Columbia College Books

A wonderful book that is clear and simply written, which helped me to understand the content standards for art education.

The title does not reflect the real content of the book. This is, in effect, a detailed description of a successful grant in a low-income school system. It does not provide genuinely useful information about how to keep the arts in 21st century schools.

Review by Arnold Aprill from
Community Arts Network (www.communityarts.net)

"Putting the Arts in the Picture: Reframing Education in the 21st Century" is an important new book -- a breakthrough document that cogently explores the role of the arts in innovative educational practice and school-improvement policy in the contemporary world. What makes it a break-through book?

For one thing, it is well written. It's actually readable. The sheer volume of books written recently about school improvement and educational policy could fill an almost endless vista of groaning bookshelves, but even setting aside the important question of how many of these tomes speak in meaningful ways to a broad base of concerned stakeholders, one first has to ask how many of these books are even readable to a small cadre of specialists. (The designated audience of most educational publishing, a world in which value to practitioners is often considered a negative.) The unfortunate answer is, precious few. And "Putting the Arts in the Picture" is one of them. Despite the variety of writers that address a broad range of topics in this one slim volume, the tone is consistently intelligent, lively and engaging. It is a joy to read as pure storytelling about kids and schools and teachers and artists and educational injustice and sustained hope. It is also a pleasure to read for its strengths in policy analysis, and for its willingness to grapple with intriguing and challenging intellectual puzzles concerning the role of aesthetic development in the cognitive growth of young people.

It is also, as is appropriate for a book about the arts, beautifully designed. The haunting school photo on the cover by Scott Fortino (who also photographs prisons) of an all-too-familiar-looking hallway, devoid of any student creative expression, makes the reader urgently long for "putting the arts in the picture." And the pleasing ivory tones of the pages are the color of those in a treasured old book handed down from parent to child.

Furthermore, the book takes a stand. It articulates a clear commitment to democratic culture in the classroom, and to the critical role that the arts can play in developing thought across all areas of content knowledge. The book is outspoken in its findings that not all arts education is the same -- that as necessary as it is to teach art appreciation and formal technique, "Putting the Arts in the Picture" takes the radical position that arts education that also explicitly connects the arts to all other school subject areas (and vice versa) is much more valuable for young people's development. And, according to the authors, this "arts-integrated" approach produces richer, more varied and more contemporary art products, and by implication, more thoughtful, flexible, and innovative young artists.

But most important, the book is usable as an organizing tool. It was written with the express intention of communicating to various gatekeepers, in a compelling and lucid voice, that something right is going on here, and that there is an urgent need to reinvest resources and to develop policies that recognize the arts as a powerful engine for effective whole-school improvement. This is about valuing the arts, not as an add-on, not as a "finishing school" touch, but as central to our core mission and responsibility in educating the next generation.

The Center for Arts Policy at Columbia College, which produced this book, conceives of the publication as just one piece of an intentional and unfolding strategy for organizing for better education-through-the-arts, for advocating for more public and private investment in it, and for developing new policies that will sustain it. The Center is actively submitting articles about the book's findings to visible media venues, and has engaged a new staff person specifically to follow up on the national wave of interest that these articles have generated. Nick Rabkin is regularly asked to present the book at conferences and symposia. This should serve as a little object lesson to arts-education advocates everywhere: It is not just a matter of "publish or perish." The harsher reality is "publish, disseminate and organize or perish."

To provide an example of how clearly Rabkin and Redmond are making their case, here is an excerpt from the article they placed with the Washington Post:

It is fall. Fourth-graders in a Chicago school in a low-income neighborhood are focused and coiled with excitement. They are drawing portraits of each other in a lesson that is part of a unit on descriptive writing. They are deeply engaged, and the rich writing and art on the walls are evidence of real learning and accomplishment. Most other classrooms in the building also integrate the arts with other subjects and buzz with the intensity of discovery.

The same day, in another low-income Chicago school, fourth-graders slump in their chairs, waiting to read a bit of advice to their classmates. They mumble, "Don't hit your sister," and "Do your homework." There is no children's work on the walls, no evidence of learning. Instead, posters remind students of rules they must follow. One asks, "What is freedom?" The answers suggest freedom is a reward for self-control.

The new economy may require higher-order skills such as creativity, adaptability and teamwork, but most schools in low-income areas focus narrowly on "basic" academic skills, testing and discipline. The student boredom and academic failure that follow prompt calls for yet more testing and discipline.

