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 The Education Enigma Sep 04, 2009
By Michelle K. Malsbury
"Michelle Kaye Malsbury, BSBM, MM"
Bruce Deitrick Price, Author
The Education Engima
Word-Wise Publishing, ISBN 978-1-4392-3035-0
Non-Fiction-education, politics
136 pages
September 2009 Review for Bookpleasures
Reviewer-Michelle Kaye Malsbury, BSBM, MM
Review
Bruce D. Price, author of The Education Enigma, was born in Norfolk, Virginia, but now resides in Manhattan. (2009, p.136) He was educated at Norfolk Academy, spent two years in the Army, and later graduated with honors in English Literature from Princeton University. Mr. Price has penned five books of various genres and also fancies himself an artist. More information can be found about Bruce Deitrick Price on his personal web site www.improve-education.org or at www.artnorfolk.com.
This book is a compilation of essays that Mr. Price has authored for his web site (see above). In the first few pages he speaks about how he became an education activist and what his aspirations are in this endeavor. Over the duration of this book Mr. Price laments how woefully and totally inadequate America's public educational system is. He sees this problem ("dumbing up") as growing in magnitude over the past hundred years. He attempts to pinpoint who or what entity he believes is at fault and offers suggestions for how to overcome this dire situation.
Throughout this book Bruce Price views our youth into adult population as largely functionally illiterate and pins this plight squarely on the liberal "progressive" Ph.D's who administer such programs in our educational system. He contends to trace this unsettling and planned dilemma back to President Dewey where he says that "...Dewey was eager to dilute content and diminish learning." (2009, p.38) "John Dewey and his gang were all too willing to settle for mediocrity. They were socialists...too much learning and knowledge got in the way of producing the cooperative, interdependent children they wanted." (p.39)
Mr. Price states that "...educators....deepest desires seem focused on control and coercion." (2009, p.31) And that the focus of this control is to "....create a New American Child--more uniform, more pliable, with fewer academic skills, and a reduced ability to think independently." (p.35) According to Price teaching methods that have been recently introduced with regard to reading (i.e., "Whole word or sight reading") have been the culprits of this debacle. These relatively new, but not particularly innovative, practices have born the crux of Mr. Prices' anger or disdain toward the educational establishment as a whole. He (Bruce Price) believes that [paraphrase] by implementing these new techniques children are no longer taught to read phonetically and therefore are unable to read even simple literature. He (Price) calls this the "war against reading or intellectual child abuse" and attributes dyslexia and other disorders with this one technique gone awry. (2009, p.69-76 and 84)
Bruce Price believes "the goal of education has always been to achieve critical thinking....and constructing new knowledge." (2009, p.91, 98) He does not think children (nor many Ph.D's, p.103) today can read, write, or speak well enough to be pressed through our public school systems let alone move on toward and through college. This planned sabotage of our educational system he (Price) suggests is "...leveling that results when everyone is semi-illiterate."
Bruce Price arrogantly calls down the Ph.D's as being "nouveau intellectuals" and states that they use such educational trappings [paraphrase-largely hollow extensive graduate/post-graduate degrees and certifications] to improve their rank within society and little more. (2009, p.105) "These liberals want to tell us how to think, but cannot even write English." "Today's liberal educators have drifted across to the dark side. They aid and abet education policies that actually lead to limited education and less universal literacy." He makes a distinction between educators (the cause of this illiteracy problem) and teachers (the culprits in this plan). (p.123) He says that "...the people at the top are grossly incompetent or actually subversive." (p.124) As to the former quote from Mr. Price I do take exception as I am a doctoral student and quite concerned with education overall and achieving my personal best.
Mr. Price concludes by deriding the newspapers (propagandists) and poet's inability to write clearly or correctly. (2009, p.115-120) He does offer suggestions for improvement in educating beginning with children in the first grade "...learning the basics in each subject". ( p.92) Mr. Price believes that by adding to those things taught in the beginning and building on them from year to year until the children have a complete understanding and are encouraged to "...analyze, to compare, and contrast" our educational facilities would create a more literate and independent thinking person as the end result. Toward this end I wholly agree.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Giving Public Scholls a Failing Grade Jun 11, 2009
By Cynthia Clarke
As the founder of Improve[...], Mr.Deitrick Price has dedicated himself to researching the failures of the public school system in America. In this book he includes 50 short essays that attempt to explain why it is that education in the USA remains ineffective, despite massive spending.
Tracing back the failure to the late 1800's, the author is able to make a firm case for where America went wrong. With chapter titles like "Dumbing Down and the Scandal of Dyslexia", "Maria Montessori vs. John Dewey (The Fight of the Century)" and "Form, Function and Foolishness", Mr. Deitrick Price takes the reader on a fascinating journey of secret agendas and failed experiments. But the essays, largely taken from his internet articles, are written in a comfortable, conversational tone that makes the difficulty of the subject easier to take in.
As a novelist, painter, poet and education activist, the author is an interesting man indeed. Although the book is an intense one, home-schooling parents in particular will find a quirky solace in its pages. We know inside ourselves that there is something so intrinsically wrong about public schools that we have been willing to dedicate our very lives to helping our children excel outside the system. This well researched book comes along side to provide the evidence for our instincts.
The Education Enigma: What Happened To American Education May 02, 2009
By G. W. Kinison
I purchased a copy of "The Education Enigma: What Happened To American Education"(Paperback) by Bruce Price on March 29th. I have found the book to be most interesting and informative. As a retired engineer, I have always been baffled at the consistently poor education being provided by the public schools. Now I understand why. I recommend this book to anyone who also has had questions. It is well written, entertaining, and short enough to be read casually on a business trip, or before retiring for the night. My youngest son who is currently a sophomore in college also read through the book and really liked it. I hope Mr. Price writes more books on American education in the future. GWK
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