Brave New Schools: Challenging Cultural Illiteracy Through Global Learning Networks by James Cummings and Dr. Dennis Sayers is an excellent book which explains how illiteracy can be dealt with more effectively through the efficient use of tools like the internet. Since Plato, educators have come to appreciate that literacy expands the human consciousness.
The authors discuss such matters as job related skills, reasons for failing student scores, the impact of poverty on education, instructional methodologies to reverse underachievement, cultural literacy, and much more.
The presentation covers the links between education and cultural identity with explanations of the need to transition from the Euro-centric curriculum to a more inclusive Afro-Asian inclusive curriculum.
The authors discuss symbolic analysis. This analysis requires abstraction, system thinking, experimental inquiry, and collaboration. Abstraction requires conceptualization, whereas system thinking requires a well-defined process of inquiry in iterative steps to arrive at a methodology to solve difficult problems.
Experimental inquiry involves testing and data gathering to arrive at inferences
while collaboration involves subjecting ideas to a group discussion.
There are implications for future study which the book could explore. Examples are behavioral aspects like setting boundaries with friends/associates, creating a quiet environment for concentration, goal congruency, measurement, and goal setting. Above all, students must learn how to cope with life, as early as possible in the education experience.
Throughout the education experience, students from all income groups have had trouble coping with the behavioral aspects to be mastered in order to succeed academically. Conquering these behavioral negations will require that students develop coping skills at an earlier age.
Brave New Schools is an excellent resource for beginning a badly needed conversation on improving educational outcomes. This work can be enhanced with a discussion of important coping mechanisms so that students can accomplish the meritable goals set forth.
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