Reviews

Teaching as a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman, Charles Weingartner

gordonmacrae's review against another edition

informative medium-paced

3.75

ogreart's review

5.0

I was just looking through this again and am saddened by how many of these issues, written about almost 50 years ago, are still relevant in today's schools. I consider it a must-read for teachers.

emmalthompson85's review against another edition

4.0

Probably the only useful thing that's come out of the university based portion of my teaching course so far. Postman advocates for large-scale change to the school system which would move the child back to the centre instead of the focus being on teaching. I can't say anything about anywhere else but I can see how elements of his ideas have been incorperated in the UK, with the idea of student-focused lessons and moving away from transmission-learning, but at the end of the day it's all the same. We call it something else but the aim in my lesson is still to take what's in my head and put it into the heads of students. It's still about right answers and the kids guessing what I know as truth rather then exploring what's true to them. I think that within science there is a place for some transmission learning but I think also that Postman has a lot to make us think about how we teach and why.

I think, ultimatley, to reach Postman's vision we will have to entirely eliminate assesment and testing, at least as we know it. There's so much here I'd like to put into parctice but, at the end of the day, while the kids may learn more if they don't learn the answers I have to teach them to pass the tests that are the only things their future educators and employers will value I'm doing good for no-one. Imagine a world without tests. Imagine if instead of being judged on a number you produced in a test you were instead, maybe, judged on a portfolio of projects and questions that showed your thinking and doing and were realy relevant and personal to you. Things you'd explored and thuoght about and cared about, not done becasue the teacher had told you to.

Though most of his ideas simple won't work within assesment and curriculum structures and require more radical, higher level change then I can effect in my clasroom he does, to be fair, give small ideas you can introduce into normal classroom teaching. And he makes you think.

three_martini_lunch's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

gilljames's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

 

This book is rather America-centric. Surely what is being proposed is good for the world not just the USA. This was an irritation. 

I was only partially convinced by some of the main arguments in it and perhaps this is as well - students should think for themselves rather than just accept what is told them, as the book suggests.  

True too that change is rapid - perhaps even more rapid today than even when the book was written in 1968. 

I believe that critical thinking is the most important gift we can offer learners. All else follows. This book seems to agree. 

It was refreshing to see someone using a Socratic approach. 

Yet surely some things must be taught - how to read, number bonds, times tables (best learnt by rote  actually) and certain life skills. Clearly as suggested these thing  may almost learn themselves if a student is properly motivated. 

lilllymoscovitz's review against another edition

challenging informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

5.0

jheinemann287's review against another edition

4.0

What am I going to have my students do today?
What's it good for?
How do I know? (193)

It's insane that this book, literally written in the 60s, still holds so much relevance to today's education system slash world. I mean, this: "[Censorship] is easy to do ... when the loudspeakers are owned and operated by mammoth corporations with enormous investments in their proprietorship. What we get is an entirely new politics, including the possibility that a major requirement for the holding of political office be prior success as a show-business personality" (9). YUP.

I reference ideas from this book all the time -- in PD conversations, in evaluation paperwork, in my own pedagogy book, Choice & Voice (2020). The way a teacher runs a classroom is a matter of equity since, as Postman and Weingartner note, the medium is the message. If a teacher stands in front of the room and tells students what to think about a book, she is tacitly insisting that authority figures have all the answers, that there is one right way to problem solve, and that students cannot find useful ideas in themselves or in their experiences. In short, students learn that their teacher's ideas and values matter more than their own.

This is why it's crucial that students are in the center of pedagogy. English class needs to be ABOUT something; you can teach reading, writing, speaking, listening, and critical thinking with any subject matter. So is that subject matter Jane Eyre or something else? Postman and Weingartner argue that "the 'subject,' of course, [is] them [the students]: that is, it concern[s] their perceptions of the world, and their attempts to communicate with that world" (178). I love that. Just like students don't become better readers if they're not reading, they're not becoming better thinkers if they're not thinking. And they're not thinking if you're doing all the thinking for them.

There is so much more to say about this book. The copy my partner and I share is so dog-eared and marked up that it doesn't even help us find the quotes we're looking for. It's a classic that feels groundbreaking.

(Full disclosure: The chapter about "City Schools" ...does not hold up. Skip that one.)

faintingviolet's review against another edition

2.0

Just not the book for me, right now. I already know and work with the theory of inquiry based learning, so that part wasn't new to me. What was interesting is looking at a work that is 50 years old and knowing that we've been having the same conversation about education since the dawn of the modern age, if not longer.

https://faintingviolet.wordpress.com/2015/03/26/teaching-as-a-subversive-activity-cbr7-21/

bookmermaidx's review against another edition

4.0

Read this for one of my classes but was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It’s a super dense read, jam-packed with information but it’s all interesting.

csd17's review against another edition

5.0

Postman takes aim at education, proving that education has been terrible since the 60s and, from my experience, has possibly gotten worse. I wish I was still teaching so that I could implement his theories. Though the administrative authorities and boards would dislike it because it might make their jobs irrelevant.