The Disappearance of Childhood

Neil Postman, a former NYU professor perhaps most noted for his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, originally published in 1985, on the pervasive manner of television into our lives and our ways of communicating had previously written a book exploring the concept of childhood. The Disappearance of Childhood was originally published in 1982, but was revised and republished in 1994. Today’s post reviews that edition of the book and discusses the ways that the notion of childhood has been conceived in our minds may be eroding.

Is NCLB Helping or Hijacking?

Following TeacherJay’s comments that while the No Child Left Behind Act is certainly not the magic cure for America’s ailing schools, from a previous post, some of his comments appeared on fellow blogger Rick Branscomb’s site. Branscomb is the author of Deducation and seems to believe that a major goal of NCLB legislation is to prove that the public schools in this country are failing in order to turn school funding over to private enterprise. An excerpt from an earlier entry includes, “Our educational system is being killed: it’s almost dead. Deducation, I call it. Mind-numbing, teaching to invalid tests, memorization of facts that won’t be facts tomorrow, stifling all ability to think critically, taking all teaching decisions out of the hands of teachers” in his plea to have NCLB repealed.