[Jacket Review]

DUMBING DOWN OUR KIDS:
Why American Children Feel Good About
Themselves But Can't Read, Write, Or Add

By Charles J. Sykes

America's schools are in crisis. Our kids rank near to, or
at the bottom of, international tests in math and science.
National reading scores continue to fall. Despite increases
in spending, our schools persist in turning out children
lacking in basic skills and knowledge - children who are
wholly unprepared to compete in the twenty-first century.
While the educational establishment points its finger at
society, families, and television, Charles Sykes focuses on
the schools themselves.

In this book, Sykes argues that the school wars of the 1990s
will be the defining cultural and political debate of our time.
While many parents bask in the glow of complacency about their
own children's education, Dumbing Down Our Kids documents the
collapse of standards in our schools, the flight from learning,
and the triumph of mediocre, feel-good education that is more
concerned with pumping up self-esteem than it is with passing
on knowledge.

This dubious triumph includes the latest educational fad, 
"Outcome Based Education." Although known by different names in 
some states, OBE is the most recent in a long series of "reforms"
that have eroded our schools. Charles Sykes traces these fads
from their roots in the early "progressive" theories of John
Dewey, through Dick and Jane and Spot, Life Adjustment, New
Math, Mastery Learning, and other reforms-gone-wrong. With 
examples, both infuriating and hilarious, drawn from schools
around our nation, Sykes discusses:

* Why American students test poorly in language, math, and
science when compared with peers from other countries.

* Why "self-esteem" has supplanted grades and genuine 
achievements in our schools.

* How the education establishment, teacher's unions, and school
boards lower standards in our schools while continuing to raise
budgets and taxes.

* How curriculum and standard tests are being dumbed down so 
everyone can pass but no one can excel.

* Political correctness from kindergarten through high school:
how schools, not parents, teach moral "values."

* Why many good teachers burn out or are discouraged, while
bad ones are rewarded.

Sykes concludes with a checklist for parents, students, and
teachers who want to evaluate their schools, and a series of 
recommendations to restore quality learning to America.
Written with passion, insight, and bubble-pricking humor,
Dumbing Down Our Kids is an essential book for anyone interested
in children and their education.

Charles J. Sykes is the author of three previous books, ProfScam,
The Hollow Men, and A Nation of Victims. A journalist who specializes
in education issues, he has written for and is frequently quoted
by newspapers around the nation, including The New York Times,
The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, and the
Chicago Tribune. He has lectured at universities and before parents'
groups about the subject of schooling. A senior fellow at the 
Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, Sykes lives with his wife and
three children in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

St. Martin's Press
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10010

(C)1995  $23.95 hdcvr

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