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Teaching As A Conserving Activity
A co-author of the influential Teaching as a Subversive Activity, Postman reassesses and reworks some of his "revolutionary" theories of ten years ago in a continuing effort to take the fear out of the classroom situation
244 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
3 people are currently reading
427 people want to read
About the author
Neil Postman
48 books1,045 followersNeil Postman, an important American educator, media theorist and cultural critic was probably best known for his popular 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. For more than four decades he was associated with New York University, where he created and led the Media Ecology program.
He is the author of more than thirty significant books on education, media criticism, and cultural change including Teaching as a Subversive Activity, The Disappearance of Childhood, Technopoly, and Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century.
Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), a historical narrative which warns of a decline in the ability of our mass communications media to share serious ideas. Since television images replace the written word, Postman argues that television confounds serious issues by demeaning and undermining political discourse and by turning real, complex issues into superficial images, less about ideas and thoughts and more about entertainment. He also argues that television is not an effective way of providing education, as it provides only top-down information transfer, rather than the interaction that he believes is necessary to maximize learning. He refers to the relationship between information and human response as the Information-action ratio.
He is the author of more than thirty significant books on education, media criticism, and cultural change including Teaching as a Subversive Activity, The Disappearance of Childhood, Technopoly, and Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century.
Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), a historical narrative which warns of a decline in the ability of our mass communications media to share serious ideas. Since television images replace the written word, Postman argues that television confounds serious issues by demeaning and undermining political discourse and by turning real, complex issues into superficial images, less about ideas and thoughts and more about entertainment. He also argues that television is not an effective way of providing education, as it provides only top-down information transfer, rather than the interaction that he believes is necessary to maximize learning. He refers to the relationship between information and human response as the Information-action ratio.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 17, 2016
I presume that this book could be read more widely if it had a different title; "conserving" is too close to conservative, and admitting that your are conservative before teachers is like admitting you are a vegetarian during Thanksgiving dinner. Getting past the title, the book provides a thoughtful message that should not be neglected.
Postman's thesis regards a thermostat. Just as a thermostat is regulated to provide feedback, countering with heat to stop the chill before too much time passes, so education provides a counter to general culture. Postman calls the education that the general culture provides an individual the First Curriculum. Schools provide the Second Curriculum, the feedback to regulate and to balance the swing of the First Curriculum. In this light, his thesis has great merit.
Each of his chapters regard different aspects of education: the classroom, evaluations, media, language, and such. I found several practical ideas from this book and recommend it to anyone involved in education in any way.
Postman's thesis regards a thermostat. Just as a thermostat is regulated to provide feedback, countering with heat to stop the chill before too much time passes, so education provides a counter to general culture. Postman calls the education that the general culture provides an individual the First Curriculum. Schools provide the Second Curriculum, the feedback to regulate and to balance the swing of the First Curriculum. In this light, his thesis has great merit.
Each of his chapters regard different aspects of education: the classroom, evaluations, media, language, and such. I found several practical ideas from this book and recommend it to anyone involved in education in any way.
June 27, 2009
Published ten years after Teaching as a Subversive Activity, this book is interesting but hardly as interesting as that one. Teaching as a Subversive Activity not only offered a coherent educational philosophy and concrete examples for implementing reform, it was characterized by great optimism, energy, and humor. Its overall effect was similar to that of a starting gun or trumpet fanfare. In contrast, Teaching as a Conserving Activity has the air of something written from the trenches. The author appears by turns frustrated, resigned, pragmatic, weary, dutiful, yet jaded—like someone only halfway through hiking the Appalachian Trail, someone footsore and exhausted who nevertheless knows there is no turning back.
The entire book is predicated on the idea that in order to preserve homeostasis and stability in a culture, “education tries to conserve tradition when the rest of the environment is innovative. Or it is innovative when the rest of the society is tradition-bound…the function of education is always to offer the counterargument, the other side of the picture….Its aim at all times is to make visible the prevailing biases of a culture and then, by employing whatever philosophies of education are available, to oppose them” (19-20). I disagree with this thesis, and as a result, found much of the book to be a disappointment (one point particularly being Postman’s momentary lapse into the kind of unwarranted either/or, “other side of the picture” thinking he decried in Teaching as a Subversive Activity). I preferred Postman/Weingartner’s earlier thesis that the purpose of education is to enhance students’ capacity for survival—physical, emotional, and intellectual. Can schools serve as thermostatic controls for society? Yes. But their primary function should be preparing their students for life after midterms.
