Educators Books

Now in a fully updated fourth edition, Elizabeth Nichols' The Genesis Of Your Genealogy: Step-by-Step Instruction For The Beginner In Family History is specifically designed and written for the complete novice to genealogical research and recording. Included are the basics of securing personal family information and then extending outward from original home sources; then how to organize information onto a pedigree chart and family groupings (with the fascinating addition of pictures); as well as the use of the Internet as a genealogical research tool. The Genesis Of Your Genealogy is an ideal "how to" introduction to the fascinating and engaging avocation of original genealogical research on yourself and your own family tree.

This book is well written and researched. It is devided into a number of cases in which the author describes the actions and accomplishments of various Quaker educators durring the Civil War era. Noteworthy was their fustrations with Southerners who distrusted any "teachers" from the North, especially ones who sought to educate former slaves. For someone unaware but interested in the history of Quakerism in the mid 19th century, or interested in 19th century women's history, I recomend this book.

International merchant and financier, the first modern philanthropist, and the first American to be named an honorary citizen of the City of London, George Peabody had a reputation for impeccable integrity and honesty. In addition to an account of Peabody's accomplishments, this biography offers a picture of Peabody the man--his broken engagement, his famous Fourth of July banquets in London, his distress about the Civil War--as well as the aura of the Victorian society in which he lived. A new chapter on Peabody's legacy, an updated bibliography, and an expanded index culminate this revised edition.

A great 50- page quick read jampacked with information for a new elementary band teacher (or administrator wanting to start a band program). So many times teachers are trained in their particular field, but no one ever tells them the very first steps to success before you ever see students and then for the first few weeks in the classroom and how to maintain these procedures during the school year. How do you set-up the program? Who do you talk to first on staff? Immediately usable tips on classroom management and much more. This truely will get you started and help remove many doubts or anxieties you may have about starting your classes.

An easy-to-read guide on how to research, prepare, and follow up on grant opportunities. Worth the money!

Personal indulgence and being environmentally friendly are often mutual exclusive. "Going Away to Think: Engagement, Retreat, and Ecocritical Responsibility" by Scott Slovic is one dedicated environmentalist's insightful ponderings about the world around him and how so often personal and societal indulgence leads to environmental turmoil, such as the high amount of jet fuel that airliners require and the damage this does to the ozone layer. A series of articulate essays pondering the importance of balance and the environment, "Going Away to Think" is informed and informative recommended reading for all environmental activists and non-specialist general readers with an interest in environmental issues.

While some in the Civil War community complain of "Chamberlain fatigue," it is difficult to gripe about this marvelous new collection of postwar correspondence from one of the most articulate officers on either side of the conflict.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain survived the Civil War - including a horrible wound at Petersburg - to become one of Maine's most prominent citizens. His postwar career included four terms as governor of Maine, a stint as president of Bowdoin College, numerous business enterprises, and perhaps most importantly, many years as a writer and lecturer on his Civil War experiences.

The correspondence included by editor Jeremiah Goulka covers nearly every aspect of Chamberlain's personal and professional life. Chamberlain's heartfelt letters to his family, especially those to his wife Fannie, reveal him to be a loving, thoughtful husband and father. His relationship with Fannie, stormy and difficult though it was for many years, survived numerous crises until Fannie's death in 1905.

Chamberlain's Civil War experiences transformed him, and his separation from the army often left him feeling restless. In 1870, Chamberlain wrote to the King of Prussia and offered his services in Prussia's war with France. In 1898, Chamberlain contacted the Secretary of War to volunteer for the Spanish-American War. Even with all his postwar positions and projects, Chamberlain never quite filled the space in his soul left empty by the end of the Civil War.

Critics of Chamberlain, in his lifetime and in our own time, claim that he inflated his role at Little Round Top in an attempt to horde the glory of that important engagement. At least one letter included in this volume refutes this criticism. In a January 1910 letter to Union veteran and author Oliver W. Norton, Chamberlain says of his brigade commander, Strong Vincent, "He was a noble man, and I have not known an abler commander in his grade. Nothing could exceed his skill and energy in taking the position on Little Round Top and the confidence he inspired in his subordinates. To this the result of the fight on the left at Round Top is very largely due [emphasis added]."

The correspondence also clarifies an often incorrectly reported fact concerning the July 1913 fiftieth anniversary reunion at Gettysburg. Chamberlain, while he visited Gettysburg in May as a member of the planning commission, did not attend the July reunion. Chamberlain's doctor strongly urged him not to go due to his declining health, and he stayed behind in Maine.

Rather than being castigated for his prolific eloquence, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain deserves the timeless thanks of everyone who studies the Civil War. Jeremiah Goulka deserves thanks as well, for his skillful editing, and for giving us a deeper understanding of a genuine American hero.

This book offers great insight of the thoughts of renowned educators of past centuries, and it powerfully mediates such insight to today's educational practitioners.

