Reviews for Drugs Partnerships for Policy, Prevention & Education

The average rating for Drugs Partnerships for Policy, Prevention & Education based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-05-12 00:00:00 Joe Belek I have mixed feelings about this book, I am very engaged by its theoretical arguments, but not convinced by the evidence provided in the body of the book. It is clearly the book of the author's PhD observing one nursery school in India. I really like her clear exposition of how she was applying the theoretical framework of post-colonial theory to the examination of her subject - early childhood education. Unfortunately the descriptive account of the day to day happenings in the nursery lacked analysis and she did not, for me, make a convincing argument. The final chapter is written with her supervisor, Gaile Cannella and this is a much stronger chapter and makes the case for applying post-colonialism to a consideration of childhood. They argue that discourses about young children have created the concept of 'childhood' in a way that gives power to the 'adults' and controls the way he think about children. They name these discourses 'colonising structures' and equate children's experiences to the colonial experience for those who were conjugates and controlled. That is to see they argue that a particular group of people (labelled children) is classified with the characterisation (s) used for control by another group of people (adults). These discourses structure the lens through which we see children that makes it almost impossible to consider other ways of looking. For them the postcolonial lens provides a different way of looking that can challenge the dominant and hegemonic discourses of that dictate what early childhood education should consist of. I am drawn to this conceptualisation of critical discourse and will definitely follow up the excellent reference list provided. Watch this space!

Review # 2 was written on 2017-06-23 00:00:00 Alejandro Vazquez Verduzco Education: Opposing Viewpoints attempts to cover the more controversial aspects of education from different perspectives and manages to include many topics: the overall state of education, vouchers, religion, standardized testing, funding, and home schooling. There are a few issues, like teachers' unions, that I would have liked to hear more about, but the book does a pretty good job in a relatively short amount of space. In addition, the book offers pre-reading questions and open-ended follow up questions for further discussion, both of which could be moderately helpful in a classroom setting. The arguments often come down to the standard liberal and conservative points of view, though, not always. As I was reading, I made an earnest effort to judge each argument on its own merit and forget preconceived notions I may have had. As a liberal, however, I still found myself siding with the liberal points of view in most cases. Allowing the Ten Commandments in public schools and putting such a strong focus on standardized tests still seem like bad ideas to me. But even so, I found some of the conservative arguments to be at least somewhat persuasive. Vouchers—at least for a while—seemed like they could be a good idea. Perhaps with some modification or at least more information, I could begin to support them. Even more compelling (or distressing) to me was the notion that liberal college professors often don't allow opposing viewpoints and, therefore, stifle true debate. I don't know the actual extent of this problem, but I do believe there is some truth to it. This is troubling to me because it seems that there are fewer and fewer places that real debate takes place, so college certainly needs to remain one of them. And, of course, this brings me to the finest aspect of a book like this. The arguments may not have thoroughly addressed every detail and I still may not quite know where I stand on some of these issues, but almost every essay raised many questions for me. It got me thinking even more critically about what the real problems and solutions are for education. In other words, the book acts as a great starting point for delving further into the truly complex issues of education.