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A review by richardrbecker
A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-first Century by Oliver Van DeMille
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
I'm always looking for new ideas and material related to education, both my own and others (as I taught at university, coached high school sports, and am a part-time speaker). I chose A Thomas Jefferson Education because of my interest in Jefferson, having no knowledge of the author or TJed.
I'm not reviewing the author or TJed. I'm only reviewing the book, which raised several salient points about education and the importance of classics and mentor teachers. That said, I found some of the ideas in A Thomas Jefferson Education interesting and worth exploring, including the idea of countries having a sense of themselves as a nation based on literature, e.g. Shakespeare for England, Tolstoy for Russia, etc. There is some truth to the idea, and we may have neglected some of our treasured national texts, including The Declaration of Independence and what it means.
Overall, I found the book to be an inspiring piece of work, something most teacher mentors can get behind with some relatively minor adjustments in its application (because we've moved so far away from these principles). Specifically, we need to recognize that the United States is a massive nation (spanning a geography the size of Europe) and may require some regional and local adjustments to make it work. It would probably work better to introduce classics and contemporary literature into classrooms and make specific classic titles more accessible by matching them to readers based on age and ability. Then, someone could develop a recommendation tree that helps students move from more easily digestible classics to more challenging ones. (It seems that the order in which one is exposed to classics can make a huge difference in how well they receive them.) In addition, more neo-classics (like Dune) and diverse titles (Lorraine Hansberry, Zora Neale Hurston) deserve their place.
Still, none of this diminishes the book, which presents a worthwhile foundation that any educator can work from to develop something even better, especially among mentor teachers hoping to break the downward educational spiral we've seen occur over the past few decades (as a whole, not necessarily as an individual educator's work). In fact, I wish this book existed when I was providing my own children an augmented education because I was not satisfied with the material they were covering in a public school or in a charter school. Simply put, I wanted to teach my children how to think, not what to think. And it is this idea more than any other DeMille drives home.
I'm not reviewing the author or TJed. I'm only reviewing the book, which raised several salient points about education and the importance of classics and mentor teachers. That said, I found some of the ideas in A Thomas Jefferson Education interesting and worth exploring, including the idea of countries having a sense of themselves as a nation based on literature, e.g. Shakespeare for England, Tolstoy for Russia, etc. There is some truth to the idea, and we may have neglected some of our treasured national texts, including The Declaration of Independence and what it means.
Overall, I found the book to be an inspiring piece of work, something most teacher mentors can get behind with some relatively minor adjustments in its application (because we've moved so far away from these principles). Specifically, we need to recognize that the United States is a massive nation (spanning a geography the size of Europe) and may require some regional and local adjustments to make it work. It would probably work better to introduce classics and contemporary literature into classrooms and make specific classic titles more accessible by matching them to readers based on age and ability. Then, someone could develop a recommendation tree that helps students move from more easily digestible classics to more challenging ones. (It seems that the order in which one is exposed to classics can make a huge difference in how well they receive them.) In addition, more neo-classics (like Dune) and diverse titles (Lorraine Hansberry, Zora Neale Hurston) deserve their place.
Still, none of this diminishes the book, which presents a worthwhile foundation that any educator can work from to develop something even better, especially among mentor teachers hoping to break the downward educational spiral we've seen occur over the past few decades (as a whole, not necessarily as an individual educator's work). In fact, I wish this book existed when I was providing my own children an augmented education because I was not satisfied with the material they were covering in a public school or in a charter school. Simply put, I wanted to teach my children how to think, not what to think. And it is this idea more than any other DeMille drives home.