I found it especially ironic, then, that Postman laments the way schools have been used as instruments for social conditioning. Though he championed the idea of discussing sex in the classroom in Subversive, here he includes sex education—along with drug education, driver education, counseling, free-lunch, baby-sitting, and racial integration—in a list of services he thinks schools should not provide. “The schools have assumed the burden of solving extremely important problems, but they are simply not equipped to achieve the solutions” (110). Problems like ensuring cultural homeostasis for entire societies? Though Postman asserts that he has turned his back on “twentieth-century ‘liberalism’” (205), I think he is confused.
Which really is my take on the entire book. Postman is confused. He disagrees with many of his former statements but not necessarily in ways that make sense or for reasons that are clear. He holds some strong opinions, but these opinions do not hang together or reinforce each other. He remains strongly against standardized testing but at times seems to advocate standardizing the curriculum. He makes a rim-shot out of Sesame Street on page 85 but then calls it “brilliant television” on page 189. He reproduces quotes from the likes of George Bernard Shaw and then writes, “if you replace the word ‘art’ with the phrase ‘language education,’ you will have a precise statement of what I have been trying to say” (153). Mr. Postman may ridicule HAGOTH all he likes, he must forgive the reader’s crap detector for going off.
All that said, I do not begrudge Mr. Postman his opinions or his book. Though I disagree with him on schools’ serving as thermostatic controls for the broader culture, I think he serves as a pretty good barometer for the state of education and educators in America. This is exactly the sort of book one might write after a decade of defeat, denial, and disillusion (which jibes well with my understanding of aspects of the 1970s), and through it all, Mr. Postman remains a generous and tenacious thinker. Tenacious because he is still grappling intelligently with large, complex, and exhausting problems, and generous because he doesn’t shrink from sharing his struggles and about-faces with the rest of us.
The entire book is predicated on the idea that in order to preserve homeostasis and stability in a culture, “education tries to conserve tradition when the rest of the environment is innovative. Or it is innovative when the rest of the society is tradition-bound…the function of education is always to offer the counterargument, the other side of the picture….Its aim at all times is to make visible the prevailing biases of a culture and then, by employing whatever philosophies of education are available, to oppose them” (19-20). I disagree with this thesis, and as a result, found much of the book to be a disappointment (one point particularly being Postman’s momentary lapse into the kind of unwarranted either/or, “other side of the picture” thinking he decried in Teaching as a Subversive Activity). I preferred Postman/Weingartner’s earlier thesis that the purpose of education is to enhance students’ capacity for survival—physical, emotional, and intellectual. Can schools serve as thermostatic controls for society? Yes. But their primary function should be preparing their students for life after midterms.
I found it especially ironic, then, that Postman laments the way schools have been used as instruments for social conditioning. Though he championed the idea of discussing sex in the classroom in Subversive, here he includes sex education—along with drug education, driver education, counseling, free-lunch, baby-sitting, and racial integration—in a list of services he thinks schools should not provide. “The schools have assumed the burden of solving extremely important problems, but they are simply not equipped to achieve the solutions” (110). Problems like ensuring cultural homeostasis for entire societies? Though Postman asserts that he has turned his back on “twentieth-century ‘liberalism’” (205), I think he is confused.
Which really is my take on the entire book. Postman is confused. He disagrees with many of his former statements but not necessarily in ways that make sense or for reasons that are clear. He holds some strong opinions, but these opinions do not hang together or reinforce each other. He remains strongly against standardized testing but at times seems to advocate standardizing the curriculum. He makes a rim-shot out of Sesame Street on page 85 but then calls it “brilliant television” on page 189. He reproduces quotes from the likes of George Bernard Shaw and then writes, “if you replace the word ‘art’ with the phrase ‘language education,’ you will have a precise statement of what I have been trying to say” (153). Mr. Postman may ridicule HAGOTH all he likes, he must forgive the reader’s crap detector for going off.
All that said, I do not begrudge Mr. Postman his opinions or his book. Though I disagree with him on schools’ serving as thermostatic controls for the broader culture, I think he serves as a pretty good barometer for the state of education and educators in America. This is exactly the sort of book one might write after a decade of defeat, denial, and disillusion (which jibes well with my understanding of aspects of the 1970s), and through it all, Mr. Postman remains a generous and tenacious thinker. Tenacious because he is still grappling intelligently with large, complex, and exhausting problems, and generous because he doesn’t shrink from sharing his struggles and about-faces with the rest of us.
