Educators Books

This memoir is excellent reading on being human - the reader gains insight into human experience as a whole through the detailed exposition of what it means to be a specific human, Ilan Stavans.

I am enormously proud of how he has expressed himself in a language still somewhat foreign to him. He has given the reader some food for thought on how we all sometimes live on immigrant islands trying so ferociously to protect our languages and cultures while our offspring yearn to find a meaning in the country of their birth.

I suppose I'm a bit prejudiced since there are family ties here, but this book is outstanding and worth your reading. It definitely deals with the great questions of the humanities. His "let it all hang out" style must have cost him dearly amongst the family and the community, but as a writer he is definitely true to himself. I admire him greatly. This is a must read.

These different viewpoints and perspectives reflect how our feelings and beliefs about sexuality change with age and experience. By their very diversity, we see again how people can be more open and more accepting as they mature, as well as how individual and unique each person's lovemap can be.

The comments are divided by chapter into groups such as communication, body, attraction, contraception, love, relationship, desire, pleasure, and masturbation, among others. I found those about love and falling in love the most thought provoking, and took issue the most on the section on communication. Many of the experts in this collection cautioned about sharing sexual secrets. I believe whether one finds this kind of confession repulsive, frightening, alarming, intimate, or erotic (or some combination) will depend on the participants and the specific contours of their individual lovemaps. I completely disagreed with, "You shouldn't tell men anything about other lovers before you had them. The jealous ones will get nasty. The non-jealous ones will think you are tacky." (page 7) Certainly, there are lots of other possible reactions, including enjoying hearing about your past! Your history offers lessons for both you and your partner. And who would want a lover who is both nasty and jealous?

In all, Haffner and Schwartz have put together a collection that can provide a beginning for self-exploration of your personal views and feelings on the many aspects of sexuality, as well as a vehicle for greater intimacy by discussing the topics with a partner or spouse.

Here are a few of the statements that I particularly liked pondering: "In some states, it's legal to buy a gun, but not a vibrator." "It is possible to have really great sex with a partner without having intercourse." "The major ingredient of desire is being desired." "One of the most vulnerable acts of one's life is to fall in love." "If you tell people what you like, they may just do it." "Sex improves with intimacy and age."

~~Joan Mazza, author of Dream Back Your Life; Dreaming Your Real Self; Who's Crazy Anyway; and Exploring Your Sexual Self (a guided journal).

In his own words, Sylwester wrote the book in order to provide "a functional understanding of these significant developments [in the cognitive sciences] to be able to comprehend the growing scientific and professional writing in this field; discuss, develop, and evaluate proposed educational applications; and effectively teach students about brain mechanisms and processes." In order to do this, Sylwester has researched well over 150 sources and concisely simplified and summarized them for easy understanding. The key difference between Celebration and other treatises on the cognitive sciences is in its direct application of its findings to educational theory, and to changes that can be made in order to better meet the educational needs of our students.

After a brief introduction and rationalization of his work in chapter one, Sylwester focuses each of his subsequent chapters upon six key issues in the cognitive sciences today. Chapter two illustrates the brain's construction on a cellular and systemic level. Here we see the organization of the brain and its basic physical and chemical functions. Chapter three explores the way in which the brain interacts with the world outside the skull through the senses and the motor system. Both of these chapters have little to offer in concrete suggestions for teaching, being intended instead to provide the information necessary to understand the later parts of the book.

In chapter four, Sylwester explains how the brain focuses on specific sensory information. Most intriguing is his focus on the role that emotion plays in making these critical decisions. While traditional educational theory has up to this point advocated the division between emotional and rational content, the author instead suggests that it is better to acknowledge that emotion is an inseparable part of attention and cannot be ignored, but rather must be worked through. To this end, he provides six guidelines by which educators can accommodate this as well as two others to reflect the biochemical and physiological functions of focusing attention.

Chapter five concerns itself with memory. After a brief introduction into the various types of memory, Sylwester explores the processes by which short-term information is either converted to long-term memories or forgotten. The most fascinating section of this chapter is the explanation of how memory is maintained and managed. Current research supports the theory that many of the activities in which humans engage, from sleep and dreaming to watching television to telling stories and even engaging in conversation, are primarily designed to promote the reinforcement and refinement of memories gained during more active periods. Education, too, is part of this process, to bring in and to maintain cultural memories (which Sylwester terms formal societal memories) that we want to pass on to our progeny.

Chapter six explores the most complex quality of the human brain - its problem-solving capabilities. The pathways and processes used in the cortex are covered, as are new theories about multiple intelligences and brain specialization for specific cognitive tasks. But Sylwester also goes beyond the simple biological mechanics and psychological conveyances of the process to go beyond the brain. He explicitly makes reference to three other problem-solving stratagems that human brains use. They "borrow" other brains by cooperating with other people, they increase their capacities through technologies such as telescopes and computers, and finally, altering the brain's function through outside chemical substances. Chapter seven is in many ways a brief supplement to this latter part of chapter six - explaining how the brain reacts to its environment.

The major strength of this work is its relative accessibility. To paraphrase an old cliché, it may be about recent findings in neuroscience, but one does not have to be a brain surgeon to understand it. Through a mixture of explanations, analogies, and clear diagrams, Sylwester seemingly effortlessly takes us through this complex maze. Despite this simplicity, Sylwester does provide a comprehensive survey of the subject, covering all the main ideas and facts necessary for people who work with brains as an abstract construct. Furthermore, Sylwester never forgets that his intended audience is made up of educators and conscientiously links the information he provides with potential applications for it in the classroom.

The one mistake that Sylwester does make, however, is his use of various shifting models in his explanations. On one page, the brain is an extensive library. On another it is a rich, jungle ecosystem. The use of the shifting and inaccurate analogies tends to confuse the reader and work against its otherwise exemplary level of clarity. Even Sylwester himself warns of the dangers of using such models extensively, pointing out that the brain and nervous system is a dynamic and self-maintaining system, while most analogies presented are static and require outside management. Another important caveat about this particular book is that neuroscience is now advancing at an incredible rate - even in the five years since its original publication, Celebration is beginning to become outdated.

Overall, however, this book will prove invaluable not only to educators (although they will be able to make better use of the suggestions provided) but to anybody with a vested interest in learning. As long as the brain is the central medium through which every child and adult acquire, process, and maintain information, we are best served by tailoring such acquisition, procedure, and maintenance to the processes by which this remarkable organ functions. Without any doubt, Celebration will provide you with a practicable, if not intimate, knowledge of those processes.

If the morning newspaper's horoscope section is your guide for making decisions throughout the day, then you might find this book delightful and 'insightful.' Reading with a critical mind, however, you will find nothing but ambiguity and contradiction throughout Finding Your Leadership Style.

For example, while explaining leadership in its introduction, the author said, "the following statement... wrong to some extent, 'Leadership is reserved for te few gifted individuals who have the capacity to lead.'" Yet in the following paragraph the author made a contradictory and equally astonishing statement, "We should attract individuals into leadership programs who exhibit and possess specific dispositions, or virtues."

By labelling leadership styles, the author further advanced toward analyzing each of seven leadership labels categorized in the book. Wherever convenient, a famous/infamous person was attached a label -- such as Adolf Hitler for the Dynamic Aggressive and Mahatma Gandhi for the Dynamic Assertive -- to (stereotypically) illustrate a leadership style. When lacking appropriate examples, the author would classify a leadership style as anonymously supportive or a behind-the-scene doer.

The marked lacking of scientifically sound theories and verifiably measurable data makes Finding Your Leadership Style, at its best, a chicken soup for educational leader-wannabes.