This article reviews Sherry Turkle's book, "The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit," which explores the subjective impact of the computer on children, adults, and our consciousness and culture in general. Two references are provided. (DCS)

Critiques the first two volumes of E.D. Hirsch, Jr.'s Core Knowledge Series, "What Your 1st Grader Needs to Know" and "What Your 2nd Grader Needs to Know" (Doubleday, 1991), for thin coverage of core curriculum fundamentals, highly condensed format, and unbalanced content. Parents should realize there is no substitute for a…

Criticizes John Naisbitt's bestselling novel, "Megatrends," for reifying constructs (industrial society and information society), treating these entities as mutually exclusive, and endowing them with a life cycle. In addition, claims the novel is marred by faddish jargon and is statistically unreliable. (MLF)

Reviews Tracy Kidder's latest bestseller, an engaging account of the daily experiences of one fifth grade teacher and her students in a deteriorating neighborhood in a rustbelt community. Teacher Chris Zajac is a pragmatist with little time for esoteric learning theory. Although Chris is warm, caring, and skillful, her school is not meeting…

Author gives an opposing point of view to Jencks' book, Inequality, on the effect equalizing educational opportunity will have on equalizing income in our society. (GB)

Criticizes John Goodlad's book "A Place Called School," claiming the conclusions and recommendations are questionable because of a limited review of the literature, a lack of student achievement data, and methodological problems. (MLF)

John Goodlad, author of "A Place Called School," responds to Hersh Waxman's critical review by claiming Waxman takes terms out of context, ignores the author's caveats, and critiques what the book is not, contrary to everything the author says it is. (MLF)

Already a business management classic, "Thriving on Chaos," by Tom Peters, has momentous theoretical and practical implications for educators. Peters's organizational solutions to the challenge of the declining U.S. economy are also prescriptions for school survival. Today's organizations need fewer structural layers and must be…

An ethnography is a richly textured description of community life that allows us to understand others on their own terms. The ethnographic work of Heath, MacLeod, Taylor, and others can help teachers uncover their buried assumptions and see faces instead of abstractions and statistics. This article summarizes six ethnographic works revealing…

This review of Ernest Boyer's "High School: A Report on Secondary Education in America" criticizes isolated aspects of the study but praises its overall usefulness. (JBM)

In a response to a review of Volume VI of the Youth in Transition series, the authors discuss how competency testing can be used to improve basic education. (MLF)

Profiles two educators with new books about challenge of teaching. Philip W. Jackson, philosopher/professor of education, muses about teaching and quests for knowledge in "Untaught Lessons." In "You Can't Say You Can't Play," kindergarten teacher Vivian Gussin Paley advocates storytelling as way to build more moral world in the…

In "The First Year of Teaching: Real World Stories from American Teachers," editor Pearl Rich Kane collects 25 stories probing male-female differences, moral classroom dilemmas, and teacher training deficiencies. In "A Lifetime of Teaching: Portraits of Five Veteran High School Teachers," Rosetta M. Cohen examines outstanding teachers' passionate…

In "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization" (1990), Peter Senge shows how educators can achieve meaningful change and transform schools into self-renewing learning organizations. Organizations must develop five disciplines: personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems…

An essay review of Volume VI of the Youth in Transition series. (MLF)