February 27, 2018
Membaca karangan-karangan Neil Postman seringkali menjanjikan kepuasan persis membaca tulisan Mortimer Adler. Bentuk penulisan kedua-duanya yang berteraskan pendidikan disulami falsafah dan sejarah di sebalik perbahasan sering membuatkan ramai pembaca jatuh hati dengan hasil karya mereka.
Buku yang diterbitkan pada tahun 1979 ini agak berbeda sedikit berbanding buku-buku terkenal Postman yang lain kerana buku ini—boleh dikatakan—ditujukan kepada para pendidik tidak kira daripada golongan ibu bapa mahupun daripada golongan tenaga pengajar di mana-mana institusi pendidikan.
Dalam buku ini, Postman membedah pandangan termostatik (thermostatic view) yang melihat bahawa sesebuah masyarakat itu akan mencerap ilmu pengetahuan berdasarkan iklim maklumat (information environment) yang wujud pada zaman tersebut. Perkara ini dapat dilihat apabila Plato mula menulis karya-karyanya selepas mendapati bahawa masyarakat separa-celik-huruf (semiliteracy) yang wujud di Athens pada ketika itu tidak seharusnya menghafal dan percaya membuta tuli terhadap sebahagian puisi Homer yang—pada satu sudut—tidak berkata benar apabila berbicara mengenai tuhan.
Masyarakat yang pada asalnya berkomunikasi melalui percakapan (oral) mula mengengsot-engsot beralih kepada komunikasi melalui penulisan (writing). Perkara yang berlaku pada zaman Plato ini berbeza dengan zaman sebelumnya kerana Plato percaya bahawa medium penyampaian maklumat yang paling dominan dalam sesebuah masyarakat itulah yang akan mempengaruhi daya penyerapan ilmu mereka. Dan menurut Plato, masyarakat pada ketika itu perlu bersifat saintifik, konseptual dan abstrak dalam mencerna maklumat. Tidak dapat tidak, maklumat itu perlu ditulis sebagai satu wahana baru untuk memupuk budaya berfikir dan merangsang sel-sel intelek dalam otak.
Ini berbeza dengan Socrates kerana Socrates berpendapat bahawa menulis mampu menyusutkan keupayaan seseorang individu untuk mengingat selain mengurangkan berlakunya proses dialektik. Menulis juga melucutkan sisi-sisi privasi yang ada pada seseorang individu dan sasaran pembaca bagi sesebuah penulisan pula sangat mencapah. Adakalanya, sesetengah mesej dalam penulisan tidak sesuai dibaca oleh sesetengah lapisan masyarakat.
Walau bagaimanapun, mereka hanya berbeza dari sudut metodologi penyampaian maklumat. Tujuan akhir pemerolehan maklumat tersebut masih sama.
Konsep kedua yang dibedah oleh Postman ialah konsep berinteraksi dengan idea-idea agung (The Great Conversation). Menurut Postman, sejarah dan falsafah terhadap cabang ilmu yang diambil oleh seseorang mahasiswa perlu ditekankan di institusi-institusi pendidikan. Pelajar sains misalnya perlu mengetahui falsafah sains yang mengandungi bahasa-bahasa yang digunakan dalam sains, peranan imaginasi, sumber-sumber hipotesis, sifat-sifat bukti saintifik dan nilai-nilai kesalahan (value of error).
Begitu juga dengan cabang-cabang ilmu yang lain. Apabila seseorang guru mengajar tentang atom tanpa menyebut Democritus, mengajar tentang elektrik tanpa menyebut Faraday, mengajar sains politik tanpa menyebut Aristotle/Machiavelli dan mengajar muzik tanpa menyebut Haydn adalah ibarat memutuskan para pelajar daripada berhubung dan berinteraksi dengan 'Idea-idea Agung'. Tambahan pula, ia mencabut akar-akar bidang ilmu tersebut dan hanya mencetak produk-produk konsumer dalam pendidikan.
Seseorang guru juga perlu menekankan kepentingan bahasa dan semantik dalam pendidikan. Bahasa bukan sekadar alat untuk berkomunikasi. Bahkan, ianya membentuk personaliti seseorang. Manusia yang miskin bahasa dan kosa kata akan terdedah untuk menggunakan perkataan-perkataan kasar (kerana mereka tidak mampu mencari istilah yang tepat untuk menzahirkan perasaan mereka) dan mengakibatkan lahirnya keganasan.
