Online Education Degree

A nation would seem to be in trouble if the supposedly educated portion of its population are writing book reviews with words like “aliteracy” such as did reviewer D Becker.

It just shows one should never put much store in print.
Rating: 3 / 5

This book is a stuffy and pretentious effort of a bibliophile to lionize the value of certain books as being essential to the development of a learned mind. Though she doesn’t state she has is tradionalist in her concept of education-and I doubt she has done much reading about the history or philosophy of education, Ms Bauer promulgates a dated, simplistic and “other directed” kind of learning by reading “great” books. She must have either not read or found worthless the works of the transcendentalists like Emerson, or the pragmatists like Dewey, or works of the Frankfurt school as her orientation to books fails to consider the orientation of these movements. In addition, though she suggests the reader take careful notes she mentions nothing about marginalia, or ideas about scaffolding ones reading with advance organizers or visual organizers or any advanced ideas about journaling via Progiffs at a journal Workshop. For someone who wants to tell others how to be well read- she seems to have not done sufficient reading, from my viewpoint. So to me her book lacks a lot of virtue. In additions, she doesnt want books to free the reader to go beyond the limits of books into developing their own understanding as the educational theorist Howard Gardner advocates in The Disciplined Mind. On that point Dewey, too would consider her kind of learning too bookish to be of genuine value.Genuine learning from books requires more reflection and engagement with real life then Bauer seems to understand. It seems to me as Dante said she has become rich in books-and impoverished in herself. This results from her orientation of revering books without critically, freely and fully digesting them. Bibliphile-heal thyself!

Books can be used to further learing if the right approach is taken. In my mind, the author shows that she has failed to approach her book thoroughl-she is given to partial knowledge and hence she has “einschrankunged” to use Heideggers term not only the reading process and what can be gained from the books she mentions but the learning experience, as well.

Whats most remarkable abnout this book is the authors failure to do much reading of the reading research literature which is quite rich and developed.

Bauer fails to understand ideas as prominant as Barthes notion of readerly vs writerly texts. She doesnt understand what Balzac and other authors with respect to “”textual anxiety”-that authors ideas dont always translate well into words. Bauer is a logocentric as she fails to understand the reading proces often involves use of images- the “dual code processing” or any of Simply put this book is “one dimensional” and “disenchanting” as the author failed to do much research-much reading about the reading experience. She also fails to understand that some like Julia Cameron in The Artists Way know reading too much or too often can stifle creativity. With books like Bauers its understandable why we have aproblem with aliteracy in this country. This books value lies in providing an annotated bibliography of some classics-beyond that it just bears witness to the authors ignorance and failure to approach the subject of reading with virtue
Rating: 3 / 5

“The Well Educated Mind” by Susan wise Bauer is a book I would recommend to anyone who is playing catch-up or looking for an easy review. For those same purposes, after you read “The Well Educated Mind”, I suggest that you also go on to read another book that is an education in itself called (and don’t be mislead by the title) “West Point: Character Leadership Education: Thomas Jefferson” by Norman Thomas Remick.
Rating: 5 / 5