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culpeppper's review against another edition
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
Gotta let my thoughts percolate a bit...
Thoughts: this is a wonderful look at what could be possible everywhere, in any sort of classroom or educational space where open minded educators and parents who want to see their kids thrive. There are a few changes that modern times face (the technology boom after initial publishing and the pandemic, to name a couple) but this book provides a good argument for place based education despite the rapid changes, and I think provides an obvious solution to many of the US education shortcomings. I'm a teaching assistant at an outdoor preschool, which is also a summer camp for a few months of the year, and we read this as a group of teachers for our spring semester. Though our kids abilities to do many of the described activities in the book are simply not there yet, or the setting is too different, there were still important lessons and questions that we took from it.
If you are a parent, educator, student, or a community member who just wants to see education change in your area for the better, give this book a try. Even if not every tactic may work for your community (there's not a one size fits all environmental education plan, which is the big point of it all) you're sure to find something worth taking away from this. If you just want to read about cool stories of schools doing wonderful environment based education, read the chapter Notes From the Field at the very least. The descriptions of worn down students coming alive with renewed love for learning made me tear up a few times.
It's a hopeful read, but in 2024, it's also hard to see how little has changed for kids in the last 20 years. We gotta make a change.
Thoughts: this is a wonderful look at what could be possible everywhere, in any sort of classroom or educational space where open minded educators and parents who want to see their kids thrive. There are a few changes that modern times face (the technology boom after initial publishing and the pandemic, to name a couple) but this book provides a good argument for place based education despite the rapid changes, and I think provides an obvious solution to many of the US education shortcomings. I'm a teaching assistant at an outdoor preschool, which is also a summer camp for a few months of the year, and we read this as a group of teachers for our spring semester. Though our kids abilities to do many of the described activities in the book are simply not there yet, or the setting is too different, there were still important lessons and questions that we took from it.
If you are a parent, educator, student, or a community member who just wants to see education change in your area for the better, give this book a try. Even if not every tactic may work for your community (there's not a one size fits all environmental education plan, which is the big point of it all) you're sure to find something worth taking away from this. If you just want to read about cool stories of schools doing wonderful environment based education, read the chapter Notes From the Field at the very least. The descriptions of worn down students coming alive with renewed love for learning made me tear up a few times.
It's a hopeful read, but in 2024, it's also hard to see how little has changed for kids in the last 20 years. We gotta make a change.
ksinclair04's review against another edition
3.0
Sobel does a good job of outlining the basic concepts and theories of place-based education, offering numerous examples both anecdotal and quantitative. I found his casual style of writing to be a bit grating at times, and would like to see some research on this topic done more formally. If such philosophies of education are to be taken seriously by the broader world of education reform (and I truly believe they should be!), more in-depth, scholarly research must be produced.
xinetr's review against another edition
5.0
I love this book. If I were to start a school, it would be based mostly on the principles in this book. I would add more arts and foreign language though. Art for its own sake, but Edward Tufte (and even historical figures like William James maybe--the guy whose first day in a Harvard lab he had to spend drawing a fish...? I don't remember who that story was about...) makes the case for the need for visual arts in communicating scientific ideas. Back to this book...I also love the combination of connecting kids to the nature and the people of their community. So many times environmental activism seems in conflict with economic needs of people who live in the environment, but I think educating with both in mind would make it easier to create short-term win-win situations (after all those are the only ones that will allow long-term survival, because people are part of nature). So we need this kind of book and this kind of education now!
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