Betsy Gunzelmann, (educator and psychologist) will be regarded as a prophet speaking of ways to save our ailing educational system. She uncovers some surprising hidden dangers in our schools, AND provides us with remedies to fix them! This is a book that needed to be written; the issues it unveils will be on both Democratic and Republican Education platforms in 2008.
Betsy Gunzelmann's Hidden Dangers is at the same time a lovely and yet forceful examination of one of America's most pressing and vexing issues. With straightforward, even kindly prose, Professor Gunzelmann enlightens us on the matters of the crises in our schools, offers beautiful interpretations, and even more, solutions to the problems she addresses. Her book emerges as a primer in a significant field of educational psychology. It ought to be required reading for students, teachers, administrators, and parents, which means just about all of us.Betsy Gunzelmann's Hidden Dangers is at the same time a lovely and yet forceful examination of one of America's most pressing and vexing issues. With straightforward, even kindly prose, Professor Gunzelmann enlightens us on the matters of the crises in our schools, offers beautiful interpretations, and even more, solutions to the problems she addresses. Her book emerges as a primer in a significant field of educational psychology. It ought to be required reading for students, teachers, administrators, and parents, which means just about all of us.
In Hidden Dangers: Subtle Signs of Failing Schools Betsy Gunzelmann presents a fresh and unique perspective at the conditions and climate of our schools. With the analytical skills, shaped by her experiences as a psychotherapist, she systematically examines the journey that too many of our children travel towards mediocrity and failure. Her disciplined approach, informed and shaped by her role as college professor, creates a context by which the not-so-obvious signs of danger challenging the well-being of our academic enterprise can be examined. Yet while analytic skills and research strength serve her well, it is the compassion of a teacher that is the heart of this book. Difficult issues examined and possible solutions recommended. Dr. Gunzelman is clearly not an uninvolved bystander. [This book] is her wake-up call for all who care about our schools and what goes in them.
The level of anxiety about our children's schooling needs some grounding. Betsy Gunzelmann's book helps us be more specific about the real dangers--which aren't because we have the wrong kids, parents or teachers, but because we increasingly reinvent ways to cripple schools, and thus kids, by unexamined assumptions. She neatly and deftly lays them out chapter by chapter.
This book is one people have been waiting for though they may not always have known it. It meets the needs of parents who may not have realized there are alternatives other than those they've been offered, and questions not always recognized or addressed. It is also a book for teachers, who have seen situations but might not recognize the fullness of what they may entail; or, who have felt they were more alone than there was need to be. Perhaps, even more so this is a book for administrators, superintendents, and members of school boards, or of government--the people charged with developing processes and procedures. Dr. Gunzelmann gives them questions to consider, options to pursue, and ways to respond respectfully and effectively to essential issues, ones overlooked to the disadvantage of all.
