The Soft Revolution: A Student Handbook for Turning Schools Around

by Neil Postman, Charles Weingartner

Hardback, ex-library, with usual stamps and markings, in fair all round condition suitable as a reading copy. No dust jacket, cover worn and discoloured.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction

183 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1971

About the author

Neil 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.

Reviews

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not all revolutions start with a crash! Boom! Bang! Some start with a squeak, a tweet or a meow. Ones in this book do anyway. According to Postman and Weingartnerman there is so much to say to young people about how not to revolt. They say don't tell bosses "I take no poop!" (only they used a dirtier word) They say that bosses don't like this and so instead you should try to compromise with these bosses and reach some kind of consensus. They say we should use mental judo. I have seen regular judo and it involves a lot of close contact, with hands, and grabbing and sweating and holding. I don't known if I want to do this with my mind. They say that this book is only for students but I read it anyway because I was conducting my own soft revolution by doing the opposite of what the authors tell me. You should too. It's pretty good.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Again, I read this in the second year of my undergraduate degree and haven't returned to it in some time. However no book so profoundly shifted the way I thought about myself and my education as this. I'd recommend it for anyone in their early 20s manoeuvring through a university education.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written as a guide for students to revolutionize their classrooms from within. Same wit and flippant humor as always for Postman. I do wonder what students the authors are writing to—feels like a select, privileged group (even though they’d deny that).

[Don Bennie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good sequel to Teaching as a Subversive Activity aimed at students...it could almost be called Learning as a Subversive Activity. Great ideas and theories. The last 25-30% is all practical but out of date for today. This is all that knocked it from 5 to 4 stars.