The first school and others like it are proving that integrating the arts into the core of the academic program is a far more productive strategy.

Within a month of the article's publication, this reviewer heard that particular passage quoted to him, unsolicited, from colleagues all across the United States. In a spirit of collaboration and shared goals, they all thought I should visit the arts-infused school described in the piece, unaware that that school is part of the program I direct in Chicago. Anything that causes a wide range of respected colleagues to lecture me passionately about my own organization's work has to be powerful stuff.

Another strength of the book is its kaleidoscopic approach to its multifaceted subject matter. Each chapter is structured to address a different aspect of learning in and through the arts. It is significant that Columbia College chose to enact its mission as a college that connects the arts to the rest of learning by becoming the publisher of the volume. And it's a good thing. Like any good arts-integrated endeavor, "Putting the Arts in the Picture" crosses the boundaries of so many silos that editors at many a publishing house wouldn't be positioned to even consider turning it down.

In a chapter titled "You Can't Get Much Better Than That," veteran education writer Dan Weissmann profiles various arts-integrated teaching and learning initiatives in Chicago, Minneapolis and Boston. To make a full disclosure, the program that I direct, the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE), is one of the initiatives profiled. CAPE has been written about in many different venues. I am relieved to report that for the first time, the portrait here captures the practice in ways that are actually true to the character of the work, and that places the initiative in the appropriate larger context of school reform through the arts. Dan is also the first writer about CAPE to quote me accurately, for which I am grateful.

Distinguished curriculum scholar Madeleine Grumet examines the strengths of arts-integrated approaches to teaching and learning as a way of revealing broad-based criteria for effective general curriculum development. She reminds us of the need to lift compelling stories of arts integration "out of anecdote, without losing their incandescence, to show that they are now embedded in educational programs that sustain and augment them."

Cultural historian Michael Wakeford's chapter, "A Short Look at a Long Past," outlines the fluctuations in American educational policy and in perceptions of the arts that have made it hard for arts educators to plant their flag in the shifting sands of public education. "Nonetheless, the current conversation about just how the arts relate to learning does pursue something new and ambitious...[making the] radical assertion that the arts, deployed most effectively, are of a piece with the higher-order types of learning from which they have traditionally been deemed separate."

Renowned researcher Shirley Brice Heath and esteemed scholar Sir Ken Robinson place the American discussion about youth, arts and learning in an international perspective, presenting powerful case studies from such disparate locations as South Africa, Australia, Sweden, Liberia, India, and the Middle East. They describe how brave, resilient young people from all over the world, facing down such horrors as ethnic cleansing, apartheid, conscription, refugee camps, and AIDS, place the arts at the center of their urgent need to reconnect the fragments of caring communities.

The editors conclude with a sober but hopeful discussion of the challenges to and opportunities for "scaling up" field-tested but under-resourced successes in improving education through the arts in the 21st century. Everyone who gives a damn should own a copy of this book. Read it and don't weep. Organize.
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Arnold Aprill is the executive director of the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE), a network of public schools and artists and arts organizations committed to school improvement through arts-education partnerships. He is one of the co-editors, with Gail Burnaford and Cynthia Weiss, of "Renaissance in the Classroom: Arts Integration and Meaningful Learning," published by Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates, and described by Harvard Educational Review as "required reading". He presents nationally and internationally on school improvement through the arts. He is a Chicago Community Trust Community Service Fellow, and received a Leadership for a Changing World Award from the Ford Foundation.

The information about the subjects may be adequate, but it does not explain it very thoroughly and the MCAT is about having a full understanding and being able to link concepts together. In addition, the tests have many mistakes! After having done a few passages, I started carefully picking through them after I had finished and found a few answers which directly contradicted the passages - these practice tests served only to confuse me. It feels as though no one proofed this book. Since then I've bought a book from Kaplan and Princeton and although they are a bit more expensive they have been used by many pre-meds with reliable results - and they don't have mistakes.

Hey, pre-meds! I had 4 weeks to concentrate on studying for the MCAt after my summer session last year. I have a great grasp of the concepts in the pre-med courses and just needed the STRATEGY of how to do well for the MCAt. This is THE book. If you really understood the stuff in your classes the first time around, this book gives an excellent review and supplements the stuff you didn't learn but need for the MCAT. All in all I did 1 week non-stop studying/section then a week of tests I went over with friends. With such intensive studying, I fared well [9v 11p 11b]. I know of one person who got a 37 using this alone to study! Good luck to all.