Great Quotes For Great Educators is a brilliant inspirational resource of over 600 insightful quotes. Including the wisdom of respected figures such as Thomas Huxley, George Eliot, and Victor Hugo; over 100 original quotes from internationally acclaimed speaker and educator Todd Whitaker; and the words of real students echoing wit and perseverance, Great Quotes For Great Educators is laudible both for casual reading and as the perfect source for "filler" quotations on flyers, school newspapers, and other documents. The secret of education is respecting the pupil. - Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Flanagan, Frank M. The Greatest Educators ... Ever! Continuum, New York, 2006

The Greatest Educators is an invaluable collection of essays on educators (both theorists and practitioners) from the Greeks to modern times. Flanagan's selection is an articulate and balanced account of major contributions to educational theory and practice over the past two and a half thousand years. A total of eighteen thinkers and practitioners are dealt with.
The author does not provide a wealth of detail in respect of any of his chosen eighteen, opting instead to provide the reader with an accessible account and some significant insights regarding each. The collection begins with a discussion of the Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
Socrates is represented as the "secular" patron saint of education. There is a paradox at the heart of teaching and education generally. Teachers are required by their professional or vocational commitment to teach what is true but they are also required to prepare the young for their place in society. These two aims are not always coherent.
The state's abiding interest in education is a function of its need to transmit to the young "the basic principles of its common life". Citing Durkheim Flanagan argues that the state must see to it that schools transmit to the young the principles and values which are essential to its survival. The teacher "becomes the functionary of the state". This is, at least, sailing close to the wind of indoctrination.





On the other hand there is surely an expectation that teachers will, irrespective of social or political imperatives, teach what they believe to be the truth? When they fail to do so (as in many cases in Nazi Germany, for example) we may understand their personal motivation (it is not easy to be a hero) but withhold any respect for their practice.
This paradox, according to Flanagan, is embodied in the fate of Socrates: he remains its most famous victim. While on the one hand Socrates was committed to the pursuit of truth he nonetheless felt morally obliged to submit to the laws of the state. This is a paradox which faces teachers in their daily practice (although in a much diluted form). The paradox takes many forms: conformity vs. independence? creativity vs. imitation ? obedience vs. autonomy? Acceptance or critique? Any kindergarten teacher will be very familiar with the apparently antagonistic imperatives of promoting the spontaneity and creativity of the young, or of imposing the conformist behaviour that the social world demands. Which is their primary aim, what is true or what is "right"?
Following the Greeks Flanagan leads us through an examination of Jesus as an educator. This is a very stimulating chapter, for those of us in the christian tradition find it difficult to see through the sacred (divine) figure to the human being who spent most of his adult life teaching. Was he any good at it? Flanagan thinks he was, and his account of what is really an end-of-term report on Jesus the teacher is itself worth the price of this book.
From Jesus we enter the Roman world of Quintilian and Augustine. And from there we skip to Comenius in the seventeenth century. In this era of universal education Comenius,


who pioneered the idea, is strangely neglected. He has been neglected since his death, in
fact, despite a vigorous European reputation during his life.

Indeed, as Flanagan points out, his neglect began almost immediately: he expresses surprise that Locke, who was thirty-eight when Comenius died and a well-connected person of his time, makes no mention of the work of Comenius although the latter's Great Didactic and his pansophist proposals were "widely known among the newly emerging scientific community".
Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education, is not, in Flanagan's view, a milestone in the history of educational thought and practice. He suggests that if Some Thoughts Concerning Education had been written by anyone other than one of the most influential philosophers of the time it would have faded into oblivion.
"And then", as Flanagan writes, "there was Rousseau" quickly followed (in historical terms) by Pestalozzi, Froebel, Dewey and Montessori. All of these were practitioners and established the theory and practice of child-centred education within the context of the burgeoning science of developmental psychology which would dominate the education of the industrialised world for generations.
Flanagan also devotes a chapter to the ideas of John Henry Newman on university education. In the early twenty first century we are apt to accept uncritically the notion that universities are there to service the needs of the economy or the "military/industrial complex". A return to the reflections of Newman reminds us that a university has higher ideals. University education is premised on "the formation of the whole man". Newman


brings us back to the ideals of the Greeks, the ideal of the complete human being; not the technologist or the scientist, the doctor or the engineer in the first instance, but the rounded human being.

Following a brief dalliance with Buber and Neill we end with chapters devoted to the radical critique of education which dominated the second half of the twentieth century: in particular Paulo Freire, and Ivan Illich.
Freire's critique of the oppressive pedagogy of conventional education/schooling had a global impact and caused much in the way of review and reform of established systems. Illich too, with his demand for the "de-schooling" caused much heart-searching in the educational establishment.
All in all this book is a "must read" for anyone with an interest in the history and development of educational ideas. It is well-informed, readable, and makes its subject-matter accessible to a wide audience.


Dr. Tony Lyons
July 2007