Reviews for Service Report on Technical Education, With Special Reference to the Baltimore

The average rating for Service Report on Technical Education, With Special Reference to the Baltimore based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-01-29 00:00:00 John Flood I took it upon myself to read this enormous tome as part of my Lenten penance for this year. Now, by Lenten penance, I am not referring to spiritual reading that will bring me closer to God during the season of Lent. This book will definitely not do that. Reading this tome was like giving up meat or taking a cold shower or wearing a celise - it is a painful undertaking that I did to atone for sin. So why was this book such a chore to read? For one thing, it is enormous, over 1300 pages of text plus another 300+ pages of appendices. "War and Peace" is actually shorter than this book. Add to that the writing style of Raymond Brown, who is a scholar writing for scholars who does not feel compelled to use readable prose and who greatly overuses abbreviations and run on sentences. Brown repeats many of the sins of modern Biblical scholars, such as the refusal to take the meaning of the biblical text at face value, the devaluation of interpretations of early Christian sources in favor of imaginary sources such as "Q" and "Pre-Mark", and a tendency to discount the supernatural and the prophetic. So why did I give such a book 4 stars? Frankly, if you want to understand what modern Biblical scholars have to say about the Passion Narratives of Christ, this book is THE one to read. Brown lines up the passion narratives of all four gospels, along with the passion narrative of the apocryphal "Gospel of Peter" and discusses the differences and similarities of each one. He explores the secular histories of such writers as Josephus and Tacitus and ties those into what the gospel writers had to say. He discusses the Greek text at length (in my opinion, perhaps too much at length) and contrasts how the wording in the Greek may point out differences in the perspectives of the Gospel writers. Despite his position as perhaps the most pre-eminent of modern Catholic scripture scholars, Brown treats the writings of the Church fathers far more extensively than I have seen among other bibilical scholars, and he discusses their views without the usual dismissal and condescention of other biblical scholars. What's more, he is deeply knowledgeable about all the most current biblical scholarship, and he can evaluate the positions of most scholars and discuss their merits. The book starts out very slow, with an in depth discussion of the origins of the Gospels. By the time Brown actually dives into the text, however, the discussion is far more focused and interesting. Brown breaks up the Gospel discussions about the Passion from the Garden of Gethsemane to the laying of Christ in the tomb and divides them into scenes, and he lays out each scene as described in each of the gospels and dives into them, going into all the linguistic, historical, theological and other aspects of each scene. By the time you finish each section, you will feel like you are an expert on that passage of scripture. I would not recommend that you read this book for spiritual reading or for any sustained reading for that matter. This book is definitely a reference book that should be picked up and read in small chunks as required for your study of certain passages of scripture. But if you want to know the latest scholarship on the Passion Narratives, this book is a must.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-03-12 00:00:00 John Kerr In the first volume of several, Bernstein compiles his essays, analyzing the relationship between linguistic codes and social class. He offers that this correlation affects a child's educability. I admittedly struggled with this book, my first attempt at reading a conceptual framework of this kind. While that is not a fault of the author whatsoever, its density lessened my enjoyment. Nevertheless, the organization of the volume was immensely helpful. With repetition of entire chunks of essays placed among different experiments or arguments, I began to understand Bernstein's theory and definitely agree with the idea that schools operate in a kind of language that undermines the potential of working-class children.