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The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need--And What We Can Do About It |  | Author: Tony Wagner
Publisher: Basic Books
List Price: $26.95
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Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 3762
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1
ISBN: 0465002293
Dewey Decimal Number: 370.13
EAN: 9780465002290
ASIN: 0465002293
Publication Date: August 11, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Despite the best efforts of educators, our nation’s schools are dangerously obsolete. Instead of teaching students to be critical thinkers and problem-solvers, we are asking them to memorize facts for multiple choice tests. This problem isn’t limited to low-income school districts: even our top schools aren’t teaching or testing the skills that matter most in the global knowledge economy. Our teens leave school equipped to work only in the kinds of jobs that are fast disappearing from the American economy. Meanwhile, young adults in India and China are competing with our students for the most sought-after careers around the world. Education expert Tony Wagner has conducted scores of interviews with business leaders and observed hundreds of classes in some of the nation’s most highly regarded public schools. He discovered a profound disconnect between what potential employers are looking for in young people today (critical thinking skills, creativity, and effective communication) and what our schools are providing (passive learning environments and uninspired lesson plans that focus on test preparation and reward memorization). He explains how every American can work to overhaul our education system, and he shows us examples of dramatically different schools that teach all students new skills. In addition, through interviews with college graduates and people who work with them, Wagner discovers how teachers, parents, and employers can motivate the “net” generation to excellence. An education manifesto for the twenty-first century, The Global Achievement Gap is provocative and inspiring. It is essential reading for parents, educators, business leaders, policy-makers, and anyone interested in seeing our young people succeed as employees and citizens. For additional information about the author and the book, please go to www.schoolchange.org
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 12
 It's hard to take someone with a combover seriously... October 6, 2009
SeaBear70
1 out of 8 found this review helpful
The content of the book doesn't help.
Seriously, I have teachers that are using this thing as everything from a doorstop to a joke book.
Ya wanna know what the problem with our schools is? It's simple, we've put the kids in charge of their own education. They get to decide what they have to learn, and we've removed any incentive for them to actually learn. Sure, there are carrots placed so low they never haveto get off the ground, but there is no stick anymore.
Bring back the ability to hold kids back a year and they will get the point. They will learn.
A bold step backwards August 8, 2009
Steven Hailey (Cambridge, MA)
4 out of 10 found this review helpful
The program of educational reform put forward in this book, if implemented, would accelerate rather than halt the decline of the United States as a free people known for a robust entrepreneurial spirit.
This book---*The Global Achievement Gap*---exemplifies and is symptomatic of the debilitating narrowness and shallowness of historical and intellectual perspective that has reached epidemic proportions in America, and that Wagner would seek, whether he knows it or not, to solidify as the end result of American public education. True humanism is an endangered species in America as it is; modeling our educational system after the the myopic corporate world will all but kill it.
Those of us engaged in educational reform would do far, far better to take note of these books, also intended for a general audience, instead:
*Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense for Reform in Liberal Education* by Martha C. Nussbaum, who is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago and who has worked with the United Nations on issues of development and international cooperation and is a past Central Division President of the American Philosophical Society.
*First Democracy: The Challenge of An Ancient Idea* by Paul Woodruff, who is Dean of Undergraduate Studies and Darrell K. Royal Professor in Ethics and American Society at the University of Texas at Austin.
These two prominent figures in the American intellectual scene offer arresting and compatible visions of education and social values that make Wagner's work by comparison look like a toddler's play in a sandbox---no, worse: they expose the kinds of educational praxes Wagner is pushing to be a deadly threat to an already anemic American civic culture and to the imperiled vibrancy of our democracy.
--- Steven Hailey
 Only half way there August 7, 2009
Squid (Florida)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Global Achievement Gap addresses and illuminates critical issues on how American education is failing to prepare our youth for life after high school - either in college or in the workforce. Wagner shows great deficits in teacher training and evaluational. I thought our failing school district was unique, but apparently the teacher evaluations (a 3-4 minute observation each year with no feedback other than a checklist) is the norm in the U.S.. He is right about the needs of industry when he speaks about the need for independent critical and creative thinking. In the U.S. manufacturing depends on high is based on avoiding labor costs. Another reviewer points out that China teaches by memory too. And there is where we are - if education continues preparing us for the 20th century - memorize, drill the hole, follow instructions, dill the hole in the next piece on the assembly line - we will catch up with the Chinese and earn $0.21 cents an hour too. What Wagner should say is that we NEED a global achievement gap - we need to have education for the 21st century - that trains students with the critical thinking, communication skills, collaborative skills and creativity or we become a cold weather Mexico without the oil.
I learned much from this book, and am glad I read it, but it was a major failure in a couple of ways. For someone advocating writing and communication skills required for business, the chapters were overly long winded and often seemed to loose focus. Maybe he was trying to bloat a 30 page thesis into 300 pages - but the book would have been much more effective at half its length. It was hard to get through it. The book also fails as it does not tell how to get there from here. It gives examples of 3 high schools which have exciting programs that may fit the bill, but it does not give any help on the process of how to transform our archaic 19th century teaching style into one that suits the 21st century. One of the schools he holds up as an example would not even hire experienced teachers as they are too used to the traditional teaching styles - so does this mean we are to fire them all and start over, or wait until they all retire??? The subtitle: "And What We Can Do About It" must be waiting for his next book. In the mean time my kids are going to miss the boat.....
 Hello Teachers... July 22, 2009
Jeff Bean
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
There's a lot one could say and there are multiple constituencies that would find the book very engaging: teachers, students, recruiters, managers, et al.
My focus is on the first, teachers. As an adjunct at multiple universities, I am amazed at how much (and how fast) some traditional universities are catching up to some of the leaders in nontraditional education. For myself, The Global Achievement Gap underscores the need to create excitement and innovation in the classroom through activities (yes, activities... for those of you who are 100% lecture!) that engage learners. As I come upon the next term of classes, I am working towards restructuring elements of my courses that incorporate even more aspects of 'working in teams', critical thinking, and other elements of Dr. Wagner's recommendations to enhance learning outcomes.
In summary, I highly recommend this book (especially to teachers). Chapter 1 is a fascinating overview that is backed up by anecdotal narratives and sufficiently good notes/bibliography for those that want to go further to the sources. Subsequent chapters go a bit deeper into each of the 7 elements but, chapter one is potentially 'class-altering' reading.
does china teach its students this way? June 21, 2009
F. Chang (Flushing, NY)
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
I haven't read the book yet, only the reviews, so I gave it 5 stars just because I had to fill in the field. I've worked overseas in Taiwan with some classroom experience there and am somewhat familiar with the educational system in China. The Chinese are the ones who we are supposedly competing against. Are they educating their students in the way Mr. Wagner suggests? No. Chinese students do not question- they memorize. In a class of 40 to 50, there is no discussion time. I'm not suggesting we copy China. I'm suggesting that the global achievement gap and competing for global jobs may present challenges different from the ones discussed in this book. The Chinese have a strong work ethic and being able to work as a part of a team is built into their culture. They are willing to work longer for less money and the sheer number of these kind of talented applicants is something the US may not be able to compete with. I think Bill Gates is feeling guilty cuz he knows Microsoft is going to make more money from cheap Chinese/Indian etc intellectual labor than American intellectal labor- just like they made more money from cheap third world manual labor than they could by paying American labor a fair wage.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 12
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