A valuable, well-considered tool for navigating a child’s early education.
A Spanish-language guide for parents of elementary school students in the United States.
The target audience of debut author Navas’ book is the parents of students in kindergarten through fifth grade (i.e., elementary school in the U.S.). Her goal is to furnish a simple, easy-to-use guide that Spanish-speaking caregivers can consult when navigating their children’s education. The opening chapters explain how the school system operates and define key terms and concepts, including public and Montessori schools. Navas addresses how readers can help their children succeed, such as asking open-ended questions (inquire about the best and worst parts of their day), and outlines important concepts, including grading systems. She playfully observes, “¡La nota ‘F’ no significa fantástico!” (A grade of “F” doesn’t mean fantastic!). The wide-ranging guide also covers noticing symptoms of depression in young people and preventing a “Summer Slide,” where students lose some of their academic skills, during their off-season from school. The author wisely reminds parents, “¡Las familias son los primeros maestros de sus hijos y el hogar es su primera aula!” (Families are their children’s first teachers and the home is their first classroom), and she helps them maintain their roles as educators. For those unfamiliar with the American school system, the book is an ideal starting point. Chapters get to the point quickly, resulting in a manageable length of under 300 pages. Still, some tips lean toward the obvious; for example, one should eliminate distractions while their children do their homework, or when reading to a child, it’s best to pick books that interest them. Nevertheless, the work is indispensable for those who need a primer on education, whether at home or in school.
A valuable, well-considered tool for navigating a child’s early education.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9798992993400
Page Count: 254
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
American schools at every level, from kindergarten to postgraduate programs, have substituted ideological indoctrination for education, charges conservative think-tanker Sowell (Senior Fellow/Hoover Institution; Preferential Polices, 1990, etc.) in this aggressive attack on the contemporary educational establishment. Sowell's quarrel with "values clarification" programs (like sex education, death-sensitizing, and antiwar "brainwashing") isn't that he disagrees with their positions but, rather, that they divert time and resources from the kind of training in intellectual analysis that makes students capable of reasoning for themselves. Contending that the values clarification programs inspired by his archvillain, psychotherapist Carl Rogers, actually inculcate values confusion, Sowell argues that the universal demand for relevance and sensitivity to the whole student has led public schools to abdicate their responsibility to such educational ideals as experience and maturity. On the subject of higher education, Sowell moves to more familiar ground, ascribing the declining quality of classroom instruction to the insatiable appetite of tangentially related research budgets and bloated athletic programs (to which an entire chapter, largely irrelevant to the book's broader argument, is devoted). The evidence offered for these propositions isn't likely to change many minds, since it's so inveterately anecdotal (for example, a call for more stringent curriculum requirements is bolstered by the news that Brooke Shields graduated from Princeton without taking any courses in economics, math, biology, chemistry, history, sociology, or government) and injudiciously applied (Sowell's dismissal of student evaluations as responsible data in judging a professor's classroom performance immediately follows his use of comments from student evaluations to document the general inadequacy of college teaching). All in all, the details of Sowell's indictment—that not only can't Johnny think, but "Johnny doesn't know what thinking is"—are more entertaining than persuasive or new.
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-930330-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The sub-title of this book is "Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools." But one finds in it little about education, and less about the teaching of English. Nor is this volume a defense of the Christian faith similar to other books from the pen of C. S. Lewis. The three lectures comprising the book are rather rambling talks about life and literature and philosophy. Those who have come to expect from Lewis penetrating satire and a subtle sense of humor, used to buttress a real Christian faith, will be disappointed.
Pub Date: April 8, 1947
ISBN: 1609421477
Page Count: -
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1947
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