example, encouraged towards schools of manual labor as women were trained to be good wives and white men continued on to Harvard et al (see, for example, Lawrence Cremin, American Education: The National Experience, New York, Harper & Row, 1980).

There are many other problems with the work: Rothstein speaks of 'averages' yet never shows us a distribution graph (what he means by 'averages' is distribution), he casually throws around the phrase 'black culture of underachievement' while never mentioning slavery and his white-maleness, he repeatedly confuses class and race without defining either, he uses his own ancestors (Jewish immigrants) as example of 'superior' adjustment over Italian immigrants in the States, he never examines his position/bias, he takes tests at their value and fails to critically examine who wrote the tests and for what purpose, ... and much more. He exalts middle-class culture as an ideal to be imparted upon the 'disadvantaged', he suggests we should attempt to assess "non-cognitive skills" like "tolerance, comprehension of pluralism, self-direction, responsibility, and commitment to craft" (p. 97); he is often contradictory, and at times even racist. Consider what Rothstein has to say on biology and genetics:

On one hand, Rothstein writes that a "family's economic, educational, and cultural traits are influenced by the genetic traits of the parents"; in other words, "smarter" parents have "smarter" babies and such reasoning (17). On the other, he says blacks and whites do not have inherent different genetics--but then again, whites do test "smarter", according to him, and there is nothing wrong with the testing in essence (i.e., who constructs the tests, the framework tests follow, etc)... we are left to work out the ambiguities of the position on our own. What saves Rothstein's ambiguity from more blatant expression is that he believes it's essentially out of policy's range at this point to regulate genetics or to do anything about them, so he "does not dwell on the possible genetic contributions" (p. 17).

This work is truly disturbing in its lack of critical examination, considering it claims its place within a critical tradition.

Review: Pedagogies of the Imagination by Leonard

Pedagogies of the Imagination: Mythopoetic Curriculum in Educational Practice

by Timothy Leonard a review

 Engaging collection that will challenge assumptions and diffuse boundaries,

This collection of essays explores mythopoetic dimensions of pedagogy from various perspectives. While each contributor has his or her own individual understanding of mythopoetic, Patricia Holland and Noreen Garman provide a broad theoretical foundation for the collection--essentially they construct the mythopoetic as both critical and interpretive (two 'paradigms' in the field of educational research that are often understood as distinct-the critical dimension as normative, the interpretive as interested in meaning). The message: the mythopoetic domain is not only a land of imagination where nothing is *real*, but in fact is political in its very being and requires reflexive, continuous self-questioning. Imagination is political. This implies a radical ethics, one in which we become responsible for our envisioning of the world.

I personally enjoyed the first half of the collection ("Mythopoesis and Curriculum Theorizing") but found myself glossing over the second part ("Mythopoesis in Educational Practice", save a few articles, for example Mary Doll's "Capacity and Currere"). While the first part often offers profound interpretations and inter-disciplinary connections, the second part is more descriptive of actual classroom practices and overall has the very 'social sciency' feel to it, and not a rigorous one at that (categorizing things in stages and steps, writing them in bulleted lists, quoting long passages of 'lived experience' accounts, quoting secondary sources who quote primary sources, using language like 'representation' when talking about art, and so on).

Overall, however, the message of the work is solid and powerful. Even the chapters I did not enjoy so much I found challenged some of my held assumptions, and for that I highly recommend this collection. As Leonard and Willis write in the conclusion, perhaps this work will help teachers or others who already practice or experience within this dimension to articulate their experiences, and to come forth and tell their stories--to make themselves known. Or perhaps this work will help us better understand how we live in the myth of Western science, and how we may otherwise envision our worlds. It's worth your time (though based on this first edition's price, I would find it in a library).

Review: Inequality at the Starting Gate by Lee & Burkam

Inequality at the Starting Gate: Social Background Differences in Achievement as Children Begin School

A Review

 Dry ahistorical statistical analysis of child inequality

Lee and Berkham use data from the U.S. Department of Education's Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) to show that various variables affect `cognitive skills' of children, such as everything from socioeconomic context to television habits, particularly as children first enter school. They contend that of all influences, socioeconomic status has the most impact on child learning, and propose several directions for policy based on their analysis, including beginning out-of-home daycare/school at an earlier age and increasing school resources in low SES communities.

Why only a "2" star rating? The book is dry and ahistorical: there is no analysis of *why* or *how* we find ourselves in the dire situation of today. Instead, Lee and Burkam act as if we could disentangle race and class through hierarchical modeling, and construct the problem as a simple one of addition: race contributes this much to learning, class this much, school resources this much, and so on. In fact, historically this is absurd, particularly in the Unites States where class formation occurred along the lines of race institutionalized in slavery. There is no simple number that will extricate race from class.

There are many other problems with the work, even within its own paradigm. For example, Lee and Burkam use a hierarchical least squares regression model to disentangle the effects of (in order): race; social class; child demographics; home demographics; education expectations and pre-K care; at-home activities; outside-home activities (p. 49-56)

However, this model has a bias that is left unexamined in the report: the order in which the variables are used in the hierarchical analysis matters. This model is mathematically hierarchical; when it is applied to social science situations, it is generally used to study phenomena that are naturally hierarchically structured. For example, the first level might divide students by state, then by district, then by school, and so on (in naturally nested subunits of students). However, students are not naturally divided into race, social class, and so on in the same naturally hierarchical way. In fact, Lee and Burkam rank their chosen variables in order of what they believe most characterize students: first, at the top as the most significant characteristic, race, then, social class, and so on. Their analysis would yield different numbers/correlations, in other words, if they had ranked their variables differently. Their 'results', then, that SES matters more than class, are in fact invalidated by their own construction of the problem.

Other question marks: This research is published by EPI, according to them, a non-profit thinktank (turns out EPI is funded by labor unions and similar organizations). Of note is that this research is published `in-house'. Also: Lee and Burkam do not critically question the hierarchical framework of testing and of their own quantitative framework, do not analyze their assumptions, and so on.

This research could have been published as one article--certainly it does not merit a book.