If Einstein Ran the Schools: Revitalizing U.S. Education
By (Author) Thomas Armstrong Ph.D.
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Praeger Publishers Inc
11th October 2019
United States
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
Educational: Arts, general
Educational strategies and policy
Philosophy and theory of education
371.207
Winner of 2020 IPPY Award, Silver, Education II (Commentary/Theory) Category 2019
Hardback
200
Width 156mm, Height 235mm
510g
Many world-class thinkers and creators have been concerned about the state of education in the United States. Discover their thoughts on how children really learn and what teachers must do to optimally tap children's latent abilities. During the last three decades, education reformers have pushed standardized testing and policies like No Child Left Behind and Common Core to improve test scores and proficiency in basic skills. However, during this period that author Thomas Armstrong calls the "miseducation of America," a number of troubling trends have surfaced, including a decrease in creative thinking scores among children in kindergarten through third grade. Rather than focus on what's wrong with the education system that has produced these outcomes, Armstrong lays out what creative thinkers know about how children should be educated. In an extended thought experiment, he asks what would happen if we turned the reins of educational policy over, not to the politicians and educational bureaucrats, but to eminent thinkers and creators like Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Martin Luther King Jr., Rachel Carson, Doris Lessing, Jane Goodall, and other seminal culture-builders. What might they say about the best way to educate a child If Einstein Ran the Schools suggests that the answers to this intriguing question should guide future efforts to reform our nation's schools.
Thomas Armstrong, PhD, is executive director of the American Institute for Learning and Human Development and an award-winning author and speaker. He has been an educator for more than 45 years.