This is a book that my wife recommended to me after reading it herself.  

 

 

 

Chapter One - Two Towers

Summary

The book opens with an anecdote about how the events of September 11, 2001 affected the students and faculty at George Wythe College. These are the lessons the author found from that day (pp. 2-6):

  1. Each Generation faces its own challenges
  2. When crisis comes, we naturally turn to God.
  3. When crisis comes we look around us for leaders to respond to. On 9/11 we looked as a nation to President Bush because he was in the position of leadership for our nation. "In crisis, leadership determines direction and our level of success--of failure".
  4. At times of crisis it is too late to prepare leaders, they need to be prepared before hand to act with confidence in guiding the community they are responsible for. We can learn from our past to teach leaders for the future.
  5. Although wisdom is usually thought to be found in the elderly, in times of challenge, often the young provide answers.
  6. The young are all about making the world better.
  7. The two towers of any successful generation (successful at changing their society) are a wave of great leaders, preceded by a wave of great teachers. If we don't have the education, we can't expect to have great leaders.

The conclusion the author has come to is that we must do a better job at educating the children of our generation for leadership so that they are prepared for the challenges that their generation will face in the years to come. He asks, "Is the education our children are receiving on par with their potential?"

Questions I had while reading

  • What is leadership?

Works Cited

DeMille, Oliver Van. A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-first Century. Cedar City, UT: George Wythe College, 2006. Print.

 

Chapter 2 - Education Today

Notes

Education in America today faces many challenges, and many people who want to "fix" it. There are two truths that stand in the way of fixing education.

First, education, and especially the public education system is many things to many people. The goals of the various groups of people that are involved with or have an influence on education are often in conflict; many of the goals have nothing to do with student learning.

The second reason is that we as a society believe this myth, "The myth is that it is possible for one human being to educate another." (p. 12)

"The fact is that the only person who can fix education is the student." The way to improve education is to help each student "determine to educate themselves and then follow through." (p.12) Great teaching inspires students to educate themselves.

There are 2 types of teachers who motivate and inspire student led education: mentors and classics.

A mentor meets face to face with a student and gives knowledge one on one. Classics are works created by great teachers and are experienced in books, art, music and other media. (p. 13)

Education comes down to two things:

  1. students put in the work to learn
  2. teachers getting the student's attention long enough to get her started and help her keep going.

Some references from the chapter:

  1. The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom
  2. Invitation to the Pain of Learning by Mortimer Adler. I found it here.

Thoughts

The myth of education was pretty thought provoking. At first I thought - that isn't true! But, then I thought about my experiences in schooling growing up and which teachers really helped me to learn and which didn't. There were definitely teachers that conveyed the material better than others, but the classes I learned the most from are the ones that I put in the effort to learn the subject outside of the class. The teacher could convey the material, but I only mastered the material as I worked on it myself or with peers. The student has that burden of self teaching in order to really understand what is being taught.

Questions

What does education mean?

From: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/education

the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.

What does learning mean?

From: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/learn

to acquire knowledge of or skill in by study, instruction, or experience: to learn french; to learn to ski.

How do you find a mentor?

The reason this question came up while reading is that I had the thought, "mentors sound pretty cool - how do I get me one of those?"

In the chapter the author describes an experience he had where he was at a weekend retreat and listened to a speaker who inspired him greatly. Afterwards he asked the speaker for additional material on the topic and followed up after reading them by asking for additional material.

John Wooden talked about mentors in one of his books (I forget the name) and how he had some mentors like his dad and a couple of his coaches that were directly in his life. He also had other mentors that he never met, except by reading their books and biographies. The latter would by called by Mr Van DeMille 'classics' I suppose, but Coach Wooden thought of them as mentors.

So I guess you can find mentors by realizing that someone is inspiring you and ask them questions to learn from them.