Education on the Wild Side

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In a free-ranging, boundary-crossing exploration of current theories and practices that address the crisis in American education, Johnson, chair of the English department at the University of Kansas, detects a shift in attitude about education, from ``teaching'' or ``lecturing, giving the answers'' to ``instructing'' or ``preparing, equipping.'' What Johnson envisions is apeironic learning--``a process whereby one learns what is `known' . . . but then questions it,'' which would combine teaching and instructing (or as the author calls them, the ``mild side'' and the ``wild side'' of education). The author, whose earlier work, Mind, Language, Machine: Artificial Intelligence in the Poststructuralist Age , explored cognitive science, is aiming for an audience of primarily professional educators responsive to illuminating critiques and his synthesis of the diverse thinking of such people as Bloom, Postman and the deconstructionists. Johnson's ability to integrate disciplines with practical approaches to the complexities of learning may evoke responses from peers in the educational establishment; the general reader may find the thickets overwhelming. (Sept.)

Booknews

Johnson (English, U. of Kansas) explores the present crisis in education, especially in the US, by surveying broad changes in recent curricular and pedagogical theory and practice. These changes entail a shift from "teaching" to "instructing"--from students learning what the teacher knows to learning how to ask questions, how to unsettle the settled, how to deal with the unknown. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)