I don't understand how this book could get anything but a "1 star" from anyone. The questions are downright wrong! I've only done a few of the passages and found numerous mistakes where the book outright contradicts itself. You don't have to be a genius to find the mistakes, I found them in the verbal section. This book needs to be tossed - do yourself a favor and spend a little more money buying Kaplan/Princeton or basically anything else.

This book was a dissappointment. I found the chemistry and biology sections to be lacking in their explinations of concepts vital to the MCAT. The testing sections were full of mistakes, something I found to be quite frustrating. How are you supposed to learn from an author who has trouble with the material? I would recommend Kaplan's Comprehensive Review, and sticking to the AAMC Practice Tests. Save yourself the frustration! Good luck on test day.

I received the Columbia Review book as part of an MCAT course I'm taking. The book is out of print, but just in case anyone is thinking about special-ordering it, DON'T!

The book provides a decent overview of MCAT science, but the subject area practice tests that follow each section are full of errors. Some of the questions don't have a single "best" answer, while others don't seem to have any correct answers at all. I'm not talking about typographical errors; I'm talking about poorly written questions that do not reflect the level of difficulty of the real MCAT.

Preparing for the MCAT is hard enough. You don't need review materials that make it even harder. Use the Kaplan Comprehensive Review, and if you want more practice on a particular subject, try the MCAT Biology/Chemistry/Physics series from Nova Press.

I really love that this book is exactly the same as it was in 1824, but Applewood's copy quality stinks. The print is not sharp... a VERY low resolution copy. If the print was clear, this book would be perfect. But as it is, it is very hard for me to read/see, and I'm sure this difficulty would only be multiplied for any child trying to look at the pages.

A repetitive and droning treatment on the topic of the over-reliance of the scientific community on computational models. Of course computational models can be taken as clear and incontrovertible predictions, which generally occurs in the context of scientific consulting in the case of an environmental problem. What the authors overlook is the standing opinion within the scientific community of computational methods as tools to further explore relationships that may not be measured or predicted easily due to constraints of time or technology. The misinterpretation of models as deterministic predictors of the environment is rapidly becoming outmoded among scientists, as environmental modelers (in the case of those I interact with, hydrologists) recognize and develop tools to express the uncertainty that exists in those predictions. That some among us choose to ignore the existence of that uncertainty, and the policymakers and business executives who expect results and get the results they expect, does not reduce the importance of such models to the point of being useless.

This book claims that environmental scientists can't predict
the future, and it offers to tell us why they can't. It provides
lots of evidence that that quantitative models in many realms
have been grossly inaccurate. Various chapters cover Yucca Mountain,
sea level rising, beach erosion and rebuilding, fishery yield
management, and effects of open pit mining, and invasive plants.
The authors claim that all environmental processes are too complex
to ever be modeled quantitatively. They are probably too
pessimistic in the long term, but they are definitely right so far.

The real problem is how the models are used, or rather misused.
Many seem like first guesses of the process, good enough to design
experiments or begin data gathering. Sometimes the creator of the
model knows it limitations, but usually does nothing to prevent
misuse. More often, the parameters are adjusted until the desired
answer is produced. They claim none of the model predictions are
ever compared to reality. The horror stories about bad predictions
are the best part of the book.

Several reviewers have complained that the authors support the AGW
alarmists. While they dismiss the climate models, they seem to
believe all the predictions from them. Perhaps this is an example
of the model misuse they complain about. Anyway, AGW alarmists
need not avoid the book for fear of weakening their faith. Skeptics
need not avoid the book since most of it deals with other issues.
I heard of the book from a very skeptical web site.

some of the attacks in the book seem to go beyond attacking the
ideas in some of the models, and attack those that do not agree
with their evaluation.

This is not a technical read. The only equations are in the appendix,
and they are provided only to show why they are wrong. Even
chemicals are explained by their properties, rather than being
blamed for their existence. This is an easy read, but Aynsley J.
Kellow's "Science and Public Policy: The Virtuous Corruption of
Virtual Environmental Science" is much better.