Bidang semantik pula sangat signifikan untuk diajar supaya para pelajar dapat menyelami ma'na sesebuah perkataan selain menambah baik kefahaman pembacaan dan penulisan serta mengesan asumsi-asumsi yang wujud dalam penggunaan sesebuah istilah.
Tuntasnya, ma'na pendidikan itu perlu diinterpretasi semula. Pendidikan bukannya bermula apabila seseorang individu itu mula menjejakkan kaki ke sekolah, bahkan pendedahan dan persediaan pendidikan perlu ditampung oleh ibubapa sebelum daripada itu. Karya-karya penulis hebat seperti Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Whitman, Dickens, Twain, Melville dan Poe perlu dibaca. Tiada alasan bagi seseorang mahasiswa untuk tidak mendengar alunan muzik Beethoven, Mozart, Bach dan Chopin sedangkan konsert-konsert lain mampu sahaja dijalankan. Begitu juga pentingnya para mahasiswa untuk melihat seni lukisan oleh Goya, El Greco dan David.
Buku yang diterbitkan pada tahun 1979 ini agak berbeda sedikit berbanding buku-buku terkenal Postman yang lain kerana buku ini—boleh dikatakan—ditujukan kepada para pendidik tidak kira daripada golongan ibu bapa mahupun daripada golongan tenaga pengajar di mana-mana institusi pendidikan.
Dalam buku ini, Postman membedah pandangan termostatik (thermostatic view) yang melihat bahawa sesebuah masyarakat itu akan mencerap ilmu pengetahuan berdasarkan iklim maklumat (information environment) yang wujud pada zaman tersebut. Perkara ini dapat dilihat apabila Plato mula menulis karya-karyanya selepas mendapati bahawa masyarakat separa-celik-huruf (semiliteracy) yang wujud di Athens pada ketika itu tidak seharusnya menghafal dan percaya membuta tuli terhadap sebahagian puisi Homer yang—pada satu sudut—tidak berkata benar apabila berbicara mengenai tuhan.
Masyarakat yang pada asalnya berkomunikasi melalui percakapan (oral) mula mengengsot-engsot beralih kepada komunikasi melalui penulisan (writing). Perkara yang berlaku pada zaman Plato ini berbeza dengan zaman sebelumnya kerana Plato percaya bahawa medium penyampaian maklumat yang paling dominan dalam sesebuah masyarakat itulah yang akan mempengaruhi daya penyerapan ilmu mereka. Dan menurut Plato, masyarakat pada ketika itu perlu bersifat saintifik, konseptual dan abstrak dalam mencerna maklumat. Tidak dapat tidak, maklumat itu perlu ditulis sebagai satu wahana baru untuk memupuk budaya berfikir dan merangsang sel-sel intelek dalam otak.
Ini berbeza dengan Socrates kerana Socrates berpendapat bahawa menulis mampu menyusutkan keupayaan seseorang individu untuk mengingat selain mengurangkan berlakunya proses dialektik. Menulis juga melucutkan sisi-sisi privasi yang ada pada seseorang individu dan sasaran pembaca bagi sesebuah penulisan pula sangat mencapah. Adakalanya, sesetengah mesej dalam penulisan tidak sesuai dibaca oleh sesetengah lapisan masyarakat.
Walau bagaimanapun, mereka hanya berbeza dari sudut metodologi penyampaian maklumat. Tujuan akhir pemerolehan maklumat tersebut masih sama.
Konsep kedua yang dibedah oleh Postman ialah konsep berinteraksi dengan idea-idea agung (The Great Conversation). Menurut Postman, sejarah dan falsafah terhadap cabang ilmu yang diambil oleh seseorang mahasiswa perlu ditekankan di institusi-institusi pendidikan. Pelajar sains misalnya perlu mengetahui falsafah sains yang mengandungi bahasa-bahasa yang digunakan dalam sains, peranan imaginasi, sumber-sumber hipotesis, sifat-sifat bukti saintifik dan nilai-nilai kesalahan (value of error).
Begitu juga dengan cabang-cabang ilmu yang lain. Apabila seseorang guru mengajar tentang atom tanpa menyebut Democritus, mengajar tentang elektrik tanpa menyebut Faraday, mengajar sains politik tanpa menyebut Aristotle/Machiavelli dan mengajar muzik tanpa menyebut Haydn adalah ibarat memutuskan para pelajar daripada berhubung dan berinteraksi dengan 'Idea-idea Agung'. Tambahan pula, ia mencabut akar-akar bidang ilmu tersebut dan hanya mencetak produk-produk konsumer dalam pendidikan.
