Recommended Reading

Why America's Children Can't Think:  Creating Independent Minds for the 21st Century
by Peter Kline

Inner Ocean Publishing, August 2002
ISBN: 1930722109 

The title of this excellent book is misleading and a gross over-generalization. The book itself is, however, inspiring, informative, and useful. It is really about how reading, writing, and conversing-- the language arts-- can facilitate the development of higher order thinking skills through the appreciation and insightful reading of great literature. Peter Kline draws on his extensive and successful experiences as a teacher and educational consultant in helping the reader to visualize how to work with even the most recalcitrant students and turn them on to becoming lifelong learners. The book is easy to read and filled with examples to inspire active and interactive teaching and learning processes. A sample follows:

"Since reading is the platform on which an education must be built, if our schoolchildren don't learn to read thoughtfully, critically, with joy, and with their whole personalities, then everything else we might hope to do for them will be more or less hopeless. Therefore I hope educators, as well as those charged with the formation of educational policy, will read this book. Above all, I hope that we, as a nation, will stop trying to make the finger in the dike a rolled-up collection of standardized tests and will start meeting headlong the challenge that anti-intellectualism inevitably poses to the future of a free and thoughtful society."

We too hope that many educators will take heart from Kline's words and ideas and suggestions. "The better part of learning is beyond rote routines!"

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