The first author is a retired professor of geology and a particular expert on beaches. He's a scientist's scientist, and clearly an opinionated and occasionally irascible guy. This book is a bit of a tirade in places but it's full of real examples, good data, and thought provoking stories. I enjoyed it a lot. The main theme is that the natural world is too complicated a place for quantitative models to work well, and that when politics is involved they can lead to really bad decisions. The majority of examples are drawn from cases where earth sciences meet human activities - sea level rise, beach erosion and "nourishment", hydrology of abandoned pit mines, storage of nuclear waste. Closely related are discussions of fishery management and invasive species. For the most part the book is well researched. The writing is clear - the book is an easy read and never boring.
Quantitative models are decried throughout the book, and the suggestion is made that what is reasonable is "qualitative" modelling. The distinction isn't really developed until the last chapter where some good examples are to be found. Still, the distinction isn't as crisp as I'd like - perhaps it is a qualitative difference and not a quantitative one! Another positive suggestion is that incrementalism is a generally better approach to interacting with the complexities of nature than the brittle approaches that arise from an overly numerate engineering mentality. In other words, instead of using quantitative models to plan enormous, long-term projects, try something on a small scale, observe the results, and go from there.
I came away with considerably more knowledge of the topics discussed. I was already a convert to the basic themes - that we tend to overestimate what we know, to trust numbers more than we should, that political processes often interact with science in ways that are inimical to both good decisions and greater knowledge. Several times I thought of Eisenhower's dictum that plans are generally useless but planning is essential. Perhaps that captures best the distinction Pilkey is trying to make about qualitative models.
Unlike some of the other reviewers, I was not offended by the political implications of anything Pilkey asserts. I didn't see it as either pro or anti global warming in any political sense. No hidden agendas here, it's really about modelling. Recommended.

Some of the complaints in other reviews are sound, but I will mention just one. This is a dull book. Longwinded, preachy. And aside from some jargon, there isn't much substance here beyond what you could say in 20 pages.

I picked this book up because the premise is very interesting, and one of the book jacket reviewers--an academic who is known in the modelling world--called it "a must-read for anyone serious interested in the role of models in ... science and policy."

I was very disappointed. I think critiques of modelling are useful and instructive, whether or not you believe in the approach or not (though few scientists believe it is really useless). But the critiques should be both sound and constructive, and this book provides neither.

Math is a language, for sure, but it is the least ambiguous language we humans have, and is the easiest means by which we can understand complex phenomena. I agree with the authors that qualitative knowledge is essential in science, but I think their premise fails by not more closely evaluating the postive aspects of modelling.

One may find probably the best critique of ecological modelling in Charles Hall's classic 1988 paper, "An assessment of several of the historically most influential theoretical models used in ecology and of the data provided in their support." (One may find it readily on the web.) Instead of getting this book, just read Hall's paper--you'll be better off on both counts.

Rarely do I praise a book for being so short; however, had this book been much longer than its 75 or so sparsely written pages, I don't think I would have made it through. Mr. Smith's narrow-minded "answers" to a series of what seem to me to be entirely self-generated questions (despite his assertions of it being otherwise) were so often irritating, misleading and unhelpful that I was completely frustrated.

I knew from reading another of Mr. Smith's books that he was an educational idealist; however, I didn't realize until now how completely beyond having anything useful to offer educational practitioners he is. In fact, this book makes me worry that his work might actually be damaging to the future of education if his ideas really begin to influence people. He seems to think that reading is as natural as breathing and if we just keep kids surrounded by books they will naturally learn to read. Certainly there is truth to the idea that being surrounded by books helps, but I still believe that things need to be taught.

After 20 years in the field of education, I am open to almost anything that will help children learn. Unfortunately, Mr. Smith seems to be stuck in an intellectual prison that allows for no outside influences and leads him to offer little of practical use. And his casual disregard for other's research and the progress made in our understanding of how the brain works is ridiculous. I was very disappointed and hope this book does not find a large audience.

I have become a huge fan of AW and thought I would go back and find some of her earlier books. I have to say I was rather disappointed by this offering. I found the characters to be a bit duller than her current ones and the book to be overall depressing. Then again it might be the fact that her 5'3" character is considered to be fat at 135 lbs, which just further buys into the size 0 stereotype that is evident today.

This story follows the early college year of Manya and her interactions and their intersecting lives with Ophelia, Arthur, her Professor, Saul and Boris.

More a fiction not a chick lit book.

I never received this product. I paid upfront and you said you would credit my account. I haven't seen any credit.

I ordered the books a month in advance of my classes; therefore, I am very disappointed that you could not deliver.

I will never use your company again.