Seseorang guru juga perlu menekankan kepentingan bahasa dan semantik dalam pendidikan. Bahasa bukan sekadar alat untuk berkomunikasi. Bahkan, ianya membentuk personaliti seseorang. Manusia yang miskin bahasa dan kosa kata akan terdedah untuk menggunakan perkataan-perkataan kasar (kerana mereka tidak mampu mencari istilah yang tepat untuk menzahirkan perasaan mereka) dan mengakibatkan lahirnya keganasan.
Bidang semantik pula sangat signifikan untuk diajar supaya para pelajar dapat menyelami ma'na sesebuah perkataan selain menambah baik kefahaman pembacaan dan penulisan serta mengesan asumsi-asumsi yang wujud dalam penggunaan sesebuah istilah.
Tuntasnya, ma'na pendidikan itu perlu diinterpretasi semula. Pendidikan bukannya bermula apabila seseorang individu itu mula menjejakkan kaki ke sekolah, bahkan pendedahan dan persediaan pendidikan perlu ditampung oleh ibubapa sebelum daripada itu. Karya-karya penulis hebat seperti Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Whitman, Dickens, Twain, Melville dan Poe perlu dibaca. Tiada alasan bagi seseorang mahasiswa untuk tidak mendengar alunan muzik Beethoven, Mozart, Bach dan Chopin sedangkan konsert-konsert lain mampu sahaja dijalankan. Begitu juga pentingnya para mahasiswa untuk melihat seni lukisan oleh Goya, El Greco dan David.
March 18, 2023
Another banger of a book from that unflappable (go ahead, try and flap him) Postman. First he subverted teaching and then he conserved it. For his next trick he will bring it back from the dead and give it its own holiday.
May 20, 2018
It isn't often that a public intellectual like Neil Postman manages to somehow change his mind and yet stay on point. In 1969 Postman saw teaching as a subversive activity, and yet 10 years later he switched to conservation. Well, perhaps it is less of the reversal than the book titles might suggest. In this book Postman's main argument is that education has a critical function in society; that is to act as a thermostat on society, ensuring balance always is maintained. When society is too individualistic it points towards the community, when too conformist, it must promote the individual. This seems like a licence for education to be in a constant state of flux, but 1979 saw a threat from the power of mass media (TV in his time) and the direction was a vector, not likely to come back to the collective. Postman uses the framework of semantics and linguistics to underpin his point, which provides a more rigorous framework for his view than a general polemic might have. Looking back from today (2018) on the argument he made in 1979, the links to social media and the atomisation of society are prescient, although I have little doubt in today's world Postman's fears would be amplified. I am sure others will find large holes in his arguments and his solutions. (May '18)
November 20, 2020
I found Teaching as a Conserving Activity to be extremely stimulating and insightful in terms of both content and delivery. Postman is able to combine wit and wisdom in a way that allows for serious critique without sacrificing grace and good humor and that presents rather complex concepts and connections in a relatively clear and straightforward manner.
The book and its central argument are organized into three main parts, which aid the reader in following and reasoning through the argument. This is especially helpful considering the sheer scope and diversity of concepts Postman covers throughout the book's 12 chapters, touching on everything from politics to technology to psychology to philosophy. Indeed, if there is a criticism I have concerning organization it is that he tries to cover too much, which can seem overwhelming, leaving the reader with so many ideas floating around in their head it is difficult to keep track of them all. Some of the chapters could probably warrant an entire book of their own, and in fact Postman did later develop and expand on at least two of them in this way.
One of the problems with all of this information overload is that it can be difficult to identify one clear takeaway from the book as a whole. This is partly by design since in the final section of the book Postman doesn't offer up one clear and simple solution to the problems he identifies, but rather proposes several possible solutions, each dealing with a somewhat different aspect of public education and its organization or implementation. He does frequently draw connections between concepts as he introduces each new proposal, but absent is any sort of concluding chapter that synthesizes everything into a grand organizing principal. Instead, the reader is left to ponder each of the various proposals and their implications. As Postman himself suggests in the introduction, his goal is not so much to spark a new education reform movement as to simply start “a good conversation.”
