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Nathan Gauer

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February 2014

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Nathan Gauer's Blog

Giveaway for "Songs to Make the Desert Bear Fruit"

I'd like to invite you to participate in a giveaway I am hosting for my first book, "Songs to Make the Desert Bear Fruit." I will be giving away five free copies on May 10th.

Songs to Make the Desert Bear Fruit by Nathan Gauer

You can find the details here: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...

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Published on March 29, 2014 09:02

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Nathan Gauer’s books

Average rating: 4.45 · 11 ratings · 3 reviews · 1 distinct work

Songs to Make the Desert Bear Fruit

4.45 avg rating — 11 ratings — published 2014 — 6 editions

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Nathan is Currently Reading

Nathan is currently reading

Lost Apple

by Iain Mavro Coggins (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading

read in June 2014

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Nathan said: " Reading Ian Coggins’ bold examination of the current state of American education, one can’t help but reflect on the central question at the heart of Lost Apple: what is the purpose of education?

Coggins’ narrative approach – Socratic in nature and fe Reading Ian Coggins’ bold examination of the current state of American education, one can’t help but reflect on the central question at the heart of Lost Apple: what is the purpose of education?

Coggins’ narrative approach – Socratic in nature and fearless in its insistence not to hold the reader’s hand and spoon feed conclusions – asks readers to engage with the questions the book poses. Nearly halfway through, Schimmel, the billionaire who founded the eponymous Lost Apple educational park/training program, observes as follows:

"Those business interests that would make our school system as profitable as our medical system, they see education merely as a commodity, while the general public sees it merely as an economic opportunity; they’re like the blind me and the elephant. Education is neither of those things. Education is a human right, as inalienable as any that Locke, Rousseau, or Jefferson ever conceived of, and it is time that society begin serving education rather than the other way around."

While one might rush to assume that this is the author speaking through Schimmel, in true Socratic fashion Schimmel’s beliefs – along with those of Lost Apple’s two main protagonists, Frank and Paul – are continuously tested, hammered, and recast in the fire of the dialogical encounters that propel the story forward.

After finishing Lost Apple, one also can’t help but reflect how rare it is to encounter serious reexaminations or explorations of the purpose of education in America. Other questions – none of which can be disentangled from the book’s central question regarding the purpose of education – emerge as well. For example, will we ever be able to remedy the vast, interlocking structural realities that perpetuate social and economic inequality in America? Will we ever provide world-class humanistic education to all of our nation’s citizens, regardless of if they are rich or poor, white, black, Asian or Latino? In the skeptical eyes of many, no; perhaps these problems are intractable. To such defeatists that lack the will to wage an earnest struggle, I would remind them of Victor Frankl’s hard-earned insight that “When we are no longer able to change a situation – just think of an incurable disease such as an inoperable cancer – we are challenged to change ourselves.”

Ultimately, Lost Apple reminds us that we ourselves must change if we are to provide America’s youth with the education that is their right by virtue of being born into this world. ...more "

Jun 15, 2014 01:46PM · see review