Reviews for Right Turn: The Conservative Revolution in Education

The average rating for Right Turn: The Conservative Revolution in Education based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-12-18 00:00:00 Brian Schofield The road to becoming a teacher is fraught with challenges: parents, students, other teachers, government policies, cultural differences to name just a few. Perhaps there is no other profession where everyone else has such strong opinions on how it is to be carried out. With this collection of essays, the teacher, especially a secondary teacher, is given an expansive overview of many of the key issues facing their work in the UK. There is much to benefit both new and experienced teachers looking to gain a more academic approach to their work. The four parts cover theory, schooling, learning, and curriculum issues, leading to plenty of material covering nearly every aspect of teaching. However, there are perhaps two main issues with this collection: the first is that it is squarely planted in the British (that is English) tradition of teaching. Its examples and case studies and data are all referring to the English system. Now, this is a question of time and scope: there is not a book large enough to cover global perspectives, and there is plenty applicable to teachers working internationally too. However, its other issue is that is only covers material up to 2010 and the election of the coalition government in the UK, neglecting many changes in education policy in the last eight years. This too in time could be improved with an update issue. This volume is still a valuable tool for teachers, regardless of their progression along this career path, and offers much valuable insight.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-12-22 00:00:00 Chad Landen I gave this three stars because, despite my urges to go find the author and shake him until his ears rang, it was extremely informative and I hard time putting it down. That said, reader beware: the author seems to go into researching this book with the knowledge that Japanese high school students were out-performing Americans in math and science and hoping to find that American schools were in fact "better," despite this statistic. In my mind, American schools are typically bad at producing what they want: informed thinkers with a passion for democracy and the greater good. On the other hand, Japanese schools are excellent at producing what they want: adults who are going to go out into the world and serve their purpose. The rub lies in the fact that Americans think that the Japanese crush their childrens' souls in the process and the Japanese laugh at what some of our high schools call "math." My original intent was to shake the author into a coma, but he mostly redeemed himself with this line, near the end of the book: "If the Japanese suffer from too much standardization and routine, American high schools suffer from lack of focus." Of course, then his appendix dips into comparing suicide rates with the flux of the school year, so...