All of that being said, there is an organizing principle (or set of principles) to the book in both the framework Postman uses to approach education and the key problems he identifies using that framework. The framework or perspective from which Postman is operating is what he terms the thermostatic view – the idea that public education should serve as a corrective counterbalance to those elements that are already too prominent in the wider culture, with the goal of achieving overall balance and stability in society.
As for just what elements of modern American society are in need of counterbalance, Postman has much to say. First and foremost, he makes the case that American culture is overly invested in and overly driven by the ideas, sentiments, and values encouraged by and through electronic media, especially television. He also suggests that wider culture is overly invested in and driven by technique and technicalization and that public schools tend to be saddled with the untenable task of solving many of the problems perceived in society.
Postman proposes several potential solutions to the problems he identifies, tackling everything from language and media education to behavior management to testing and evaluation. What unites all of these proposals is that each reflects one or more biases of wider culture, and stands in opposition to these biases in one way or another. Under this model, Postman suggest public education might work to "conserve that which is both necessary to a humane survival and threatened by a furious and exhausting culture.”
The Bottom Line
Teaching as a Conserving Activity is a brilliantly insightful and original work that is much more than a book about teaching written for teachers. It tackles crucially important questions about society and its overall stability with a focus on what the public education system should – or should not – do about them. As such, I would recommend it to anybody who cares seriously about the future survival and betterment of society as we know it.
For a more extensive summary and review:
https://allthingsmatter.net/review-te...
The book and its central argument are organized into three main parts, which aid the reader in following and reasoning through the argument. This is especially helpful considering the sheer scope and diversity of concepts Postman covers throughout the book's 12 chapters, touching on everything from politics to technology to psychology to philosophy. Indeed, if there is a criticism I have concerning organization it is that he tries to cover too much, which can seem overwhelming, leaving the reader with so many ideas floating around in their head it is difficult to keep track of them all. Some of the chapters could probably warrant an entire book of their own, and in fact Postman did later develop and expand on at least two of them in this way.
One of the problems with all of this information overload is that it can be difficult to identify one clear takeaway from the book as a whole. This is partly by design since in the final section of the book Postman doesn't offer up one clear and simple solution to the problems he identifies, but rather proposes several possible solutions, each dealing with a somewhat different aspect of public education and its organization or implementation. He does frequently draw connections between concepts as he introduces each new proposal, but absent is any sort of concluding chapter that synthesizes everything into a grand organizing principal. Instead, the reader is left to ponder each of the various proposals and their implications. As Postman himself suggests in the introduction, his goal is not so much to spark a new education reform movement as to simply start “a good conversation.”
All of that being said, there is an organizing principle (or set of principles) to the book in both the framework Postman uses to approach education and the key problems he identifies using that framework. The framework or perspective from which Postman is operating is what he terms the thermostatic view – the idea that public education should serve as a corrective counterbalance to those elements that are already too prominent in the wider culture, with the goal of achieving overall balance and stability in society.
As for just what elements of modern American society are in need of counterbalance, Postman has much to say. First and foremost, he makes the case that American culture is overly invested in and overly driven by the ideas, sentiments, and values encouraged by and through electronic media, especially television. He also suggests that wider culture is overly invested in and driven by technique and technicalization and that public schools tend to be saddled with the untenable task of solving many of the problems perceived in society.
Postman proposes several potential solutions to the problems he identifies, tackling everything from language and media education to behavior management to testing and evaluation. What unites all of these proposals is that each reflects one or more biases of wider culture, and stands in opposition to these biases in one way or another. Under this model, Postman suggest public education might work to "conserve that which is both necessary to a humane survival and threatened by a furious and exhausting culture.”
The Bottom Line
Teaching as a Conserving Activity is a brilliantly insightful and original work that is much more than a book about teaching written for teachers. It tackles crucially important questions about society and its overall stability with a focus on what the public education system should – or should not – do about them. As such, I would recommend it to anybody who cares seriously about the future survival and betterment of society as we know it.
For a more extensive summary and review:
https://allthingsmatter.net/review-te...
February 19, 2025
An exceptional companion to Teaching as a Subversive Activity.
July 30, 2011
10 stars for this one. I read this thirty years ago and thought the ideas were good, especially his explanation of why school needs to be the anti-TV. When i read it over the winter break I found the root of nearly every key idea in my Foundations of Reading, Language, and Literacy course. Neil Postman, my most influential mentor.
Read
March 3, 2009Thoughts forthcoming - thank you to Ed Francis for lending.
September 16, 2017
A neat time capsule of a book.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews