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The Book of Learning and Forgetting	Customer Rating:
This is a great book that challenges everything we know in our educational system. A must read for educators and teachers to open the eyes to how we all learn.

A book must remembering!	Customer Rating:
This book is a must read. The book offers a more philosophical, theoretical perspective on learning, contrary to mainstream, contemporary educational thought and practice.

Typical pop-psychology drivel

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The author presents the standard Rousseauian view of education: learning is natural growth, let children flower, if you force it will come out crooked, etc. As is typical with these kinds of books, not a shred of evidence is offered for this view. Any experienced educator knows full well what happens with this approach to education, the brightest children blossom while the other 70-90% of the kids fool around and socialize. He idealizes the "classical" approach to education, where older kids taught the younger ones and education was a communitarian affair; completely glossing over the fact that this approach is hopelessly unworkable in today's globalized knowledge economy (today's smartest kids have up to 30 years of learning ahead of them, they hardly have time to spend teaching). It also ignores the fact that only a fraction of the population was educated under this method, and the education they recieved was often quite poor (see "Excellence Without a Soul" by Harry Lewis for an idea of what a Harvard education circa 1800 was like). Today's schools face the problem of educating everyone to the fullest extent practical. The author completely ignores the main purpose of education today: career preparation. His ideal school is the typical open education model; kids learn whatever they are interested in, without regard to standards or practical utility. The whole approach to education espoused in the book is intuitive seat-of-the pants style schooling, precisely the opposite direction from the general trend over the past century. Instead of standardized tests and massive bureaucracies we need smart, happy teachers and students that all participate together in a community of active learning. Basically his ideal education is the kind of education system it would be really fun to have, and that we COULD have, if people weren't the way they are and the world wasn't the way it is...The truth is that the general trend has been neccesitated by demographic changes in the population being educated, massive increases in both number and diversity accompanied by lower average ability and motivation. No amount of educational philosophizing can change this. The book does have some merits. It gives an insightful overview of the history of educational research from this perspective. However the narrative can be painful to read at times (at one point the author seriously wonders why agriculture did not become the academic basis of education instead of psychology)

Educational Utopia

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As a high school teacher for 15 years and now an educational consultant, I came to Dr. Smith's book with a lot of interest. There can be little doubt that there are some powerful ideas here. His belief that we only learn by joining "clubs" (e.g. the spoken-language club, the literacy club, etc.) is a great metaphor for the apprentice/journeyman/master mode of learner that has deep roots in our society. One can even argue, as Dr. Smith does, that this is the best way to learn things so we never forget. (In fact, Dr. Smith believes this is really the only way to learn things.) And yet, in many ways his ideas are utopian, despite the fact that he claims not to believe in "ideal schools." Admittedly, I am always suspicious of authors in the field of education who spell out big ideas that seem simple and obvious and yet provide no concrete examples of how these ideas can be implemented in our schools. In my experience, it leads to two things: repetition and unwarranted criticism. Both of these are obvious features of this book. He harps on his one point over and over without expanding or detailing its implications and devotes chapter after chapter to how things went wrong and are wrong in our educational system. I also find his criticisms of our educational system to be disingenuous. I agree that our current educational system has it roots in the military-industrial complex and that this has affected everything from the bell system to its vocabulary; however, I disagree that this was necessarily a wrong approach. The one room schoolhouse served the needs of a nation that was 90% agricultural, the bulk whose students needed only the rudiments of math & literacy. The transition to a military-industrial school system was necessitated by the Industrial Revolution and world wars. The fact is, the educational system that Dr. Smith so criticizes did exactly what it was designed to do and made the United States the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth and the sometimes ridiculous "scientific" educational research that produced it led to some powerful advances in our understanding of people and how they learn. The people who made it work should be thanked even if they are now behind the times. The key thing to understand is not Dr. Smith's bluster about the fact that our current educational structure is somehow inherently wrong or bad. Yes, it has its weakness which deserve to be pointed out but, more importantly, we need to understand that over the past twenty years or so our society has undergone another seismic shift away from an industrial base to a service/information base. The problem is that our educational system has yet to catch up with this. It may be that there is some value in looking back to the "classic view of learning" for inspiration to help us through the paradigm shift currently underway in education but it will take real innovation, not abstract criticism, to make a difference. The shift is already underway and, though our school system is still riddled with holdouts from a previous era, eventually our school system will look entirely new. Otherwise, Dr. Smith is right and our educational system will collapse. But I don't think so.

The difference between schooling and learning...

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...is enormous! I go back to this book whenever I let myself be frustrated by a lack of nurturing combined with over-emphasis on grades/tests at my childrens' schools. It doesn't help the situation itself necessarily, but it reminds me to teach them that school is a tool FOR THEM, to help them find and make opportunities and participate in a social dynamic. They are not there for the school. And believe me, that paradigm shift can make an enormous difference. Perhaps because we did homeschool for a few years, the school system mystique has been broken down somewhat in our estimation. If all schools closed down tomorrow, my children would still be Learners. Learners are the ones who are poised to get the most out of "schooling," or out of any life experience they participate in. As much as I appreciate this book, I can only give it a four star rating because it does indeed fall short in practicality. It is a book that is meant to be read along with other books of the same vein, talked about, and debated. Individuals can make a lot of it. It will not, unfortunately, affect our "system of schooling" as a whole though.