The Spirit Of Education
Podiobooks.com presents a book by Jeff White, “The Spirit Of Education:”
“The Spirit of Education” attempts to begin anew our conversations about this thing called education. It suggests that we start not with what students ought to know, but what humans are. It suggests that learning isn’t something that happens to children in specialized buildings at the hands of experts, but something that is hardwired into the human animal, an essential goad to our personal and collective evolution.
July 10th, 2007 at 7:35 am
Jeff,
Well I finally finished the book and I have several comments about it, both good and bad.
This book is really a tome, it’s huge, I’ll talk more about that later though. The theme song is nice, actually really enjoyed the theme song, so congrats for picking that one out. The mixing and post production quality seemed to be done very professionally, I don’t know if you are an audio guru or what, but it sounded great.
The premise behind the book was interesting. However, trying to build analogies between all the main points and a tarot deck seemed cumbersome and didn’t add much for me since I’ve never even really seen a tarot deck. Beyond the tarot deck, the chapters seemed riddled with cumbersome analogies that confused me more than helped. It seemed that the book rambled on a bit. A chapter would be introduced and would compare the main subject to the tarot cards, then you might talk about politics, the environment, society and on and on. Ultimately I’d lose the point of the discussion.
It seemed like many of your arguments referred to societal issues which you then extrapolated to humanity wide issues. However so many of your references were clearly focused on US society and I don’t think you can automatically extend issues and societal problems or even educational issues in the US to the entire globe. Some systems throughout the world work very well and allow for the inner acorn to develop nicely in the population.
I generally agreed with you, I thought many of your ideas were of an existential and left wing nature. At times I didn’t agree with your explanations or the way you backed up your points, even if I agreed with you. Your argument and points were generally to American focused and seemed to disregard the rest of the world and the way they do things.
Because of the analogies and the rambling arguments and points that backed those up I often lost the main thread of the chapter, I think if the book stayed more focused on the main ideas it would appear more coherent and ultimately more powerful.
Thanks,
Chris
Shanghai, China
May 18th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
I have to say, this book found me at the right moment. I didn’t mind the length, but I have a penchant for wanting to always know more and not being able to wait for another podcast, episode, etc.
We have been homeschooling and unschooling (life learning) our daughter for the past 7 1/2 years. As a former teacher who ultimately became disenchanted with the whole business of school, I have faced serious paradigm shifts in raising my child in this manner. This book helped solidify in my mind that we are doing the right thing for her.
Spirit of Education is American and Western centered, but as the author lives in the U.S. and some of the more harmful parts of Western ideology are spreading like a virus to other parts of the world it is an important message to get across. Also, as some of the philosophical points have a more Buddhist tone of live and let live, it would seem that this idea is certainly needed in the West and particularly in the U.S. where the school systems nationwide are failing our children altogether.
When looking at learning as a lifelong process rather than a terminal one, the philosophy behind it needs to be explored and explained. I actually enjoyed the tarot being the framework on which the book was hung, though I’m not particularly familiar with the tarot. The figures in the book are all archetypes from mythologies especially in the West.
Overall, I enjoyed the book, it’s message, ideas, and overall feeling of hope it has. I would reccommend it and will be to many of my fellow homeschoolers and unschoolers.